Satisfied by God (Psalms 63:1-11)

I said growing up, one of the most difficult times in my life.

This is like when I was a teenager.

So it might seem like not a big deal now, but at the time it was

a big deal, right? Teenagers, everything is a big

deal. So I was like in middle school

and high school, and my dad was leading a church.

He was a church planter. And so the first few years were

really good. Like, we had, you know, a good

number of people. I had friends, a lot of kids.

But then after that, after the first couple years, it was like

a slow death, OK? And eventually a lot of people

left and literally all my friends left the church.

So I come to church on Sundays and it's just me and my mom

doing Sunday school, right? My mom's like my teacher.

It was so fun, so fun. But anyways, that was church.

And on the weekdays, like my parents obviously dealing with a

struggling church plan, financial issues.

So it was just fighting every day, every night.

It was just terrible, OK? And I just remember feeling so

miserable, so lonely and just very hopeless every day.

And my escape was to just be in my room by myself, reading books

and comics and drawing for hours and hours a day.

Even on Sundays, I'd be like in my own little corner, just

drawing and reading, right? And I just remember, like, my

prayer at that time was just, God, Get Me Out of here.

Get Me Out of this situation. I don't like it.

And, you know, looking back, it doesn't seem like a huge deal.

But I think that feeling of wanting to escape a difficult

situation is something I'm sure that we can all relate to.

When we're desperate, when we're in an uncomfortable or harsh

uncomfortable situation or a hardship, our first instinct is

to escape, to try to fix it, to find a way out.

And, but interestingly, it's usually in these difficult

situations that God meets us. And that's what happens in

today's passage in Psalm 63. And a little bit of background

of Psalm 63. David here is on the run.

He's running for his life. Some scholars are a little

divided about who he's running from.

There's two periods of his life where he's on the run, and one

of them is, you know, early on in his life, he's running from

salt or Saul wants to kill him because Saul is a king.

David is a point like anointed to be the next king, and he's on

the run. But he also is on the run for

his life later in life from his son Absalom, who's also trying

to kill him. So we don't know exactly which

period of time this is, but we know regardless that David is

running for his life and he is in the wilderness of Judah.

He is far from comfort, far from safety.

He is far from everything that made his life good and safe.

And it's in this wilderness that he prays this song.

And he doesn't express a desire to escape his situation.

Instead, he expresses a desire for God.

He expresses hunger and thirst for God.

And I think that kind of a contrast to how I might handle

the situation. I would be praying God Get Me

Out of here, like save me from this wilderness.

I want to go home. I want to eat good food again

and see my family. But David doesn't do that.

He desires God. So the question I want us to

delve into is how can we be like David?

How do we cultivate our desire for God in times of hardship?

How do we cultivate our desire for God and times of hardship?

The first point is by recognizing our need for God,

recognizing that our need is for God.

So let me read the passage, Psalm 63.

It's just 11 verses, so I'll just read the whole thing,

right? This is God's word.

God, You are my God. I eagerly seek you.

I thirst for you. My body feigns for you in a land

that is dry, desolate, and without water.

So I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see your strength

and your glory. My lips will glorify you because

your faithful love is better than life.

So I will bless you as long as I live at your name.

I will lift up my hands. You satisfy me.

As with rich food, My mouth will praise you with joyful lips when

I think of you as I lie on my bed.

I meditate on you during the night watches because you are my

helper. I will rejoice in the shadow of

your wings. I will follow close to you.

Your right hand holds on to me. But those who intend to destroy

my life will go into the depths of the earth.

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

They will become a meal for jackals, but the king will

rejoice in God. All who swear by him will boast,

for the mouths of liars will be shut.

Amen. So how do we cultivate our

desire for God? By recognizing our need for God.

So then these verses, right off the bat we see that David knows

that who he's hungering for and thirsting after is God, right.

He says, God, you are my God, I eagerly seek you, I thirst for

you, my body feigns for you. Very vivid imagery of his body

just craving God, right? He knows that only God can

satisfy him, not just medium satisfaction, but abundantly.

And that's why he uses language like God's love is better than

life, right? He's satisfying me as with rich

food, not just regular food, but rich food.

