Experiencing God

Our scripture reading this morning is from Psalm 63, and I'm going to invite Douglas Carter to come and to read that passage for us.

! A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

O God, you are my God.

Earnestly I seek you.

My soul thirsts for you.

My flesh faints for you.

As in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live.

In your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food.

And my mouth will praise you with joyful lips.

When I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night.

For you have been my help.

And in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.

My soul clings to you.

Your right hand upholds me.

But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth.

They shall be given over to the power of the sword.

They shall be a portion for jackals.

But the king shall rejoice in God.

All who swear by him shall exult.

For the mouths of liars will be stopped.

Amen.

All right, we're working our way in the summertime through some of the psalms in the mornings.

And we've said most weeks that psalms are prayers.

Sometimes they're prayers.

Sometimes the psalms are meditations.

Meditations where the author is actually talking to themselves about the experience of the Christian life.

And when you look at all the psalms together, all 150, what you have is a guidebook really or a blueprint for what it is supposed to be like to experience seeking after God.

So what the experience of seeking God's face in this normal life should be like.

And you can look at all 50 together to get a sense of what that's like.

Like, Psalm 63 is probably one of the two or three purest examples of what it is to seek God.

What it looks like played out from the internal thought life of David here.

It is a prayer entirely about the experience of communion with God.

So you would have noticed that as Douglas read it, just the language like,

I thirst for God.

Or my soul clings to you.

Or your love is better than life.

So this is language of deep communion with God.

And so this is one of the purest examples of really what the whole of the book of the psalms is doing.

So last week we were on holiday the past couple of weeks.

And I watched a short little film that somebody sent to me on YouTube made by some of the churches in England.

And it was about the awakening of spiritual hunger in the UK.

A story that many of us will have read and thought about and seen in the media.

And it talked about how in the early 2000s, really all the way up to COVID,

so many folks were still in a space of militant atheism, of anger at religion.

But since COVID, there's been a shift towards spiritual hunger.

And so one of the questions that's been coming up is,

what does it even mean to have an experience of God?

What's it look like to have a real experience of the real God?

And so lots of people are asking that.

And then some of the people that they did testimonials with,

they were being interviewed and they said that their experience of God was things like,

you know, I heard God tell me in my normal work day,

stop what you're doing and go plant a church next to this cafe.

And so different people were giving their different takes on what an experience of God might be like.

And there's confusion.

I think anybody in this room would probably admit,

it's hard to really know the answer of what should an experience of God be like?

What should deep communion with God feel like?

What should it look like?

What should be happening to me?

Should these things be happening to me?

If I'm having real experiences of God in my life?

And we here at St. C's are,

this is a Presbyterian church, free church.

And that means we are oriented towards being a cerebral bunch.

So we like to write what we believe on paper.

We like to read it.

And that means that we will always tend towards a more intellectualist side of the pole

of what it means to experience God.

We will think of experiencing God as knowing God through knowing propositions,

through knowing ideas,

through learning more about God means knowing God deeper and deeper communion.

Of course, there's the opposite end of the pole,

which is the mysticism tradition of the Christian faith.

And in the most far-reaching mystical ideas that have been around in Christianity,

the idea is that you seek an unmediated experience of God,

which means you want to vacate your mind of concepts and language and words.

And only then could you get closest to the God who you can't really know.

And so Christians throughout the centuries have vacillated between shifting between those two things.

Personality has a lot to do with it and the tradition you may have been brought up in.

And so we feel oftentimes confused and saying,

what should an experience of real communion with God actually look like and be like?

Where do you go?

Well, the book of Psalms all collectively actually tells us what it looks like to experience God

according to God's own word, according to God's own hand.

And Jonathan Edwards, he's one of the great theologians,

pastors of the American Christian tradition.

And he's well known for thinking about the experience of God and communion with God

more than most others in the past couple of centuries.

And this is what he talks about.

He says, experiencing God can never be divorced from knowing things about God.

That's a must.

