95-59 – Wisdom Breakers – Crucial Longings

This sermon is Part 4 of the series "Wisdom Breakers" by Dr. Chuck Betters.

Wisdom Breakers is a study of the book of James. James tells us that as long as our faith is weak and if our faith is wavering, then we can never possess wisdom. When God calls us to fulfill his purpose, HE does not rescind that calling. Often times we can distracted or sidetracked with living out our mission. My identity in Christ is directly related to whether I understand what it means to be a bond servant of Jesus Christ. This is how James identifies himself in the opening of this book. Dr. Betters is about to explain that if we understand that our identity in Christ is that of bond servants to him, that is when we become a threat to the powers of Satan. Because then our identity is clear and we can serve the Lord to our fullest.

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Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Betters, produced by Mark Inc. Ministries. Each In His Grip message is designed to help turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Betters as he preaches today's message.

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I want you to take your Bibles and turn to the book of James, chapter one. James chapter one. There's a part of me that feels very inadequate to deliver this message. And there's another part of me that says that for the past week I have been living this message, and so it gives me an opportunity to share with you what the Lord has been teaching me. And as you have your place there in James 1, just put a finger there and go back to the Psalms. The Psalms are the window of the soul. The Psalms were meant to be used in public worship. They were sung in public worship. They were quoted in public worship. And if you've ever taken the time to do even a cursory study of the Psalms, you will quickly discover that God not only accepts the longings of the psalmist, but he encourages them. When you read the Psalms, you will find a lament, an anguish, a thirst in the soul. God indeed has given us this wonderful book, this wonderful and majestic window or glimpse into the soul of man, the soul of man that cries out to him. One of the things that we tend to think of when we think of the great saints of the Bible is that they were super Christians. They were so far above us. They are men and women to be idolized. When we get to heaven, we're just going to be in awe of David. I don't think so. I think when we get to heaven, the only one we will be in awe of is the Lord Jesus Christ. I think when we come face to face with people like David, who wrote the majority of these psalms, we're going to find a man just like us who struggled and longed after the very same things that we long after. The psalm is filled with questions and doubts, questions of faith. It's filled with anger. It's filled with images and pictures of a man shaking his fist at God and raising deep and intense questions about the character and the nature of God and the whys of life. And you say, well, that's not so unusual, that's not so disturbing to me. I already knew that. But perhaps what you didn't know is that in light of this longing, in light of this quest after God, you will find that God in the Psalms actually encourages men to do that. He invites their questions. He invites their criticisms. He invites their doubts. He invites their faithlessness. He brings the psalmist to the point of saying, My soul longeth after thee. Psalm 42, which was read for us this morning, we sung it as one of our chorus songs, verse 1. Look at it again. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Some scholars think that David's talking about dying, he's saying, I want to die. I don't think that's what he's talking about. I think he's talking about a craving, that there was something missing in his life. There was an emptiness, there was a longing that he couldn't quite put his finger on. There was a thirst that nothing else could satisfy, nothing else could quench, that there was an emptiness and a shallowness to him, and there was a dryness of spirit that said, Lord, there's only one way in which this dryness can be satisfied, one way in which my thirst can be quenched, my soul, my soul longeth after thee. Where do I meet this kind of a God? How do I come face to face with this kind of a God? Who can satisfy this thirst? My tears have been my food day and night. While men say to me all day long, and I might add, Satan also, where is your God? Where is your God? These things I remember as I pour out my soul. Get the picture of an emptying out. I pour out the very essence of my being, I pour out my soul. How I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession into the house of God with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. I remember those days when I could touch God. I remember those days when there was exhilaration in my faith and joy and peace that goes beyond description. I can hear the laughter in the walls. I can hear the sopranos and the altos and the tenor and the bass singing praise to a living God as we carried the ark together with triumph and victory over our enemies. I remember those days, but Lord, what troubles me is that they're only a memory. My soul now is dry and thirsty, and I don't know where to go, and I don't know where to meet you, and I can't touch you like I used to be able to touch you. Then he goes inside of himself. He's now vented himself to God, and now he goes inside and looks at his own soul and says, Why? Why are you downcast, oh my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. Drop down to verse seven. Deep calls to deep in the roar of the waterfalls, all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love. At night his song is with me. A prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning? Why must I go about oppressed by the enemy? He even talks about his physical longings. My bones suffer mortal agony. As my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, where is your God? Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet, I will yet, underline the word yet, because he wasn't doing it then. I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. You get the picture? Here is a man longing to touch God, examining his life. And the only instances and examples he could think of were distant memories where the beauty and the power and the majesty of God touched him. He looks inside of his soul and he says, This is a troubled man. Now God not only hears that, he encourages that. He encourages that kind of questioning. You say, why? Because you see, as we question and as we examine, as we go inside of ourselves and look at that soul that is wrenched, panting, and dry, we are forced to one conclusion. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in this life will ever be able to satisfy that longing. Nothing. It will drive us to Christ and drive us to hope. That's why God encourages us to do that soul surgery. Now you're ready to go back to James for a moment. As we go back to James, he says in verse 2, consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds. James 1, verse 3. Because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like the wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all that he does. We've been talking about wisdom. Wisdom defined as the knowledge of how to regulate my life to the interventions of God, to regulate my responses in conjunction with the movements of God in my life. Wisdom says, Lord, how do I now respond to what is happening in these circumstances in my life? How do I respond when you interrupt me? How do I respond when you change directions? How do I respond when I am tested? When I am tempted? How do I respond when I have to face sudden crisis? How do I respond when Satan unleashes a horrendous attack? How do I respond? Wisdom is the regulation of my responses to God. It's interesting. The different responses I have received from some of you by way of letters and comments concerning what we've done in this series on wisdom breakers. That's what we've been focusing on. What are the things? What are the things that will hinder us from understanding the perspective of God? What are the faith breakers? What are the things that hinder me from discerning the mind of God, from seeing things from God's perspective? What breaks down my faith? Because James told us, if you lack wisdom, ask God. And I asked you both Sundays before, how many of you lack wisdom? And all of you raised your hands, and the ones who didn't were lying. We lack wisdom. We don't know how to regulate our responses to God. That's why Psalm 42 is there. David didn't know how to do it. David's soul was crying after God with a longing that he couldn't even put words to. He couldn't put his finger on his relationship to God. There was something missing. He lacked wisdom. So we've been talking about the wisdom breakers, and I told you to write these down. And those of you who did, one day you're going to come back and you're going to look at them and you're going to say, I'm so glad I learned this. The others who were too lazy to do so, you're going to say, What do I do now? What do I do now? I don't know what to do. And you're going to panic and you're going to wonder, I'm giving you this ahead of time because all of you are going to need it at one time or another. Wisdom breaker number one, we say the pain is too great. The pain is too great. God, you have lied to me. 1 Corinthians 10.13 isn't true. This temptation or testing is too great. The pain is too much. I can't handle it. God, you have not given me the grace that you've promised. The pain is too great. That will break down your faith every time. Secondly, your disciplines are too inconsistent. Colossians 3.16 talks about the word of Christ dwelling in you richly. There is a prayer aspect and a prayer dimension and a scripture dimension to my life that involves communication with God. Prayer is my way of communing with Him. Scripture is His way of communing with me. When these disciplines are missing, we lose perspective. We lose faith, and therefore we are robbed of wisdom. Thirdly, there is a ruptured relationship with God due to unconfessed sin. 1 John 1 9 says we need to agree with God, confess our sins to God, lay it out on the table, ask him to reveal to us not only the known sin but the unknown sin and confess it and agree with God because as long as there is a ruptured relationship due to unconfessed sin, we'll never have wisdom. We'll never know how to regulate our response to God. Fourth, pride. Who's in control? The power grab. 1 Peter 5, 6 and 7 speaks of the issues of that. Fifth, we talked about the hardened heart. That is a hardened heart against the callings of God. In so many of our lives, God has called us to do something or be something or take a step of action or move in this direction or that direction. And God's callings are irreversible. God has spoken to us on many different occasions in many different ways, whether through a sermon, through a still small voice of the Spirit, through scripture study, or some other way in which God communicates with us by way of the scriptures into my heart and teaches me, I want you to go in this direction. We promise him, we pledge it, we commit to it, and somehow or another we drift off course. The whole time we have drifted away, God is still back here calling us to what he originally called us to. We talked a lot about that the last time. Sixthly, we talked about self-advancement and the wrong reasons for suffering. There are people who suffer and they want others to see that they're suffering because they want to advance their own cause. It's a suffering that invites people to feel sorry for you, so that you can wallow in that suffering, so that you can struggle in that suffering for continued self-advancement, to feel good about yourself because others feel sorry for you. Wrong motives. 