Naming Our Devices & Desires in a Culture of Addiction

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I'll be reading today's scripture lesson from Psalm 16, verses 1 through 11.

Psalms 16 · chapter mention

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord, you are my Lord, I have no good apart from you.

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.

The sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply.

Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.

You hold my lot.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.

In the night also my heart instructs me.

I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand.

I shall not be shaken.

Therefore, my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices.

My flesh also dwells secure.

For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your Holy One see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life.

In your presence there is fullness of joy.

At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

The grass withers and the flowers fall.

But the word of our God stands forever.

Thank you, Susie.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Andrew, and I'm one of the pastors here.

Mark, we're so glad to have you here, and so proud to be partnering with you in this mission to Japan.

We believe here that missions exist where worship doesn't.

And we so hope that your labors will result in worship.

Let the nations be glad, right?

Let the nations be glad.

We're going to open up God's word from Psalm 16 this morning, but let's go to the Lord in prayer first.

Oh, God, we ask that your spirit would so descend upon us in this moment that we would be utterly convinced of the words that you speak to us in the scriptures and in Psalm 16.

Would we so believe that in your right hand are pleasures forevermore, and in your presence is the fullness of joy.

Would you so convince us of that truth that we would pursue holy habits of grace, being near to you, intimate with you, close to you, God, in our daily lives?

Because we just can't get enough.

Make us those kinds of trees.

Make our church that kind of garden of trees, we ask in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

All right.

So this might sound kind of weird, but it might sound kind of creepy, but I'm just going to go with it.

But the thing that's been on my mind the most lately is eighth and ninth grade boys.

All right.

That's something that I've been thinking a lot about lately, eighth and ninth grade boys.

And it probably started about a month ago because I was invited to preach at a youth retreat.

It was the retreat held by the church that I grew up at, the same youth retreat that I grew up attending.

And so what happened was me and Amy, we got there.

Some of our youth came as well.

I didn't have to preach until the next morning, so we just kind of settled in, went to the dining hall to have dinner with everybody else.

And I was like, cool, I got this.

All right.

I'm just going to start mingling, get to know these students.

There are about 110 students, sixth through 12th graders.

No sweat.

Should be fun.

Right.

So I go and I sit down with this table of like four eighth grade boys, or they're about to be ninth grade boys.

And I think to myself, oh man, these guys are going to get a kick out of having dinner with the guest speaker.

Right.

Can't wait to show them how cool I am.

Right.

But you know, like pretty much one minute into sitting with these eighth grade boys, these awkward eighth grade boys trying to chat with them, I was like, oh shoot.

Everything I'd prepared is totally not going to work.

Like five out of the six talks that I thought I'd finished, you know, all my reheated, slightly modified Christchurch content that works here with you guys, I realized all of that was totally going to fall flat unless I made some major changes.

And I knew this like conceptually as I was preparing.

I did make a lot of changes to my content, but clearly not enough.

Because when I sat down with those eighth to ninth grade boys in real life, it struck me like, yo, I might be the special guest preacher here, right?

Specifically chosen by their youth pastor to teach them about repentance.

But come on, no one's here at camp for me.

All right.

Haylin, did you sign up to go to camp to listen to me?

No, you didn't, right?

No one signed up to listen to some millennial dad give six talks about repentance.

repentance, right?

No one did that.

I was the honored guest preacher, but I was so not the main event, right?

I was more like, I felt like I was the vegetable that they had to swallow in order to just enjoy everything else about camp.

That's how I felt.

So I ended up spending like way more time in my room during that retreat than I expected, just kind of reworking my material, really just forcing myself to focus on the question,

how the heck do you like so capture the attention of eighth and ninth grade boys that they don't feel the urge during every single one of your talks to get up and use the bathroom?

All right.

That was my goal.

Or more seriously, I just thought to myself, how do I engage the heart of an eighth grade boy?

How do I lead a ninth grade boy into a deeper relationship with Christ?

Those are some of the questions that have been on my mind a lot lately, and they're hard questions.

But, you know, even though being the speaker at that camp was probably one of the hardest and most humbling things I've done in a long time,

it was actually a really good exercise for me as a pastor and a preacher to try to get into the mind of eighth and ninth grade boys,

especially because we have six of them right here in our youth group, in our church, and I'll be leading them in a small group this year.