But in knowing the truth about God, there's something else.

And this is what he calls it.

He says, a profound inner sense of the heart.

Where you taste God's infinite beauty and holiness that transforms what you care about

and what you love.

So Edwards says, the biblical model of the experience of communion with God

absolutely includes theology.

It includes knowing things about God that are true.

But then there is something else.

There is a inner sensation, an inner taste of God's divine beauty

that displaces things you used to love and changes what you care about.

And very famously, Edwards says, there's a world of difference in knowing that honey is sweet,

learning that honey is sweet, and tasting honey, and delighting in honey.

And he says, you need both.

You need to both know the sweetness of God,

but you also need to have an experience of the taste of the beauty of God.

You need to not only be told honey is sweet, you need to be able to taste that honey as well.

And that's what you see happening in Psalm 63 and throughout so many of the Psalms.

David here is undeniably experiencing an immediate felt experience of God's presence.

And he's not here necessarily saying God is telling me things and giving me new information.

Instead, how does he express it?

He says, the experience of God is, my soul thirsts for you.

And so that means that when I think when you look at the Psalms as a whole,

one of the things you realize, if you were to ask the question,

is a real experience of God something God gives you to hear primarily?

Is it an experience of vacating your mind and try to experience the transcendence of God

in a way that you've never met before?

I think when you look at the Bible, the main thing that we're given is,

you know you're experiencing God in your life when you have an appetite for God.

So the main thing that we're given here in Psalm 63 is that, that when you can say in some measure,

any measure at all, I do thirst for God, then that means that you are and have had an experience

of the real God in your life.

So let me dig into that a little more, according to David here,

thinking about the details of the experience of God he gives us,

and then secondly, the experience of God in the wilderness.

And then lastly, just a very brief reflection on the basis of that experience.

So what is this experience?

A little bit more detail on that idea.

So look at verse one.

This is the main idea of what he means by an experience of God here.

He says, oh God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you.

Now the order, that's the main idea of the whole Psalm,

the order of that, those two clauses matter so much.

Oh God, you are my God, therefore I seek you with earnest.

And it can't be flipped around.

It has to be in that order.

The order matters so much.

This is when he says, my God, that's covenant language.

It's the same way that God told Abraham to speak only after God came to Abraham and said,

I will save you, I will deliver you, and I will make you, I will be your God,

you will be my people.

And only then was Abraham able to say, this is my God.

And so notice the order.

David says, my God, therefore earnestly I seek you.

One writer points out the importance of saying my God.

You can think about it this way, as I read this week.

Like, how many people in your life do you say my about?

So if somebody comes to you, if somebody comes to me at the end of the service during tea and coffee

and says, I'm new here, I haven't gotten to meet Heather,

I might say, do you mean my Heather?

Because there's multiple Heathers that go to this church,

but I do have a my Heather here.

Or if somebody asks, where's Isabel?

I might say, do you mean my Isabel?

I have a wee daughter named Isabel.

But if they come to me and they say, you know, I was hoping to get to be introduced to David,

I probably wouldn't say, do you mean my David?

Or Don told me this, and there's lots of Don's around here,

but I wouldn't say, are you talking about my Don or another Don?

Now, I love all the Dons, and I love all the Davids,

but there's a difference, because friendship doesn't even really allow you to say my.

And so when David says, my God, he's talking about deep covenant family relationship with God.

So much so, that if you look down to verse 7 and 8,

he uses two more words that really help us see this.

He says, for you have been my help.

And this is one of the rare places that the word help shows up.

This word help in the Old Testament,

and it's the same word that shows up in Genesis chapter 2

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

for the way Adam talks about Eve,

or the way Eve is described to Adam.

She is my help.

That's not language of servitude in Genesis 2.

It's language that throughout the rest of the Old Testament

is only ever used of God to say, he is my help.

He is so intimately close to me.

It's marriage language.

And then down in verse 8, right after that,

my soul clings to you.