1 Peter 4, 12 through 17 speaks of that. Seventh, we talked about satanic oppression. We don't want to minimize the power of Satan, nor do we want to maximize it. You must keep in mind that all that comes to us by way of satanic oppression must be filtered through the hand of God first. Satan doesn't have open season on Christians. Satan is bound. He no longer has power over the believer. But there are times when God permits Satan to oppress. There are times when the testing period is filtered through God's hands first, and we see there are times of severe satanic oppression. And then we talked eighth about lack of discipline in non-related areas that spill over into the area I'm struggling with. For example, if I'm not disciplined in these other areas, it may spill over into a mindset in the area that I'm currently struggling with. And we looked at 1 Timothy 4, 6 through 11. These eight things can become stumbling blocks to wisdom, stumbling blocks to faith. They are faith breakers. Now go over to 1 Peter 5, 10. Let's look at the ninth one. 1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 10. Let's look carefully at what he's saying here. And the God of all grace, who called you to what? His eternal glory in Christ. After you have suffered a little while. You say, but wait a minute, I've been suffering for 80 years. Doesn't sound like a little while to me. Contrast internally in that verse what he's saying. He says, I want to set up two parameters. The time frame in which you're suffering is called what? A little while. The purpose or the end of that time frame is called what? Eternal glory. So we have on the one hand eternal glory, and on the other hand, a little while. The 80 years is a little while compared to eternal glory. So what's he saying? And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you. Now there are some Greek scholars, by the way, and there may be legitimacy to this, although it seems to me to be a little ambiguous in the Greek, that change the placement of the words there. It says, Will himself restore you? There are some scholars who say, Who will restore you to himself? That there is a missing element in my life, there is a void that only Christ can fill. It will never be completely filled in this life. That ultimately Christ is going to restore me to himself. Because you see, that's what glory is. Glory is a restoration to him. The place that he goes to prepare for us is not some sort of physical building that sits up on the beach. The place that he goes to prepare for us is centered in Christ. It is complete union and fellowship with the very glory of Jesus Christ. Now, to give you a little impression of what that means, remember the story of Moses, how he asked for the glory of God to pass by. Remember that story? What did God say to Moses? Can't do it. Why not, Lord? Because if my glory passes by, you'll what? You'll die. Because as you are in this temporal state, as you are in this human condition, if my glory passes by, the glory of Christ and the depravity of man cannot meet without one of them giving, and the one that's going to give is the depravity of man. You'll die. But Lord, I need a touch of your glory. All right, Moses, I'll tell you what. Get down into the rocks, hide your head in the rocks, and when I go by, just as my backside passes, look up out of the corner of your eye and I'll give you a little taste of it. And that experience so lit up literally the face of Moses that he had to walk around for days with a veil on his face because people couldn't look at him anymore. He was too brilliant. That's the glory of Christ. And he says to us here, there is coming a day I'm going to restore you to that complete glory in Christ. That's the place I go to prepare for you. Until then, you have to suffer a little while. He will himself or restore you to himself. Either way, I think it captures the same image. He will himself restore you, make you strong. What's the opposite of strong? Weak. Anyone weak here? I am. Firm. What's the opposite of firm? Unstable. Steadfast. Persevering. Enduring. Continuing. It's like Peter can't contain himself anymore. He gives the doxology right there. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen. You get the picture? You say, well, what's the faith hindrance? The faith hindrance is this: the failure to take the long view of my suffering. Losing sight of the glory to come. Do you know how much of the Bible is laced with the word hope? Listen closely because it's going to bring me to point 10, which is the main point that I want to give you in this particular message. Listen closely. Try to catch the flavor of what I'm saying. This is not meant to be pessimistic. This is meant to be honest and true. You will never, ever, ever in this lifetime enjoy perfect peace. Never. You will never experience completely the glory of Christ in this life. Never. And anyone who tells you any different is a tool of the devil. You'll never experience perfect peace, perfect joy, and perfect contentment in this life. And now here's the key. And you were never meant to. You were never meant to. Why? Because God does not want our eyes focused on what is temporal. He wants our eyes focused on what is eternal. We are eternal creatures, and God is going to restore to us Himself in the condition that He gave to us in the first place when He created Adam and Eve. He is going to bring us back to perfection, strength, steadfastness, stability, dwelling and basking in the glory of God, not hiding our heads in the rock, not simply tasting a little bit of his glory, but experiencing the fullness of the glory of Christ. And we'll never experience that in this life we were not meant to. This life is the place in which we suffer a little while to prepare us for what is to come. Now that brings me to the tenth point. Go over to 1 Peter 2 and look with me at verse 9. 1 Peter 2 and verse 9. Now watch this. One passage here, and then another passage in John's gospel, and then I want to get on to the tenth point. 