So this is where my mind's been at, eighth and ninth grade boys, and, you know, honestly, especially so this week, right?

After the Appalachee High School shooting, Colt Gray, right, the shooter, he's 14 years old.

He just started his freshman year of high school.

And a thought that I had this week was like, man, it's crazy that even in an eighth grade boy,

there's already so much, like, destructive, life-taking potential.

It's so crazy to think about that, right?

But, you know, another thought that I had was that, you know, man, if a broken family and a gun in the hand of a ninth grade boy

can make him such a deadly, life-taking force in this world, how much more might the gospel,

how much more might the power of God and the love of the Father in the heart of a ninth grade boy

make him a delightful, life-giving impact on this world?

And this is a word to all of us, especially those of us who are ministering in our kids' ministry,

in our youth ministry.

We aren't glorified Christian babysitters.

We're called to lead these kids, these youth, into deeper relationships with Christ and his church.

But now, of course, the question is, well, how do you do that with, like, an eighth grade boy?

How do you do that?

And in trying to answer that question, I've been trying to reflect upon who I was

as an eighth grade boy growing up in the church.

And honestly, when I think about that, Andrew, I'm like, okay, yeah, I use the bathroom a lot, too,

during tons of sermons, all right?

And I know for sure that my youth group leaders, they, like, pulled their hair out over me and my buddies

because all we ever cared about was having a ton of fun.

We never showed up to worship God or to listen to the teaching of the Bible.

All we were there to do was play basketball, eat lots of junk food, laugh like crazy,

hang out with girls, and throw dodgeballs at each other, right?

As an eighth grade boy, all that I lived for was pleasure and entertainment.

I was a junkie for dopamine and delight.

And my vision of the good life of paradise was fun and games and laughter all the time

and endless entertainment and all the physical and emotional pleasures that I could think of.

To eighth grade, Andrew, heaven would be paved with hardwood floors so I could play basketball 24-7, all right?

There would be my favorite TV shows streaming endlessly from everlasting to everlasting,

and there would be a stream flowing through the city filled with nacho cheese.

And I would love it.

Because, again, all I lived for was pleasure, or at least pleasure as I knew it.

And you might say that these temporary, material, consumable pleasures were even my God's.

My whole life was devoted to them.

These pleasures were what I woke up in the morning, got out of bed to pursue.

I hungered for them.

I labored for them.

I sacrificed for them because I believed that they would satisfy me, fulfill me, make me happy, and make me whole.

And now maybe you're expecting me to say that this is everything that's wrong with modern, western, contemporary culture and society,

that we're all like eighth grade boys with an inordinate desire for delight

and in passionate pursuit of pleasures at all costs, right?

Maybe you're expecting me to say what so many other religions say, what you've heard so many Christian pastors say,

that self-control and self-denial and self-restraint and the suppression of our desires is the right way to live righteously in the presence of God.

But what I really want to say is what if the problem isn't so much that our desires are too strong,

but actually that our desires are too weak and tragically misdirected?

I love how C.S. Lewis puts it in his sermon, The Weight of Glory.

He basically says that, you know, sure, the New Testament does talk a lot about self-denial,

but the New Testament never talks about self-denial as an end in and of itself.

Lewis says it is right.

It isn't a bad thing to desire our own good and to hope for enjoyment in this life.

Lewis says that, yes, Jesus talks about, you know, denying yourself and taking up your cross,

but the focus should actually be on what we get.

What does Jesus say?

Deny yourself, take up your cross, and what?

Follow me, Jesus says, right?

See, Christianity isn't first and foremost about self-denial.

It's about getting to be with Jesus.

So C.S. Lewis writes this.

He writes,

Indeed,

Eighth grade Andrew was far too easily pleased.

Even 36-year-old Andrew is far too easily pleased.

When I often dream of that city flowing with streams of nacho cheese, right?

Even though that nacho cheese makes me have to wake up in the middle of the night because I'm so thirsty, right?

Reach for my water bottle.

God instead promises us a better stream, the stream of living water, so that we might never have to thirst again.

That's what we're supposed to desire.

So you see, the problem with the world is not that human's desire, but it's what humans desire instead of God.

The problem is that we've exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and we've desired created things over the Creator.

Instead of crying out to the Lord like David does here in verse 1,

Preserve me,

We lift up this prayer all the time.