That's the same word that shows up rarely in the Old Testament,

but in Genesis 2.24, when it says,

a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave,

hold fast, cling to his wife.

And so these marriage metaphors are being used

with covenant language to show the intimacy of this relationship

that God has, that David has with his God here.

Now the order, therefore, the main idea,

is that the order he puts this in is the gospel itself.

He says, you are my God, therefore earnestly I seek you.

And here's why.

Because in the Bible,

we learn that every single human being

is spiritually hungry for the real God,

for this God, the God of the Bible.

Every person is.

And even in the most ardent campaign

against Christianity and the other religions

from militant atheism in the early 2000s,

the Bible actually still teaches

that even Dawkins and Hitchens,

at their greatest powers,

still were hungry for the real God.

They still actually want the real God.

That's part of what's deep down in the human soul.

We were made by God.

We were made for God.

And he is our only and truest and deepest satisfaction.

But at the same time,

the Bible says that nobody wants God.

So because you were made by God,

actually you do want God.

But at the same time,

because you are a sheep that has run away, rebellious,

you don't want God.

So Romans 3 says, no one seeks for God.

No, not one.

We have all gone astray.

We have all run away from God.

And so we've got this great tension

that generic religion, the world religions,

what are the world religions?

The world religions are simply expressions

of people's hunger for the real God.

But because they don't actually want the real God,

because we're all idolaters, all rebellious,

they've just attached themselves to things

that aren't actually the real God.

Hinduism, Buddhism,

this is just expression of desire,

hunger for the real God,

except they misplace worship to the wrong thing.

And in the same way,

every single one of us wants the real God.

And at the same time,

we don't want the real God.

What does that mean for this psalm?

What it means for this psalm is this.

If you today can say,

God, I seek communion with you in any way,

it is because God has already sought you.

You can only say earnestly,

do I seek the God of the Bible,

if the God of the Bible has already made you his child.

You see, the order, the order is the gospel.

He says, oh God, my God,

therefore, only because you first sought me,

can I now say, I seek you.

And I hope this is a word of assurance

to every person in here,

because I would imagine for some of you,

if you're like me,

you read Psalm 63,

and you say,

I would love to have communion like this with God.

But I can honestly say,

I'm not sure the last time,

I can't remember being able to pray,

say things,

and feel the way that David feels

about his God in this psalm.

But look,

if you have the slightest inkling,

even if you say today,

I wish I had more of this communion than I do,

then that tiny feeble desire

is only because you have had an experience

of God in your life.

Because the Bible says,

no one seeks God,

no one wants God,

no one chases after God,

only unless God is already chasing after you.

And that means you are experiencing God in your life.

If there's any sense that you can say,

I want God in the slightest degree,

maybe like this,

you might say,

the things that I thought

were going to fulfill me in this life

that I have been pursuing

have become less and less

and less attractive over time to me.

Maybe you got some of them,

and you realized they weren't exactly

what you had hoped for.

And only in that space,

you feel slightly more inclined

to want God more.

That is God working in your life.

That is the experience of God

that is taking place in your life.

And so you can come today

with assurance that

if you desire God at all,

the real God,

it is because God

has already desired you,

has already chased after you.

That means God's grace

is already at work in your life

according to the experience of God

that David receives here.

Now secondly,

we learn here that

that means

one of the most important ways

the Bible teaches us

about the experience of God

is through the evidence of appetite.

So do you have an appetite,

a hunger,

a thirst at all,

like David puts it here,

for God?

And that's the evidence

of God's work in your life.

But where does this tend to grow?

Where does this tend to happen best?

Where does this experience

tend to really come out?

And we learn that also in the psalm.

Look at the title,

what we call a superscript.

So superscripts,

the little smaller printed text

in the Bible

is also part of the Bible.

It's also part of the text.

And we have an introduction here,

a psalm of David,

King David,

when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

And so almost all the commentators agree

that the wilderness of Judah

is a reference to the time

that David fled Jerusalem

because his son Absalom

was trying to overthrow him

and take the throne.