This is talking about like the richest, fattiest, most filling

food you can find. So David is experiencing not

just physical hunger and thirst, but spiritual ones.

He's not just in a physical wilderness, but a spiritual

wilderness. And so I think we can all

probably relate to feeling like we're in the wilderness

sometimes. And by wilderness, we're talking

about like a time of deprivation where we feel empty, like we

have nothing left in life, nothing good.

Maybe all the good things have been taken away by some kind of

hardship or trial. We just feel dry, no sense of

purpose. We're just floating.

But here's the difference between US and David.

David realizes that this hunger is spiritual, and so he goes to

God immediately. But I think for us, many times

we don't always recognize that what we need is to go to God, at

least not right away. So we we're in this season of

the wilderness, we start feeling empty and then we go looking for

something and instead of going to go to fill that need, we fill

it with something else. It could be whatever the world

tells us we need, success, relationships, comfort,

distractions. The world has taught us or even

conditioned us to think that these are the things that will

fill our hunger. And over time our spiritual

senses become dull and we don't even realize that God is who we

need. So we even come to church with

these misdirected desires. We come to church out of a sense

of duty instead of love. We come simply to make friends

and have community, which are not bad things.

These are all good things, but they are not the ultimate

things, right? We come to church to be in God's

presence. We come to church to satisfy

ourselves, not with more relationships with people, which

is a good thing too, but first and foremost to be satisfied

with the presence of God. The other things will follow.

And the problem is that a lot of these things the world throws at

us, they don't truly satisfy us. It's kind of like they're kind

of like sweets, OK, sugar. We all like sweets.

Who doesn't have a sweet tooth? I'm sure, I don't know.

I I have a sweet tooth. My husband has a major sweet

tooth. But what is it about sugar,

right? We crave it, we want it, we eat

it and then it's so good and then it's gone.

Get the sugar high and then we crash and then we chase after it

again and again and there is no nutritional value.

It doesn't satisfy us. There's this kids nutritionist I

follow and she kind of talks about how we don't want to

villainize sugar, but we should talk about it in this way, like

to kids, right? Like, oh, that candy will give

you quick energy, but food like chicken or pasta and vegetables

will give you long term energy, energy for a long time, right?

And that's God. God is the good protein, the

good carbs, the veggies. He satisfies us forever.

The thing that the world offers us, that's the sugar, the sweets

that satisfies us briefly, but it doesn't truly last.

When we go to God, His love, His presence is truly all we need.

So instead of chasing after achievement after achievement,

we can rest in Christ's achievement for us.

And instead of striving for more status, we can rest in the

status that God gives us. And instead of looking for a

love in all the wrong places, we can rest and find comfort and

confidence in the love that God gives us, which never changes

and never shifts. And I think, you know, this is

one of the reasons we go after what the world offers us.

And it's because it is, honestly, it's easier and maybe

more convenient is what we're used to.

It's more natural to us. And when we are in like a season

of wilderness, we're not always on guard.

We let our guards down. We kind of just let our hearts

wander and we do what's easier for us.

Because honestly, going to God does require intentionality.

It does require some effort on our part, right?

We have to search our hearts. We have to pray.

We might even have to wait. We might have to like, have some

hard conversations with people. The world's options are easier

because we're so used to it. We've been doing it for so long

and that becomes our default. And another reason that we go

after these things is honestly, we forget that God is better.

We just forget that God is so much better than what the world

has to offer us, right? Verse 4, David says, you know,

your love is better than life. I think about that.

Your love is better than life. How many of us right now can

truly, honestly say that about God's love?

That His love is truly better than life?

David's life is on the line, right?

Like he doesn't know if he's going to live the next day,

right? People want to kill him.

He's in the literal wilderness. And yet he is able to rest and

be confident in God's love because it is better than life

for him. And David shows us what it means

to see God first, not as a last resort, but as the only source

of life. And he does something in this

passage. And even just throughout the

book of Psalms and first, second Samuel, you see him doing

something to combat, to fight against forgetfulness, OK,

Something that helps him keep God at the forefront of his mind

always. And he cultivates his desire for

God. And how does he cultivate his

desire for God? He does it through remembrance

and meditation. So that's the second point.

