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. In order to prefer God's presence above the pleasures of sin, you have to have wonderful experiences of God's presence, but how is that done? That's what today's podcast is about. We're going to get some insights from Psalm 42 and 43 about how that psalmist satisfied his thirst. It starts out with him being really thirsty for God, really desiring God, and then he gives insights on how he went about drawing near to God and satisfying that craving. Now this is a very basic overview. If you want a more detailed study of how to enjoy the presence of God, how to have experiences with his presence that satisfy your soul more than sin, then I would recommend going through the sermon series on treasuringgod.com titled Loving God With All Your Heart, especially the last six messages. Now, that whole series is all about how to draw near to God and what that means, what it doesn't mean, what Scripture says, how do you know when it's happening, all that. And then the last six messages in that sermon are about specifically how to do that with each member of the Trinity. Two messages on how to have fellowship with the Father, two messages on what Scripture says about communing with the Son, and then two messages about the Holy Spirit. Very important insights from Scripture, and neglected. You don't hear a lot about how to have fellowship with the various members of the Trinity, so I would recommend those to you. But for today and tomorrow, let's just get the overview on how to draw near to God. Today, step one, get thirsty. Verse two of 42. My soul thirsts for God. Before you can really enjoy God's presence, you've gotta get yourself thirsty. You gotta get thirsty for it. You gotta desire it. Drinking water is actually an unpleasant thing when you're not thirsty, isn't it? If you're not thirsty at all, it's not very, it doesn't feel good to drink water. But the thirstier you are, the more you enjoy it. A meal is so much more enjoyable when you're hungry. One of the benefits of suffering, there's many benefits, but one of the many benefits of suffering is it enables you to experience attributes of God that you could never otherwise experience. You can only experience them then. There are attributes of God that the angels will never know by experience. They're going to have to ask us what it's like to experience those particular attributes of God because they can only, for example, what it's like to experience God as your refuge in a time of trouble. Angels never know what that's like. They'll never know what it feels like to be pulled out of a horrible pit by God. It's an incredible feeling. So many of the attributes of God in this psalm are aspects of the glory of God that can only be experienced from the standpoint of suffering. God as our savior, God as our shelter, as our stronghold, these are attributes that you can only have when you're in trouble. So praise God for your suffering. Praise God for something, it's good. When we're full all the time, we take that for granted and we forget how important food is. We need hardships to keep our appetite going. We need to go dry before we'll be thirsty enough to actually drink. You can try to discipline yourself to just read the Bible and pray every day and go to church and just force yourself to do it all, but your commitment to do all that is not gonna last long. It's only gonna go a little while and then it's gonna peter out unless you're really thirsty. You just have the desire. So to really drink deeply from God, you have to be thirsty. So how do you make yourself thirsty for God? Well, just do what the psalmist did here. Interpret all the longings of your soul during hardship as what they really are, and that is thirst for God, a need for God's presence. When you misinterpret the groanings of your soul, it will make you thirsty for the wrong thing. If you get really lonely and you interpret that as a need for a friend or a spouse or a better spouse or something like that, you're gonna be energized to run after a better friend or a better spouse or whatever. But if you interpret it for what it really is, a need for God, the presence of God, that will energize you to run hard after God. If you get really sick, and that takes away your joy. If you interpret that misery as a need for physical health, then that will energize you to run hard after physical health. But if you interpret it for what it really is, a need for the presence of God, you'll be energized to run hard after God. You've got to get thirsty Look how he describes God in 43.4. He says, then I will go to the altar of God, and then listen to this, my joy and my delight. That's how he describes God. Literally that phrase is, to God, the gladness of my rejoicing. That's what God is. He's the gladness of my rejoicing. Can you think of a more delightful description anywhere in the Bible of God than that? What is God like? He's the gladness of my rejoicing. When I rejoice, anytime I have happiness, anytime I have joy in life, the core of that happiness, the nucleus of it is God. He's the supplier of the joy. Now, there is a shallow, temporary, counterfeit version of joy that comes from sin, but that's not real joy. That's never a real joy. It always leaves you emptier than you were to begin with. This is talking here about authentic, deep, rich, lasting, profound happiness. that's greater than the sorrows of life, no matter how big the sorrows of life are. And whatever tool God uses to bring that happiness into your life, the happiness itself doesn't come from that tool, it comes from God. He's the gladness that supplies my rejoicing, all my rejoicing. And if I get happiness from time spent with my wife, or from seeing my kids, or enjoying some part of God's creation, or a really good meal, or a cool Jeep, or a new gun, or whatever it is that makes you happy, you get that happiness, and that causes joy. It ignites some happiness in your heart. That's God at work. Whenever something starts your heart to rejoicing, that's God at work enabling you to enjoy that thing. He's the gladness beneath all your rejoicing. That's what this phrase means. Whenever you have true happiness in your life, if somebody got a shovel and started digging down at the root, they would see underneath there God enabling that happiness. And the more aware you become of that, the more you're experiencing the presence of God at that moment. Now the psalmist understood that, which is why he wanted to meet with God even more than he wanted relief from his suffering. That's why that was the main thrust of his desire. He wanted that joy. He wanted that happiness that came from that. And if God used a tool to bring it, or this tool, or that tool, or some other tool, or no tool at all and just gave it directly, it didn't matter. None