And so this is a story

from 2 Samuel 15 to 20.

And in that section,

David's own son Absalom

had been plotting for years

to overthrow David

and ultimately have him assassinated.

And that means that

when David writes this psalm,

what has taken place

is what has taken place

in 2 Samuel 15.

He has run for his life

from Jerusalem.

He's crossed the Kidron Valley.

He's gone up the Mount of Olives

and he's entered

into the wilderness of Judah.

And there he's starving.

He's thirsty.

The text tells us

that he was barefoot,

weeping,

that he had no armor,

hardly any clothing.

And he's crying out.

And can you imagine,

you know,

being kicked off your throne,

being displaced from your home.

But, of course,

we read later in the story

that the greatest pain

he experiences

is because this is his son.

It's Absalom

that has done this to him.

And it's here

where we get Psalm 63.

That's the context.

Now, what's so striking

about that is because

what you read about here

is not Absalom

or getting kicked off the throne

or the loss of a son.

What you read about here

is him just going directly

into the sweet communion

of God's presence

and saying,

I need you,

I thirst for you,

I hunger for you.

He is literally

in a physically dry,

parched, weary, thirsty land.

And, of course,

his soul is absolutely dry

and parched and weary

and thirsty

because of what his son

has done to him.

But it's seeking the honey,

the sweetness of God's presence

that he goes to.

What does that mean?

It means this.

Communion with God

does tend to grow

in the wilderness experience.

Communion with God

does tend to arise

more palpably

when you walk

into the wilderness.

And Charles Spurgeon

points out in his sermon

on Psalm 63

a few different

wilderness experiences

that we might be going through.

One is the wilderness experience

of terrible circumstance

like he's walking through.

Something you don't want,

something that you didn't choose.

But the others

are the wilderness experience

that sometimes

God puts us in,

which happens

in other Psalms of David

where we're put

in a wilderness experience

because of patterns

of sin in our life.

And as one writer puts it,

sin is the great suppressant

of appetite.

So the more we are

in patterns of sin

in our lives

and the more God

puts us in a wilderness

to wake us up

and shake us back up,

the more we will struggle

with any desire for God.

And so if you come today

and say,

I'm struggling

with desire for God,

I don't thirst for God,

I don't seek God

as sweeter than honey

in my life.

One of the first questions

Spurgeon and I think

the text is drawing us

to ask is,

is there a pattern

of sin in my life

that we haven't confessed yet?

Because sin is the great

appetite suppressant.

It is eating sweets all day

and not wanting your dinner.

The very thing

that is so good for you

is dinner,

the vegetables at dinner,

but you eat sweets all day

and sometimes God puts you

into the wilderness experience

to awaken to that

and then that draws you

back into sweeter communion,

deeper communion with God.

Another wilderness experience

that is pointed out

by some of the authors

is just the wilderness

of the heart.

So you may say,

look, I don't have

any obvious patterns

of sin in my life

that I could point to

in some extreme way

and I'm not going

through bad circumstances,

but I am just walking

through the wilderness

of the drought.

I just don't care.

I have apathy.

I just don't feel like

seeking after God at all

and there's all sorts

of things we can do,

but let me give you

two things you can do

according to David here.

Of course,

we need to self-examine.

Of course,

we need to ask,

are there patterns of sin

in my life

that I'm not even aware of?

All of those things,

but let me give you

the two main things

David gives you

from the psalm

very briefly

and here's the first.

Notice,

in this prayer,

he does not ask

for his circumstances

to change.

Not yet, at least,

and instead,

what David does here

is he gives you

a very particular

type of prayer

and so you can see it.

It's almost chiastic.

It moves in and out.

In verse 3,

he says that

my lips will praise you.

In verse 4,

he says,

I will bless you

as long as I live.

In your name,

I'll lift up my hands.

That's a reference

to worship.

In verse 5,

my mouth will praise you

with joyful lips.

Back to lips.