How do we cultivate our desire for God, the remembrance and

meditation? So when we think about the

wilderness, typically, we usually think about bad things,

right? Wilderness is equated with the

suffering, deprivation, harshness, danger.

And so in these seasons of life, when everything feels dangerous

or harsh or empty and we're suffering, it's easy to forget

God's goodness, his, his love. So much easier to just focus on

the bad. And that's what we have to learn

to remember. And David does this by

remembering the Lord of the past, what the Lord has done for

him in the past. And this is really important

because right now he's far from the Tabernacle.

He can't just go to church and worship God.

So he needs to like bring God to where he is, right?

And so he has this longing for God and he turns that into

practice of remembrance. And so we see him doing that in

verse two. I gaze on you in the sanctuary,

right? He's remembering the time he

worshipped God with, you know, God's people in the Tabernacle.

He's being reminded of God's strength and glory.

He's recalling the joy of being in God's presence in the

sanctuary, right? And he says in verse 3, your

faithful love is better than life, right?

So he's remembering the way God has been faithful to him through

how it is whole life. And he talks about even at

night, right in verse 6, I lie on my bed, I meditate on you

during the night, watches, right?

Even in his sleep, he's stressed out, he can't sleep.

So what is he doing? He's thinking about God.

He's remembering and reflecting. And as he remembers the past, it

shapes how he views and how he deals with the present, right?

So remembrance shapes how we view the present.

So for David, as he remembers the past in the present, right,

the wilderness, it becomes a sacred space for him to

encounter God. Usually in the wilderness, we

just want to escape, right? We want to get out of there, go

back home, eat food and drink water.

But what we see often in Scripture, just throughout

Scripture, is God's plans usually go beyond just escaping

from our problems, right? The wilderness becomes an

opportunity for us to meet God in a powerful way.

And this is something we see in Scripture just in a lot of

places. The wilderness is a very

significant place in the Scriptures.

God meets his people often in the wilderness.

We see that with Moses. He's in the wilderness, He sees

a burning Bush, He meets God. He's a changed man.

Even Hagar, if you guys remember the story of Hagar, she's, you

know, on the run from her, from Sarah and she's dying, her son

is dying and God meets her, shows his love to her.

Even Jesus went to the wilderness to pray to his

father. The Israelites wandering the

wilderness, encountering God, experiencing his miracles, and

David here meeting God. They all meet God and experience

God satisfying their needs in the profound way.

But what we often do is we chase after other things, fill our

hunger with other things, and then we miss out on the

opportunity to be satisfied by God.

So we need to learn to remember. I think one of the 1st movies

that came to mind as I was preparing this sermon was as a

child of the 90s. My favorite movie was Lion King.

OK, not the remake, like weird CGI one, but the original real

animation, OK. And I I'm sure you guys remember

the scene. If you've seen the movie, you

know there's like this pivotal moment for Simba, right?

The main character, the little lion, his father shows up to him

in like a dream or a vision. And he's like Simba and the

stupid voice, right? Remember who you are.

You are my son, the one true king, right?

Remember who you are, right? Simba had like allowed his

tragedy, his guilt to like shape his life and he ran away from

his life and he just want to escape.

But he remembers who he is and he it brings him back to his

true purpose, right? And he goes back home and he

lives out his role as a king. And I know that's just like a

cartoon illustration, but I think that really shows the

power of remembrance. So some of the ways that we can

practice this is remembering God in our daily devotionals.

When you come to read the Bible and meditate on Scripture,

that's you remembering what God has done in history or you

reflect on the gospel and what Christ has done for us on the

cross and in his resurrection. That's remembrance.

And something that I've been learning to do is also

practicing affirmations. Maybe if you've done therapy,

maybe you know what this is and you've read about it, but

affirmations is simply repeating truths to yourself, right?

And I remember when I was preparing to give birth to my

two kids, I would try to like practice affirmations and but I

ain't made to do this. My body is made to give birth.

And it's all like remembrance of what my body is capable of doing

or whatever. But lately what I've been

telling myself is God loves me unconditionally.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made every day, every morning,

right? These are biblical truths that I

repeat to myself every day to remember who God is to me and

who I am to him, right? These ways of remembrance shape

our thinking, shape our beliefs, which in turn shape our actions.