1 Peter 2, verse 9. But you are a royal or a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Notice the contrast between what you were and what you are, before Christ and after Christ. Now there may be some here who aren't in Christ. You're still in darkness. You still haven't received mercy. You're still alienated from God. There is no before Christ or after Christ. You're still lost. You're still before Christ. Only you know the answer to that question. But for those of you who are believers, there's two parts to your life: before Christ, after Christ, in darkness, in the light, alienated from God, in fellowship with God. Dear friends, verse 11, I urge you. I urge you. Underline these words now. I urge you. What's he saying? There's a drama to this. What I am about to say is dramatic. It'll change your life. I urge you. If I could force you to do it, I would. I urge you. As aliens and strangers in the world. There's part of our problem. We're not aliens and we're not strangers. We're in love with the world. And that's why we never experience any peace. As aliens and strangers in the world, abstain from sinful desires which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God when? On the day he visits us. Notice where Peter's emphasis is again. Notice what he's focusing our eyeballs on. You're an alien here. You're a stranger here. All of it's going to make sense, and all of it is going to culminate when the full glory of God empties into you, and you empty into him, and you bask in the glory of God, and that won't happen until he visits us. And that's not going to happen until he comes again. Until then, I suffer a little while because I'm an alien and I'm a stranger. Now go over to John chapter 10. You're going to have to stay with me on this one, friends. Stay close. John chapter 10. A typical verse quoted by a lot of Christians, and they haven't a clue as to what they're saying. John 10, verse 10. The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. And thus over the years, Christians have formed a label for what they call the what? The abundant life. And it's interesting how we define the abundant life. It's interesting how men have come up to define the issue of what it means to have the abundant life. You have one group of people out here who say, well, you have the abundant life if you express certain gifts. If you speak in tongues, or if you do this, or if you do that, if you've been baptized with the Holy Spirit, then you have the abundant life. We've got others over here who say you can have complete perfection in this life. And so we must strive after that point until we come to complete perfection and that it's possible to have it in this life. That's the abundant life. Others have said the abundant life is a life full of service, where we are so sold out that we are literally selling ourselves for the purpose of helping others that when we become that kind of a servant, we have the abundant life. I don't believe John 10, 10 has anything to do with any of those things, because I think for the most part the evangelical community hasn't a clue as to what it means to have the abundant life. And most of us sitting here struggle with the very same problems. Let me give you the tenth faith breaker, the tenth hindrance to wisdom. I'm going to call it simply loss of identity in Christ that leads to a failure to adequately understand the meaning of the abundant life. A loss of identity in Christ that ultimately leads to a failure to adequately understand the meaning of the abundant life. Most recently, I have been blessed by some of the research that I've been able to do in this whole area of the thirsty soul. One of the great authors and biblical scholars and teachers of our day is Larry Crabbe. Larry Crabbe wrote a book that I would encourage all of you to read. If you haven't gotten it, you need to get it. It's called Inside Out. How many of you have seen that book or read that book? Exciting material. I don't think he realized it when he wrote the book, but he defined certain categories of existence. Let me see if I can capsulize what I hear Larry Crab saying. And more specifically, let me show you where I think it has a biblical model to it that maybe he doesn't or hadn't referred to. There are two words in the Bible that speak of perseverance, that speak of endurance under trial. The one word is the word macrothumia. The second word is the word hopamone. Both of them come out in the English and render the same thing. It speaks of perseverance or endurance or patience under trial. But there's a difference, as I've studied these words, between what we are to endure, what we are to patiently endure as far as the circumstances are concerned. Let me see if I can explain it to you this way. Larry Crab says, and I believe he's right on target here, in fact, if you want to draw three concentric circles, you ought to do that. Put down three concentric circles. The outside circle is what he calls casual longings. Casual longings. That's interesting as I studied the Greek on this. That seems to be what the word hopomone is talking about. It's talking about perseverance in my circumstances. He calls it longings that are casual longings. For example, how's your job going? How's your health? Have you been able to pay the bills lately? How are things going as far as the direction of your vocation? These are casual longings. These are things that all men long after. The Bible speaks of hupomone under those conditions. That is, we are to persevere when the casual longings are brought under the test, when the job is threatened, when the direction of my health is threatened, when my circumstances change. In fact, that's what you can call casual longings. The circumstances of life. All of us have those circumstances. Casual longings. Hupomone. Perseverance when my circumstances change. Now we've all experienced those. We all long after peace and contentment in our circumstances. We all want to have as much peace in our work as possible, right? We want a good relationship. We want a good health report. We want a good job. We want to make sure that we have enough money to pay the bills and the circumstances of life that make me comfortable, that give me pleasure, these casual longings we all have and we all long after them. And it's not sinful to do so, to long after those things. The second circle, Crab calls critical longings. I think the Greek word macrothumia is the word that speaks more of