He's talking about

worship and praise

through the lens

of a specific type of prayer

and that's the prayer

of adoration.

So,

if you read the Psalms,

you'll see all types

of prayers,

adoration and confession,

thanksgiving,

petition,

and if you look

at our order of service

here at St. C's,

you will see that we try

to do every type of prayer.

We begin with a prayer

of adoration,

we move to a prayer

of confession,

then a prayer of thanksgiving,

and then a prayer

of petition.

And you'll see all this

throughout the Bible,

but the most important

type of prayer is what?

Adoration.

It's the beginning

of every other type

of prayer.

And what David here

is in the midst of this,

he just starts praying

about God's beauty

in the midst of

pretty terrible circumstances.

He doesn't say,

Lord, give me.

He says,

Lord, I adore you.

Now, he's going to come later

to, Lord, give me.

I need.

But he begins with,

Lord, I adore you.

And we're being,

you're being invited here

to see something

that's very simple,

but just that prayers

of adoration to God,

contemplating through prayer

on God's sweetness,

His beauty,

His attributes,

is really the key

in the Psalms

to sweeter and deeper communion,

to every other type of prayer.

That if you reflect

on God's power

in all of Him

and His beauty

and His infinite majesty,

that leads you

towards prayers

of confession.

And that's exactly

what David shows us here.

He gives this whole person

into adoration

and praise

as the primary response

to His circumstance.

The second thing

is that prayer

of adoration here

leads to what we call

Christian meditation.

Okay.

The Psalms are prayers,

but often,

if you read them carefully,

the Psalms are not prayers.

They are meditations.

And that's slightly different.

So what are meditations?

You can see one

at the bottom of this Psalm,

verse 9 to 11,

when he turns away

from prayer

and he says,

but those who seek

to destroy my life

will go down

into the depths.

He's not talking

to God there.

He's turned to just

talking to himself.

That's a meditation.

Of course,

he's talking there

about the circumstances

and so his great friend

Ahithophel,

who ate dinner with him

almost every single night,

has been the main partner

with his son Absalom

in plotting

his assassination and coup.

And so very probably

when he says,

those who seek

to destroy my life

shall go down

to the depths of the earth,

he's thinking of

the treachery

of his friend Ahithophel here.

He's talking very specifically

about the circumstance,

but that's a meditation.

Look at verse 6.

He says it outright.

He says,

when I remember you

upon my bed

and meditate on you

in the watches of the night.

So there it is,

meditation.

The Old Testament

in the time of Jesus,

we looked at this

in the series we did

in June on Luke 24,

is divided into three sections.

The books of Moses,

what's called the prophets,

but the prophets

actually begin with Joshua,

the history books,

and then the Psalms

are the writings,

which starts with the Psalms.

So you've got

the first five books

of the Bible

and then section two

of the Old Testament,

Joshua,

section three

of the Old Testament,

Psalms.

Chris preached on Psalm 1

recently,

and you'll remember

that language,

meditate on the law

of the Lord

day and night

in Psalm 1.

He meditates.

Joshua 1,

in the second paragraph

of the opening

of that second section

of the Bible,

what does it say?

It says,

Joshua was given

the command,

meditate on God's law

day and night.

So at every section

of the Old Testament,

it opens by saying,

practice meditation.

What is this meditation?

We're told about it

right here,

and it's this.

It's contra mysticism,

contra Eastern religion

where you're invited

to empty your mind

of all concepts

and instead just experience

whatever you happen

to experience.

Instead,

Christian meditation

in the Psalms

is when you actually

fill your mind

with the beauty,

presence,

and truth of God

that you learn about

in the Bible

until God becomes

sweet to you.

So that's the practice

of Christian meditation.

Listen to Jonathan Edwards

talk about it.

He says,

it's when you take

a single spiritual truth

and you deeply digest it

until it moves

from a cold fact

in your brain

to a sweeter taste

in your heart.

There was a woman

named Ann Bradstreet.