So all these different, like, creaturely things, and maybe not explicitly from our lips, but in our hearts, and with our hands, and through our habits,

We build a dependence upon these things, often without even thinking about it.

So the question I want to ask this morning, the question I want us to consider is,

Do you believe, or rather, can you believe, in a God who offers Himself to you as the fullness of your joy,

pleasures forevermore, and the fulfillment of your deepest desires?

Can you trust that that is who God is?

That He wants your joy?

That He wants your pleasure?

That He is your joy?

And that He is your pleasure?

See, Psalm 16 is King David's prayer of confidence that the answer is yes.

Yes, we can trust Him to be the fullness of our joy and pleasures forevermore, the fulfillment of our deepest desire.

Or we could look at Psalm 16 as King David's prayer of defiance against all the other voices in the world,

tempting him to believe that the answer is no, God doesn't want your joy.

No, God doesn't want your pleasure.

God doesn't want to fulfill your deepest, purest, and highest desires.

Others, Psalm 16 is the prayer of God's people fighting to believe that God is better, that God is enough,

and that blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners,

nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but whose delight is in what God says and in who God is.

Psalm 16 is a prayer of confidence, a declaration of faith, fighting to believe what it says at the very end of this psalm,

in verse 11, you, God, make known to me the path of life and not death.

In your presence there is fullness of joy.

At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

This is what Psalm 16 is about.

It's basically saying in the words of John Piper,

if you think that God is incapable of making you happy forever, you don't know God.

You don't know God.

For what is fuller than fullness, what is longer than forevermore,

nothing can outdo God in filling you with all the life-giving joy and pleasure

that you were created to experience in relationship with Him as His beloved child.

Now, if you're new here today,

Jonathan started us last week in this series in the Psalms.

He started with Psalm 1,

and the specific question we're asking as we go through the Psalms this fall is,

what are the holy habits of grace that God's people should weave into our lives

in order that we might be a garden full of trees planted by the stream of living water,

yielding fresh, juicy fruit in season and never withering?

What does it look like to be a deeply rooted, flourishing tree that is constantly being nourished

by the life-giving presence of God?

What kinds of holy habits keep us in communion with Christ who is the vine?

That's our focus this fall.

And as we go through these holy habits,

I'm going to keep warning us again and again and again as often as I can

that the danger in a series like this on spiritual disciplines and on holy habits

is to think of these holy habits as just some spiritual techniques

to practice in a transactional relationship with God.

Like just some things we do to manipulate God into blessing us,

put quarters into the slot machine, right?

Like if I say my prayers,

God will make sure my children are going to be okay and have a nice day at school.

If I practice the Sabbath faithfully,

if I don't work on the Lord's Day,

then my business will make even more money than if I disobeyed the Sabbath rule.

But see, the point of these holy habits is not to get stuff from God.

It's to get God.

It's to be with God.

The point of being a tree with deep roots in God's stream of living water

isn't just to enjoy the fruit,

but to enjoy the union and communion that exists between a healthy tree

and a fresh flowing stream.

The point of our holy habits is for us to enjoy God,

really to know the pleasure of being fully human.

This is core to what we believe at Christ Church.

Did you know this is one of the very first teachings,

one of the very first official doctrinal standards

that the church has in our Constitution?

Westminster Shorter Catechism, question one,

what is the chief end of man?

Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

This is what we're after in this series on holy habits.

Not some rule-abiding, super-disciplined, self-controlled robot Christians.

We're after joyful children of God

who intimately know the pleasure of communion with their Father in heaven.

But now maybe this sounds nice and ideal,

but it's really hard for us to imagine enjoying holy habits in the presence of God.

It's hard for us to imagine enjoying this habitual communion with this God who's so far away.

And I mean, this is who I was when I was an eighth-grade boy.

That's how I felt.

Even when I wanted to try to grow as a Christian,

grow in my relationship with God.

I remember in eighth grade, I was at another camp,

and I was just challenged to give Jesus the steering wheel of my life.

This is before Carrie Underwood's song, right?

But somehow it clicked for me.

That picture, it clicked for me.

Like, yo, Jesus gave His life for me.

I should live mine for Him.

So I started to try to engage in these holy habits,

to read the Bible, to pray, to spend time with Him.

But I could never follow through with any consistency.

Because again, what I was truly living for

was fun and pleasure.

And reading the Bible weren't that to me, right?

