Welcome to the Food for Your Soul podcast, where we apply the Word of God to the hearts of men and women to stoke the fires of your delight in Christ. First, get yourself thirsty enough to start seeking God. Then, go to the altar and get your sins dealt with and taken care of so that you're not shut out of His presence, and then you're ready to go into the presence of God and draw near to Him. But how? What's the next step? What do you do next? Because you're not gonna just know intuitively what to do next. You're gonna need guides. You're gonna need two guides Look again at 43.3, send forth your light and your truth. Let them guide me, let them bring me to your holy mountain, the place where you dwell. The only way you're gonna get into his presence is if God provides truth and light. which means he'll give you the truth, and then the light is, he'll open up your eyes to understand that truth and receive that truth, accept it in your heart, so that you can live by that. And for us, of course, that comes through the scriptures, doesn't it? This is his truth, and his light comes when his Holy Spirit enabled us to understand and receive what's in here. We don't find the presence of God any other way. We don't find the presence of God through some kind of random mysticism. It doesn't happen through being a good enough Christian and earning your way into his presence. It doesn't come through rituals or ceremonies or incantations or any of that. It doesn't come through seniority in the faith, doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian. It doesn't come through music. A lot of people think if I get caught up in corporate praise and I'm just really emotional and it starts my heart pounding, that's the presence of God, now I've experienced His presence. No, no, that's not that. People who think that way tend to get into all kinds of wacky doctrines because they determine what's true based on what they feel instead of based on what the scriptures say. No, the only way into His presence is the way that God has mapped out in His Word. He sends forth truth and light, and you follow that, and that's the only way to get there. That's what this psalmist is saying here. That's why we're constantly studying the Bible around here. I mean, that's why we're all about the Bible. It's not because we're into academics. It's not because we want to become a bunch of eggheads, experts in the scriptures or anything. We tear into the scriptures every day because we're seeking the same thing that this guy's seeking. Send forth your light and your truth. Let them guide me into your presence. That's why you read the Bible. If you want to experience the presence of God, if you want the joy back, and you want to experience the presence of God, you're going to have to crack this thing open. Don't let it just sit on your shelf from Sunday all the way to the next Sunday. You gotta crack it open. Secondly, you gotta have it crack you open. The truth isn't enough. There's two guides, truth and what? Light. And it's the light that opens our eyes, enables us to understand, enables us to receive and accept and appreciate and delight in that truth. Joy, get rid of the depression. We approach the scriptures not as a student trying to master a textbook, but like a newborn baby just craving pure spiritual milk, sucking with all his might to draw out from his mother nourishment to sustain his life. That's the image we have of how to approach the scriptures. Seek God in the scriptures. Read a passage, ask yourself, what does this tell me about God, my Savior? What does it tell me about His will, what He desires, what He wants? What does it tell me about which kinds of things are pleasing to Him and which kinds of things are displeasing to Him? And God, open my eyes to see how this is relevant for today, for my life today. If your Bible reading is dry, Get a mentor, ask a pastor, your prayer group leader, somebody that can help you encounter God in the scriptures. One of the healthiest things you can ever do, I think, is to open up the Psalms. Just pick any Psalm and go through it and just write down all the attributes of God that you see either stated or implied in that Psalm. And typically there'll be a lot of them. And then look at that list and just let that list shape your heart. Let it correct wrong thinking about God. Our perception of what God is like is constantly getting corrupted. It's like the operating system on my computer. It's just always getting corrupted. It gets corrupted by human wisdom, and it's just always in need of correction. Or it's like the alignment on your car. It just gets out of whack every once in a while. It needs to be brought back in, straightened back out. Let the truth of the Scriptures shape your outlook, your way of thinking about God, your way of thinking about yourself, your way of thinking about the world and the things that happen. and just keep that up, keep that up until you have an attitude about God that's like this guy's attitude. One thing that really stands out in this psalm is this guy's attitude about God, it's amazing. We saw last week that he felt like he'd been rejected and forgotten in 42.9, why have you forgotten me? 43.2, why have you rejected me? That's the way he feels. But did this guy really believe that God had actually rejected him and forgotten him? Well, of course not, otherwise he wouldn't be praying this prayer. If you wanna know what he really believes, I mean, he felt