She was a Puritan author

in New England,

and we have just a host

of her meditations

on God

that have been preserved,

and she's got,

they're really worth

looking at.

They're absolutely beautiful.

But this is what she,

she talks about

her practice of meditation

or contemplation on God,

and oftentimes

she would look at nature

as a mirror

like Psalm 19 does

and reflect on the sun

and the moon

and the trees,

and she says,

I don't just see

what's in front of me,

but I see the sun

and the moon

and the trees

as symbols or mirrors

pointing to God's

divine beauty

and His power

and His order

and His love.

And then she says,

she writes this

in one of her meditations.

Lord,

why should I doubt

any more

when you have given me

such assured pledges

of your love?

First,

I see you are my creator.

I see I am your creature.

You my master,

I your servant,

but my comfort arises

when I say this,

you are my father

and I am your child.

So there she's practicing

meditation,

leading into prayer,

and that's exactly

what we have

all throughout

the book of Psalms.

It's pursuing conversation

with God

through thinking about God

all the time

in the most ordinary

moments of your day.

There's another writer,

Brother Lawrence,

who Protestants

have sometimes pulled from

for some of the helpful bits.

You can't take everything

from Brother Lawrence.

You leave some stuff behind,

but Brother Lawrence

in his book,

Practicing the Presence of God,

he was a cook

at a monastery,

this guy,

and he says,

there is no manner

of life in the world

more sweet

or more delicious

than continual conversation

with God,

and Brother Lawrence

in his book

talks about how he

most communes with God,

most thinks about God,

most talks to God

when he is doing the dishes,

that that was

his favorite moment,

that he says,

the time of business

does not with me

differ from the time

of prayer.

And so this is the practice

of what Paul means

in the New Testament

when he says,

pray without ceasing.

It's learning to meditate

on the infinite beauty

of God

and let that draw you

into prayer

until your heart

feels sweet

with the reality

of who God is.

Sometimes

that takes 30 seconds,

and sometimes

that takes three years.

Sometimes

you don't arrive

at the sweetness

of the infinite beauty

of God's

very being,

meditating

and praying.

It doesn't really

get into your soul

until three years later.

And you might be

walking through

a 30-second season

or a three-year season

on this very day,

but the promise

is that God

will give you

that sweetness.

That's the promise

of Psalm 63.

Listen,

I'll move on

to the final

and very brief thing,

but let me give you

what Edwards says

about this experience.

He says,

I want,

he says,

excuse me,

he says,

in reading Scripture

I seemed often

to see so much light

that I could not

get along in my reading.

Almost every sentence

at times in my life

have seemed to me

to be so full of wonders.

I found from time to time

an inward sweetness

that used,

as it were,

to carry me away

into contemplation

about my God.

I felt alone,

sweetly conversing

with Christ,

wrapped up

and swallowed up in Him.

The sense I had

of divine things

would often,

of a sudden,

as it were,

kindle up a sweet

burning in my heart

and ardor of my soul

that I know not

how to express now

to you into words.

This is the experience

that David is having

in Psalm 63.

Now,

one application,

and it's this.

This is so important

for us

in a cerebral congregation

as we will tend to be

in our Presbyterian

theologically oriented

tradition

because it is my default.

I imagine it is

some of your default

to say,

when you are feeling

spiritually low,

to say,

I want a spiritual

pick-me-up,

so I am going to put

my favorite preacher

on my favorite Spotify app,

on the Spotify app,

into my ears

while I walk through the city

and dig in

to what he has

to say to me.

And that's a very good thing.

I believe in preaching.

We're doing it today,

in fact.

And so,

don't not do that,

but we all know

that sometimes

going to our favorite preacher

because we like

the way they put things

can leave us

in front of our favorite preacher

because we like

the way they say things

and never taking

that next step,

which is to actually

meet with God.

So,

do you,

even today,

even as we sing,

even as we pray

in just a moment,

do you take the step

from saying,

I like the way

somebody may or may not

have put X, Y, Z

in a sermon

to actually saying,

I'm turning now

to speak and converse

with the living God

about what I've just

seen and heard and read.