And maybe that's how a lot of you feel

about all these different kinds of holy habits.

Not really excited about these holy habits

that God invites us into.

Skeptical that they'll lead to pleasure and joy

and just fullness in God.

And if that's you, I totally get it.

But what I want to suggest is that

maybe the problem isn't that the holy habits,

maybe the problem isn't that

Christian spiritual disciplines are boring.

Maybe the problem is that we're boring.

Maybe the problem is that

we become too easily satisfied

with lesser habits

that have conditioned us to enjoy lesser pleasures.

Maybe the problem is that

we've become the people in verse 4

habitually running after other gods,

habitually offering up to them

our own life and blood offerings.

See, whether or not you're interested

in the holy habits

or the Christian spiritual disciplines,

we all have habits.

We all have habits.

But I think for a lot of us,

our habits and our daily rhythms

are largely unexamined, right?

I think if we examine them,

we'd realize how much they are shaping our hearts

and shaping our desires

and even shaping what we find

to be enjoyable and pleasurable.

And I think if we examine them more closely,

more intentionally,

we'd also realize that these habits

and these rhythms

are not just some neutral patterns

that we've simply chosen to adopt,

but they're habits and rhythms

forged within a culture

with a lot of backward values

and a lot of empty promises.

If you haven't picked up

any of Justin Whitmell Early's books,

I highly recommend his book,

The Common Rule.

And if you are parents,

the book that I really recommend to you

is Habits of the Household.

That book's money, all right?

Gotta get that one.

But today I want to share with you

a good-sized chunk of what he says

about our habits and life rhythms

in his book, The Common Rule.

And in it, he actually challenges us

to see our daily life habits,

what we do as soon as we get out of bed,

as liturgies,

as patterns of worship

that are forming us

more than we even realize.

So listen to what he says.

This is a long chunk,

so bear with me.

This is what Justin Whitmell Early writes.

As far as our habits go,

the invisible reality is this.

We are all living according

to a specific regimen of habits,

and those habits shape most of our life.

A study from Duke suggested

that as much as 40% of the actions

we take every day

are not the products of choice,

but of habits.

And just because we don't choose our habits

doesn't mean we don't have them.

On the contrary,

it usually means someone else chose them for us

who probably doesn't have

our best interests in mind.

Take your work schedule

or your social media scrolling, for example.

Think about your internet history

or how you spent your mornings last week.

Think about the time you spend

with your family versus the time

you spend looking at a screen

during a normal day.

These things define vast portions of our lives.

And while we would like to think

we've carefully chosen them,

most often we haven't even given them

a second thought.

Most often we just swim along

with those around us.

And much more often

than we would like to admit

or even understand,

we are nudged into those choices

by those who want to make money

off the patterns of our daily life.

This wouldn't be so bad

if it weren't for the fact

that habits form much more

than our schedules.

They form our hearts.

Calling habits liturgies

may seem odd,

but we need language

to emphasize the non-neutrality

of our day-to-day routines.

Our habits often obscure

what we're really worshiping,

but that doesn't mean

we're not worshiping something.

We have a common problem.

By ignoring the ways habits shape us,

we've assimilated to a hidden rule of life,

the American rule of life,

which forms us in all the anxiety,

depression, consumerism,

injustice, and vanity

that are so typical in American life.

See, Justin Early is trying to show us

that we are all being formed,

and if not by holy habits,

then probably by many unholy

and unexamined habits

that we probably just see

as neutral and natural.

But as King David warns

in verse 4 here,

many are the sorrows

of those who run

after another god.

So a question for all of us

is what habits in our lives

are actually acts of worship

toward false gods?

Like, for example,

what are your phone habits?

And what do they reveal

about your desires

and your beliefs

and how you view the world?

And I gotta admit,

my phone habits are terrible.

All right?

This is a very embarrassing example,

maybe even inappropriate,

but we're gonna go with it.

Just yesterday,

I had to use the bathroom.

All right?

So I went into the bathroom,

I closed the door,

I sat down,

and as I started to go,

it occurred to me,

oh, shoot,

I forgot my phone,

right?

And I was like,

mad at myself.

I was mad at myself,

like, dude,

you're being so unproductive

right now,

you could be cleaning out

your inbox,

what if you get a great idea

for your sermon?

Should you yell to Chelsea

to get your phone for you?

What should you do?