like he was rejected and forgotten, but what does he really think about God? If you wanna know that, just look at how he describes God. Look at all these descriptions of God all through here. God, my God, 43.4, my Savior and my God, the God of my life, God my rock, God my stronghold, God the gladness of my rejoicing. I mean, you can tell this guy's attitude about God. This is the way he felt about God. It's just critical, it's absolutely essential that the truth of God's Word is constantly improving your conception of what God is like. And if you read through these Psalms, I mean, you just read Psalm 42 and 43 out loud slowly, it takes less than two minutes. Less than two minutes, this is a short prayer. And yet, all these attributes of God. You know, I don't know about you, but when I pray a two-minute prayer, typically, you're not gonna see a dozen different attributes of God sprinkled all through the prayer. How did he come up with all these attributes? I mean, did he pull his Wayne Grudem theology, systematic theology, off the shelf and just find a list of attributes of God and use those to beef up his prayer? I don't know, maybe he did something like that, but I think it's a lot more likely that these came out just because this is the way that he thought about God. He called him my God because he knew there was just no question that he was in this special covenant relationship with God. He was my God. And he called him my Savior because he knew without a doubt that God was the only one who could possibly rescue him from his trouble. And that God had already promised to be his Savior. So the conception he had in his mind of what God was like is he's a rescuing, saving God who has compassion on his people, his covenant people, and who would never reject them or forsake them. He called him the God of my life because he could sense that all his strength, all his vitality, all his life came minute by minute from God. He felt that. And so he calls him the God of my life. He calls him God my rock because he felt shaky and unstable and his life was spinning out of control and he couldn't, and he was just sinking down in the mud. And when he assessed his situation, it really did seem to him like the only thing that could help was if he could get his feet on God, just rest his life on God. It seemed that way to him. So he calls him God my rock. He calls him God my stronghold because the attacks are coming at him from everywhere. And they're raining down on him like bunker-busting bombs that smash right through any other shelter that he tried to run through. And so he felt like the only safety he could possibly have is if he could experience God as his shelter and his stronghold. And he called him God the gladness of my rejoicing because he knew that all his joy in his life came from God. He knew that there's absolutely no hope of ever getting joy again except through encountering the nearness of his presence. See, he wasn't just reciting a list of attributes of God that he picked up in Bible college or in Sunday school somewhere. He was talking to God and just addressing him with the titles that described how he felt about God. A.W. Tozer was right. The most important thing about you is what comes to your mind when you think about God. Your conception of God will determine the trajectory of your life. And it's so personal. Notice all the first person pronouns, all the my's. Psalm 42, my Savior, my God, the God of my life, God, my rock, my Savior and my God. And then 43, you are God, my stronghold, the joy of my rejoicing. Oh God, my God, my Savior and my God. This wasn't some detached, theoretical, abstract theology. It was just intensely personal. It's not the Savior or even our Savior. It is my Savior, my rock, my God, my stronghold, my joy, my God and my life. The next time Satan tries to convince you that God has rejected you, God has forgotten you, that he's had it with you and you're just separated from him, try this. Try it, just try it. Say this, okay, fine, fine. Let's just assume for a moment that God did reject me. Okay, just assume that God rejected you. If that were true, raise your hand if that would bother you. If it turned out God rejected you, would that bother you? Okay. If the thought of being rejected by God deeply troubles you, I would say that's really strong evidence that he hasn't rejected you. Because if God rejected you so that you didn't belong to him anymore, you didn't have the Holy Spirit in you anymore, no Holy Spirit, you wouldn't care about God if that happened. You wouldn't care if he rejected you or accepted you. It wouldn't matter to you. You wouldn't have any love for God, you wouldn't have any fear of God, and His approval or disapproval just wouldn't matter to you. The very fact that Satan tries to use that to hurt you proves that you care about being accepted by God, which is evidence that you belong to God. So Satan's whole thing backfires. If you care about God's opinion, that's evidence that you belong to God, and He is your God and your Savior. Now, you hear all that, you think, wait a minute, didn't, didn't you just get to understand a minute ago that he felt like God rejected him and forgot about him? Yeah, yeah, that's how he felt. That's how it looked. You say, well, how does that fit together with all this, my savior, my stronghold, my deliverer, how does it fit? It doesn't, that's the point. It doesn't fit together at all, that's why he's so perplexed. It's not