And the result for David is joy. It's praise.

He's able to worship in the wilderness.

And going back to my little story and the introduction, you

know, my teenage loneliness years or whatever, fortunately,

I was going to a Christian School at the time, and I didn't

really have, you know, a good community at church, obviously.

But fortunately, through my Christian School, I had the

resources to learn about the Bible and I learned to direct my

desires to God. I'm really thankful for that

time. I had great teachers and we have

worship times. I learned to study the Word.

I learned to do devotionals. And as I meditated on who God

is, I was able to find hope and joy in the midst of my hardship.

And they made it possible for me to face the future, to face each

day with hope. And that is why the wilderness.

There's so much potential for growth, you guys.

And that is how it also impacts the way we face our future.

So for David, you know, wilderness became the sacred

place to meet God. He praised him and then he also

found the confidence to face his future, right?

And verses towards the end of the passage he talks about,

that's verse 9, right? He talks about his enemies,

right? Those who intend to destroy my

life will go into the depths of the earth.

They'll be given over the power of the sword.

They'll become a meal for jackals.

It's not kind of mean, OK? He's obviously having a hard

time with his enemies, but it's not about him taking vengeance

on his enemies, right? David is the guy who did not

kill someone he had the chance to.

So what David is is experiencing here is confidence that God will

take care of his future for him. He will deal with his enemies.

And so therefore David can face the future with hope and with

confidence. Remembering God of the past

effects, his present and his future.

He is able to trust God's character, his love, his power,

and his justice now and for the future.

So when we remember God, when we practice remembrance, He meets

us where we where we are and strengthens our faith so that we

can endure. To continue living the life that

God has called us to live. And I think This is why

intentional worship, learning how to intentionally worship God

each day, is so important. Worship is remembrance.

We're all here today to worship God.

This is the time when we get to remember Him.

It impacts our relationship with God right now.

It shapes our trust in Him and it helps us live for the future.

So even if you're in a good season of life, maybe you can't

relate to David. Maybe you're everything's going

well, right? But it's important for you to

know how to remember God now so that when you do encounter the

wilderness, you will find yourself hungering and thirsting

for God, and you will know to satisfy yourself with God alone.

And there's two ways we worship God, right?

Just really briefly, corporate worship.

This is what we're doing right now with our brothers and

sisters, the family of God. We come to church, this

dedicated time and space, no distractions, just you, God, and

God's people. We meditate on who God is, the

prayer, the community, God's words, the gospel.

This is why we sing the songs that we do.

I know our praise leaders, like they intentionally pick songs

with good lyrics that actually teach us about who God is.

So next time you're singing a praise song, like after, you

know, when we do the response, pay attention to the lyrics.

Don't just enjoy the melody, pay attention to the lyrics.

It's about God. It'll point you to God.

And when you listen to a sermon, right?

Do are you trying to like see God more clearly, right?

That's why we listen to God's words, know God, to meet him, to

encounter him. And the reason why we have our

CGS, why we have to like hang out with other people at church

is so that we can see God working in their lives.

And they're the testimonies of other people.

We can remember God as well. And then in our daily private

worship after Sunday is over, how are you spending your days?

Are you making time each day to spend with God in His words to

remember Him, to remember His goodness, to reflect on what He

has done for us on the cross? Are you going to your C GS so

other people can help you remember as well?

So this is my challenge to all of you and to myself.

If you're going through something and you've been

feeling empty, you're feeling spiritually hungry for

something, don't ignore that. Don't ignore your hunger, your

thirst, your emptiness. It could be your soul hungering

and thirsting for God. God is presenting you with an

opportunity to meet Him in a deeper way.

Your wilderness can become a sacred space for you to

encounter God. So instead of going after

whatever you normally go after to fill your hunger and thirst,

go after God. Seek God because our souls were

made to be satisfied by God and God alone.

So how do we cultivate our desire for God?

Our main point today is our desire for God grows as we

remember His loving faithfulness and seek His satisfying

presence. At this time.

Let's go into time of prayer.