Or should you just suck it up

and just get through the moment?

Like, no joke,

that was my thought process.

And I'm realizing

that my phone habits

are impressing upon my heart

and my mind

the false and idolatrous belief

that productivity

and efficiency

and time maximization

should be my highest values,

like even over hygiene,

apparently, right?

But seriously,

think about it.

For many of us,

our phone habits indicate

that many of us think

that we're actually

quite like God.

We think we're omnipotent,

we think we're all-powerful

because our phone

can help us accomplish so much.

We think we are omniscient

that we're all-knowing

because our phone

can deliver us

so much knowledge, right?

We think that

we can be omnipresent,

we think we can be everywhere

because our phone

allows us to be everywhere,

we can be on the top

of Mount Everest

through our phones, right?

Even if, when honestly,

it makes us less present

to the people in our own house,

in our own families, right?

One of my favorite writers,

Alan Noble,

he writes this,

I think he's a wonderful

commentator on our cultural moment.

He writes,

the beauty of using my iPhone

as my alarm clock

is that when I reach over

to turn it off,

I'm only a few more taps away

from the rest of the world.

Before I'm even fully awake,

I've checked my Twitter

and Facebook notifications

and my email

and returned to Twitter

to check my feed

for breaking news.

Before I've said good morning

to my wife and children,

I've entered a contentious argument

on Twitter

about Islamic terrorism

and shared a video

of Russell Westbrook

dunking in the previous night's

basketball game.

Or maybe for some of you,

your phone reinforces to you

that you can and should be

entertained

at every moment in your life.

Maybe that's the implicit belief

that your heart is holding on to.

Standing in line

at the grocery store,

waiting for your kids

at their sporting events

on your phone

rather than watching them play,

doom scrolling,

waiting for my sermon

to be over, right?

Pastor John Mark Comer writes,

how do you pray?

How do you read the scriptures?

Sit under a teaching at church

or rest well on the Sabbath

when every chance you get

you reach for the dopamine dispenser

that is your phone.

So do you see how our habits

shape our hearts

and the people that we're becoming

and even what we find

to be pleasurable

and enjoyable

and worth our time?

See, this is exactly

why we need holy habits

to reshape,

to reform our hearts,

to recalibrate

what we find to be delightful

and pleasurable

even if at first

these holy habits

seem undesirable

and inauthentic.

The philosopher Jamie Smith writes,

not all sins are decisions.

Once you realize

that we are not just thinking things

but creatures of habit,

you'll then realize

that temptation

isn't just about bad ideas

or wrong decisions,

it's often a factor

of deformation

and wrongly ordered habits.

And overcoming them

requires more than just knowledge,

it requires re-habituation.

A reformulation of our loves.

And see again,

that is the goal

with these holy habits.

Not simply being able to say,

I prayed,

I read my Bible today,

check.

It's to experience God.

It's to experience God

like David experiences God

here in Psalm 16.

It's to love

and to treasure God

as our highest good.

I love what David says

in verse 2,

I say to the Lord,

you are my Lord.

I have no good

apart from you.

For King David,

Yahweh is his Lord

and Yahweh is his good

and that is not at odds

at all with each other

but actually integrally

tied together.

God is his Lord

and God is his treasure.

God is his everything.

God is his good.

Then in verse 5,

he says,

the Lord is my choice portion,

right?

The only cup I'm interested

in drinking from,

the one who holds the world

in his hands,

the creator and sustainer

of the world,

the writer of history,

he is the one

who holds my lot.

He personally holds

my lot in life

within his almighty

yet gentle hands

and he has never

let me down.

Verse 6,

that's what it says there.

He has never let me down.

I love how it says

the lines have fallen,

right?

They've fallen

in pleasant places.

Like David doesn't say,

the Lord God

has helped me,

he's given me strength

to move my own lines

exactly where I want them to be,

to make my life

turn out exactly

how I planned.

No,

it's completely passive here

and even surprising,

the lines have fallen for me

in pleasant places.

My life has turned out

just fine

within the Lord's plan.

Indeed,

I have a beautiful inheritance,

more beautiful than I deserve

and more beautiful

than I could ever have

imagined for myself

and that's the kind of God

that I have

is what he's saying here.

See,

David here in Psalm 16,

he's practicing

the presence of God.

He's practicing

the presence of God.