making sense to him. When he observes, when this guy observes what God is doing in his life, it doesn't seem to match what he knows to be true about God. They don't jive, they don't fit. He knows God is his stronghold and his savior, and yet when he makes observations about life, it looks like the exact opposite of what he knows. His theology tells him that God is his stronghold, but his experiences are telling him that God has abandoned him and rejected him. His theology tells him that God is his savior, but his observations about life tell him that God is not his savior, has forgotten him. But this man's, here's the thing, this man's theology runs deeper than his observations of life. His belief in the attributes of God runs so deep that he knows them to be true, even when everything he can observe contradicts it, or seemingly contradicts it. He believes this stuff way down deep at the controlling level in his life. And when I say controlling level, what I'm talking about is those things that you believe that you believe them so deeply that they control everything you do. They control the way you feel, they control the way you react, they control the way you perceive things, decisions you make, reactions that you have. Even without consciously thinking about it. That's what a controlling belief is like. It controls what you do even when you don't consciously think about it. And I think a great example of that is gravity. Your belief in gravity. Your knowledge of gravity controls the way that you act and react and feel in every context. It's why you set your car keys down on a table instead of trying to set them in the air, right? You don't consciously think about gravity, you just set them on the table. Your belief in gravity controls how firmly you grip something when you try to pick it up. It controls how your emotions react when you get too close to the edge of a cliff. It controls how you interpret a situation where something is moving through the air, how you interpret it. Everything we do all day long takes gravity into consideration, even without consciously thinking about gravity. You don't go back to your eighth grade science class and start thinking about this formula. You don't think about it. You just believe in it. That's what I mean by believing something down at the controlling level. And this guy's conception of God as his Savior and as his God and the gladness of his rejoicing, he believed that stuff way down deep at the controlling level. He observes all this evidence that seems to contradict it, that seems like it's saying God has rejected and forgotten him, and yet he still thinks of God as his Savior and the gladness of his rejoicing. Why? Because you still believe in gravity even when you see something that seems to defy gravity, don't you? Maybe you see something up in the air and it seems like it's floating and you're like, I can't explain that. That doesn't make any sense. It should be dropping. It's staying up in the air. I can't explain that. It seems like it's defying gravity. It doesn't make sense. And yet while I'm saying that, I'm still living my life as though gravity is intact, right? I don't start living as though, well, maybe gravity's not there after all. When you see something that seems to defy gravity, you continue to believe in gravity and you just assume that what you see isn't what it appears to be. Our theology needs to run deeper than our interpretations and observations of life. We walk by faith, not by sight. And one thing that can actually help with that is music. Verse eight of 42, by day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me. Even though this guy is beyond miserable, still, he says, your song is with me. And in 43.4, he says, I will praise you with the harp. Musically, I'll give you musical praise. Sometimes what you need is just some of the best of God's truths just prepackaged in a melody, right, in a song. That's why Christians sing so much. more than any other religion. We are a singing bunch. We sing. We sing about everything. We even sing about our sorrows. We sing about our sin. We sing about everything. So how do you enjoy the presence of God? First, you've got to get hungry. You've got to get thirsty for it, so much so that you'll run after it. And getting hungry and thirsty comes from interpreting anxieties and sorrows in your heart as cravings for the presence of God, training your heart to interpret them that way. Because once you get thirsty enough, you'll run. You'll go after it. You'll start seeking after God, and seeking after God begins where? At the altar. Deal with your sin. If you're guilty of sin anywhere else, you're doomed! But there at the altar, there's a solution for it. There's forgiveness. So start there. Search your heart. See if there's any unconfessed sin in your life. See if there's any cherished idols lingering, anything that your heart thinks it has to have in order to be happy, anything that makes you angry, you have a sinful response if you don't get it, that's an idol. Repent to those things and seek forgiveness from God on the basis of what Jesus did on the cross. And when there's sin in your life that hasn't been dealt with, that door to God's presence is barred shut until that sin is dealt with at the altar. So start at the altar. Then, cry out to God in prayer. Pray. Huge aspect to seeking God is prayer. That's why the psalmist wrote this psalm. It's a prayer. That's what the psalm is. It's a prayer. Seeking