That's the step

that we,

as theological Protestants,

often can miss.

And so,

we're being invited

in Psalm 63

to deeper communion

and meditation.

On what basis,

finally,

as we conclude

very shortly?

Luke 24 tells us

that Jesus

read the Psalms

and he taught

how they concerned

himself.

And that means here

that when you read

Psalm 63,

like the rest,

especially the Psalms

of David,

you have to say

that they are ultimately

about Jesus Christ.

You have to read them

in the light of him,

in the light of the gospel.

I don't think

it's coincidence at all

that when you read,

if you were to go read

2 Samuel 15 to 20,

the story of David

being run out

of the city

because of this

circumstance

of Absalom

that David goes

barefoot and weeping

out from the center

of Jerusalem

down through the Kidron Valley

up the Mount of Olives.

And there,

on the Mount of Olives,

he meditates

on the one

who ate dinner with him

yet betrayed him,

Ahithophel.

And it's there

that he starts to pen

the Psalms like these.

It's no coincidence.

That a great king

in the middle of history

would go up

the Mount of Olives

and pray a prayer

like this

on the basis

that the one

he had been eating

dinner with

had betrayed him.

And of course,

this Psalm

is far more

about the true

and better David

that we read about

in Matthew chapter 1

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

who went up

the Mount of Olives

and who stood

in Gethsemane

and who was betrayed

by the one

who had eaten dinner

with him

just that very night.

And he was

the true

and better king

that was being

exiled where

into the deep wilderness.

But there's a difference

and the difference

is this.

David here

in this Psalm

says,

I thirst for you,

God.

And God

comes to him

sweeter than honey.

But the true

and better David

said,

I thirst.

And in that moment

he wasn't just talking

about his lips,

his physical lips.

He was saying,

I thirst for communion

with my father

and he was nothing

but parched.

He was starved.

He was forsaken.

He was cast out.

And see,

David did not deserve

communion with God

and neither do we.

We are rebel sheep.

We are rebel sheep.

David does not deserve

this communion

but God gives David

this communion

on the basis

that one day

the true and better David

will say,

I thirst

and he will be

ultimately exiled

so that David

can know the grace

of the sweetness

of God's infinite presence

with him

in this very moment.

And that is the same

exact thing

that is true for you.

If you come today

and you say,

I'm struggling to pray,

I don't experience

this sweet communion

in my life right now,

let me add one

little facet

to the discipline

of meditation

and it's this.

Meditate,

as he says,

on the steadfast love

of the Lord

which is better than life.

But how do you meditate

on that?

You say this,

the steadfast love

of the Lord

expressed in Jesus Christ

hanging on the cross

for me,

that love

is better than life.

So you orient

your meditation

to the Christ

of the cross

and you say,

that's where I know

that his love for me

is better than life itself.

Your heart,

over time,

your heart over time

will start to see

that the greatest benefit

of prayers

of communion

with God

is not,

it's not Lord give me,

it's not in getting

whatever you're asking for,

but it is in

the very fact

that you get God himself.

that will grow

in your life.

Let us pray.

Father,

we want an experience

of God

even today,

even now,

and some of us

are there,

we're tasting

the honey

that is the infinite beauty

that is condescended

in your presence

with us

as you promise it.

And for many of us,

probably,

more of us,

we are feeling distant

and cold

and struggling

and saying,

yet I want this,

and so Lord,

first we ask

that you would assure us

that you are working

in our lives

if there's any hint

of desire in us

for knowing you more.

And then secondly,

we ask that you would

grant it to us even now.

So help us to turn away

from the meager words

of some sermon

from some guy

and instead,

Lord,

all of us help us now

to turn in prayer

and communion with you,

the living God.

So we ask for that

as we sing these words

of Be Thou My Vision.

In Christ's name,

we pray.

Amen.

Amen.