His whole life

and his outlook

are saturated

by the presence

and the guidance

and instruction

and counsel of God

even at night.

Verse 7,

I bless the Lord

who gives me counsel.

In the night also

my heart instructs me.

Verse 8,

I have set the Lord

always before me.

Basically,

I live as if I'm always

in the presence of God,

as if God is always

in front of me,

also at my right hand.

He's my ultimate helper,

my ultimate strength.

In fact,

I am completely dependent

upon him

and because of this,

I know that I will never

be shaken

because I'm in the presence

of God

because he's at my right hand

and the result,

verse 9,

is this,

therefore,

my heart is glad

and my whole being

rejoices,

literally in the Hebrew,

my glory rejoices,

my flesh also dwells secure.

Verse 10,

for you will not abandon

my soul to Sheol

or let your holy ones see.

Now,

how could David

say such a thing?

He died.

How could he say such a thing?

Was this just hyperbole?

Many of the more liberal,

modern commentators

want to say that David

either was just speaking

in hyperbole

or that he was just

speaking wrongly here.

But we know from Peter

in Acts chapter 2

Acts 2 · chapter mention

and from Paul

in Acts chapter 13

Acts 13 · chapter mention

that there's a better way

to read this psalm.

According to the apostles,

David was prophesying

about Jesus,

crucified and risen,

the most holy one

who went to the grave

but rose

and did not see corruption.

David was prophesying

that because of what God

was going to do

through his offspring,

Jesus,

David too,

by faith in that offspring,

he knew that his body

was secure,

that his soul

would not ultimately

be abandoned

to the realm of the dead.

And this promise

that David rejoices in here,

it's a promise

for all of us.

It's a promise

for everyone

who is united

with Christ by faith.

This is what God offers us,

ultimate security,

freedom from abandonment

and death and decay.

It can be yours in Christ.

He is the only God

who can offer this to us.

Only Jesus,

only the resurrected

Son of God

has made known

to the world,

verse 11,

the path of life.

Only the resurrected

and ascended Lord

seated on the throne

on high

can guarantee us

our deepest,

highest,

and purest desires.

Because it's only

in his resurrection presence,

which we will celebrate

here at this table,

that there is fullness

of joy.

It's only in his right hand,

his nail-pierced hand.

It's only by his pain

that he has secured

for us pleasures

forevermore.

And this is the gospel.

This is the good news.

Not only that God

offers us abundant life,

fullness of joy

and pleasures

forevermore,

but that he passionately

wants it for us

and that he passionately

pursues it for us.

So passionately

that he gives himself

over for us

and to us

in Christ.

At his own expense.

That's the gospel.

See,

every other counterfeit God,

every other counterfeit God

makes us pay the cost.

Every other God

makes us chase after them,

but not the God

revealed to us

in Christ.

Verse 4,

For many are the sorrows

of those who run

after another God.

Many are the sorrows

of those whose gods

make them pour out

again and again

sacrificial drink offerings

of blood

day by day

with no end in sight.

But the gospel says,

Many are the joys

of those whose God

runs after them.

Those whose God

does not cry out

for more of their blood

but offers

his own blood.

This is the only

kind of God

whose name

is worthy

of our lips.

And that's what

we get to celebrate.

That's what we get

to proclaim

at this table

where we will rightfully

and joyfully

take his name

and his body

and his blood

upon our lips

and we will taste

and see

that he is good.

And we will remember

the pain

of his nail-pierced

right hand

which secured for us

pleasures

forevermore.

Pleasures even enough

to satisfy

the eighth grade boy

in each of our hearts.

Amen.

Let's pray.

God, we want to

delight ourselves

in you.

Delight yourselves

in the Lord

and he will give you

the desires

of your heart.

That's what the psalmist says.

God, be our desire.

Be our delight.

Allow us to know

the pleasure

and the joy

of habitual communion

with you

and make us

that garden of trees

planted by

your stream

of living water.

Lord, we desire

to be with you

and for those of us

who don't,

I pray that they'd

want to want

to want you, God.

Because in your presence

is the fullness

of joy

and at your right hand,

your nail-pierced hand

in Christ,

there are pleasures

forevermore.

God, help us

to believe that

with all our hearts.

Draw us near to you.

Thank you for running

after us

and we ask that you

continue to do so

because that's what we need

as your people,

as your children.

In Jesus' name,

amen.