God. So pray a prayer like this one, or Psalm 63, or just ask God, help me find your presence. Make an assessment of your personal prayer life and figure out what is the next step in deepening my prayer life, and then just take that next step. Get thirsty, go to the altar, then go to God in prayer, immerse yourself in the light and truth that come here in his word. Open up your Bible every day, and before you read a single word out of that thing, ask God, open my eyes, incline my heart towards what I'm gonna see. Send forth your light, let me see the way into your presence right now. Let me see, open my eyes and see what's beautiful and what's delightful and what's satisfying about you, about your nature. Ask him to give you the faith to believe those things way down deep at the controlling level. And then, from there, just walk through the day, all day, interpreting everything that you see through the eyes, through the lens of those truths, so that everything you do all day long turns into a little act of fellowship with God. And every single time you see something through the lens of those truths about God and it's delightful to you, you like it, every time you experience one of God's attributes firsthand, make sure you connect the dots in your soul so that your soul understands this delight that I'm feeling right now, this happiness, this pleasure, is a result of his presence enabling me to enjoy one of his gifts. That's what it means to draw near to God. Well, I hope you've been keeping up with the godliness training exercises. Are you ready for some more? Remember, this is how change will come in your life, is through doing these exercises, not just through listening. So over the next week, here's some exercises for you. Number one, pray for victory throughout the day each day. this area where you're trying to make changes in your life. Pray every day, all through the day, just beseech God, bang on the doors of heaven, and ask God to expose idols in your heart, whatever it takes, pray hard. Number two, Follow through on the next step for your prayer life that you identified in previous podcasts. If you're like most people, when you decided to make that change, you didn't make it because change doesn't come easy. So make a concerted effort this week. Follow through. Take that next step. 3. Do one of the devotionals from the What's So Great About God devotional book each day. Now if you don't own that book, you can get it on Amazon or you can download a digital copy for free from treasuringgod.com in the resource library. Just go to the articles page and look for What's So Great About God. Get that devotional book and do one each day. There's a topical index in the back if you want to pick ones that especially apply, but the first 20 are the most important. Those are the ones that really give the basic idea of how to have fellowship with God. So do one of those each day, and at the end of the day, each day, answer this question, did I experience that attribute today? The attribute that you studied in that devotional for that day, did you actually experience it through the day? If yes, write down a brief description of the experience. 4. Review Galatians 5.16 that you memorized before, and memorize Isaiah 55.2 and Jonah 2.8, word for word. Go over them every day. They're easy verses. Isaiah 55.2 and Jonah 2.8, word for word. Go over them each day this whole week. 5. Read the introduction to chapters 1 and 2 of Gospel Treason, the book Gospel Treason, or listen to the messages online. And if you have the book, complete the worksheet at the end of chapter 2. It helps you discover the idols in your heart. If you want to listen to the sermons online, just type in gospel treason by Brad Bigney in Google and it'll come up. And number six, attend church this Sunday and involve yourself as deeply as possible in fellowship. Now you'll notice these godliness training exercises cover a range of different things. There's some that are oriented towards learning. There's scripture, there's prayer, there's fellowship, there's action. And so they're all important, you got to do them all. These are all ingredients that go into making change, long-term heart change. So don't leave any out. If you want to see the list, they should be posted on today's podcast link on the Food for Your Soul Facebook page. Thank you for listening. Our prayer is that this season of the Food for Your Soul podcast will help you tap into deeper and deeper experiences of the fruit of the Spirit, especially self-control. Your thoughts about the materials in these studies are important to us, and they may be helpful for others as well. A link to this podcast is posted on the Food for Your Soul Facebook page every weekday morning. You're invited to follow that page and post your reactions to that day's content. Your perspectives might be just what someone else needs to gain insight. And when a session is especially helpful, feel free to click on the share button so others can find it too. This content has been provided to you free of charge by the generous supporters of Food for Your Soul Ministries. For information on how you can support Food for Your Soul, visit us online at treasuringgod.com. There you'll find over a thousand sermons, as well as articles, books, and many other resources, all available for free download. Until next time, rejoice in the Lord always and set your mind on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. you