of that mattered to him. The only thing that matters is that he experienced God's presence. That's the only thing that will bring the joy back. The problem is, we just don't naturally think that way, do we? I mean, we just don't think that way. It takes a conscious effort to diagnose the problem of my sadness or my depression as being a craving for God's presence. Those two don't naturally connect. So whenever you suffer and it starts stealing your joy, Just remind yourself of that. Just tell yourself, if I were to experience the presence of God right now in these circumstances, I would have joy. Even if the suffering keeps going, I would have joy. We need to preach that to ourselves. Continually reminding yourself of that is how you increase your thirst for God. That's how you make yourself thirsty. is reminding yourself of that. Otherwise, your suffering, it won't work. Suffering is supposed to make you thirsty for God, and it won't work. It'll get wasted if we don't remind ourselves of this. So keep doing that, and eventually your thirst for God will become so extreme that it will drive you to find God, no matter what it takes. Your soul is actually already thirsty for God, but it just takes a lot of work to convince yourself of that, right? When I get physically thirsty, I never crave the wrong thing. Never. I never misinterpret my dry mouth and dry throat as a craving for sawdust or dirt or anything other than a real drink. I'm so convinced in my mind, I'm so convinced that water is the solution to a dry throat, dry mouth, that the sensation of a dry throat is exactly the same thing in my mind as a desire for water. Think about that. It's exactly the same thing. The sentence, this sentence, I'm thirsty. That sentence means two different things in my mind. It means my throat is dry and it means I want water. I want a drink. Because those two things are identical in my mind. And the goal is to get to where that's the way my thirst for God is. so that whenever my soul is dry and I'm lacking joy, I'm feeling joylessness, that feeling of joylessness and not being happy is exactly the same thing in my mind as a desire for the presence of God. They're synonymous. My goal is to get to the point where this sentence, I'm sad, or the sentence, I'm afraid, or I'm overwhelmed, or I'm worried, that those sentences mean I want more of the presence of God. They just translate to that in my heart. And it can be a process to get there, right? It can be a process. I mean, it might take some doing in your life, if you haven't been thinking this way, to actually get to the point where you're thirsty for God. You don't have a desire right now for God. You don't have that much desire to pursue intimacy with God through prayer and scripture and fellowship and all that. You don't have a driving passion. You're just not thirsty. And it might take some doing in your life just to get to the point of being thirsty. The psalmist is already there. He's already done all that. He's thirsty. He's ready. So verse 2, right off the bat in 42, my soul thirsts for God. So he already feels it. So that's the beginning point. Get thirsty. Then once you do that, the next step will come naturally. Do whatever it takes to drink, right? That's what you do when you're thirsty. But what does it take? I mean, how do you manage to drink from God? Well, it takes some seeking. Before you'll be able to experience the presence of God as your food and drink, you're gonna have to find His presence. You have to seek it for it and find it. He says, as the deer pants for streams of water, that word translated pants, really it's, I mean, I don't know if pants is the best translation. Literally it means to bend toward something or to be inclined towards or to look for something. The idea isn't so much of the deer panting as much as the deer searching. I think a better translation instead of paint would be search. As the deer searches for streams of water, so my soul searches for God. Scripture speaks a lot about this, searching for God, looking, seeking God. First Chronicles 22.19 commands it. Devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord your God. It's just commanded. Devote yourself to that. Seek God. We're commanded to seek his presence. And the criterion for success in seeking His presence is that you do that seeking wholeheartedly. Deuteronomy 4.29, if you seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart and all your soul. You'll find Him if you seek with all your heart and all your soul. God will not demean Himself by allowing Himself to be found by half-hearted seekers. If you go after a woman and say, will you marry me and I want to be your husband on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays? The answer is going to be no. You've got to go after her with all your heart. And so this man is searching for God like a deer searching for water, and he's just doing that as a way of life wherever he is. It's not just once a week in church. It's not just here and there. It's not just once a day in his morning prayer time. It's wherever he is all day long. And I get that from verse 6 of 42. He says, my soul is downcast within me, therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from Mount Mizar, outside of Israel, north of Israel, where Hermon is, in Israel, atop the highest mountain, on the smallest hill, wherever I am, I remember God. He's seeking hard after God, he's seeking hard after God from wherever he is as a way of life. He's thirsty for God, he's seeking hard after God, up on the mountain, down in the plain, wherever he is, he's seeking God, but it's not working. It's not, he's still dry. Listen, if you have some idea that in order to experience the presence of God, all you have to do is just spend 10 minutes in prayer seeking Him in the morning, and boom, there He is, and that's just the way it's gonna work. Go back to the Psalms, and you're not gonna see that. I mean, look at this guy. He's a godly man, he's an exemplary saint, he's thirsty, he's really thirsty, he's seeking desperately hard after God, and all he's getting from heaven at this point is a dial tone, nothing. He wants to drink deeply from the spring of living water, but it's just not happening. His soul is dried up. See, even when you seek God the right way, even when you seek God wholeheartedly with everything in you, and you're thirsty and all that, even when you're doing all that, the results, they're gonna come, but they may be delayed. God may test you to see how serious you really are, just to show you how serious you really are. Are you gonna keep on seeking Him, even though it's taken a long time, or are you gonna resort to some alternative, some substitute water? 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. 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