relationships than it does of circumstances. That's what the second circle is talking about. Relationships. How's your relationship to your wife, to your husband, to your children? We long after our children to be solid and Christian in their behavior. It grieves us when our children go astray, doesn't it? It grieves us when there's tension in our marriage. We long after peace in the marriage. We long after children who are walking with God. We long after work conditions that are good between us and our employers. We long for dynamic, vital relationships within the context of the church. Critical longings involve people. Macrothumia is usually the word that is associated with a perseverance under the circumstances that deal with relationships. The first circle, casual longings, talks about our circumstances. The second circle talks about our relationships. Now here's the problem. The problem is we think that when everything is going well in the first circle, that is, all of our casual longings have been satisfied, we've got a great job, our health is good, the bills are paid, we live in a nice house, the lawn is growing, the garden is growing, we have just everything hunky-dory going good for us, everything is well, everything is fine. We move to the second circle, we color that one in and we say, boy, things are really going good in my marriage. I have a great marriage, my kids are walking with God. I have a wonderful boss, or I am a wonderful boss and have great employees. My relationships are good, I get along with my neighbors, I get along with my friends, my relatives, everything is fine. I have joy and contentment in my casual longings. I have joy and contentment in my critical longings, and since that's true, and all along I am loving God, all along I am a good churchman, all along things are going well in my church. I study my Bible, I pray, God seems to answer my prayers. There's a discipline that's going on in my life, things are going well, everything is fine, my casual longings are met, my critical longings are met, therefore we conclude I must have the abundant life. And that's where we're dead wrong. And do you know when we find that out? When something goes amiss in one of those first two circles. When something goes wrong, when we lose the house, when the wife dies, when the child is killed in a car crash, when we're told we have cancer all through our body, when the checks bounce, when the enemy stands up and calls us names. And those two circles start to disintegrate. And we find out that the soul has never touched God. We've circled the wagons, but the soul has never touched God. Because you see, that's what the third circle is. I think the Bible calls it the peace that passes all understanding. It's when that little inner circle is colored in. It's when that little inner circle is full that you have the abundant life. Regardless of how the outer two circles are going. Now here's the key. That little inner circle can never be fully colored in because it's designed to push us to eternity. It's designed to make us crave an intimacy that only eternity can satisfy. You following me? Stay with me. Listen closely. What are we talking about? We are talking about a thirst of the soul. A thirst of the soul. That is the painful path to God. This is what David was doing. He had wealth, he had power, he had women, he had children, he had a kingdom, he was a man that the Bible calls one after God's own heart. He was one of the most prestigious characters of the Old Testament, and yet he says, in the midst of all of this, my soul longs after thee. There's a craving inside of me. And until that craving is satisfied, until that longing is filled, I will never have the abundant life. And even as it is filled, it is driving me to eternity. Let me read you something that I think Crab hits the nail right on the head. I want to quote from him. He says, until we acknowledge painful disappointment in our circumstances, that's the first circle. And relationships, that's the second circle, and more specifically the second circle, until we acknowledge that we have been painfully disappointed in both of those circles, we will not, we will not pursue Christ with the passion of deep thirst. Or he says to put it more simply, we rarely, rarely learn to meaningfully depend on God when our lives are comfortable. We rarely learn to meaningfully depend upon God when our lives are comfortable. You have got to see that those casual longings will never quench the thirst of your soul. Never. Those relationships will always disappoint. They will not quench the thirst of your soul. No matter how good your marriage is, no matter how well your children walk after God. Those relationships will always fall short of satisfying the deep thirst of a man's soul. Only intimacy with Christ can satisfy that. Only intimacy with Christ and identity in Christ can satisfy that longing. That's the crucial longing. He says, and I'm reading again, the promise of refreshing springs within us guarantees only that for now Christ will do something about our crucial longings. That's the inner circle. We have no promise that he'll provide us with the comforts of health, prosperity, or leisure, nor can we depend on God to make our human relationships as warmly satisfying as we wish. Listen, his promise of daily bread and his pledge to supply us with what we need according to his riches must be carefully understood to mean that we can count on receiving from God all that is necessary to achieve his purpose in our life. God never promised you contentment in your casual relationships. He never promised you contentment in your critical relationships. All he has promised you is that the crucial longing of your spirit he and he alone can satisfy. Even when everything else in those outer two circles comes crumbling down. And they will come crumbling down. It's inevitable. Why? Because in our casual circumstances and in our critical circumstances, we live in a sinful, fallen world. People die. People hate. People hurt. Our circumstances change. There are no guarantees and all the other cliches you can think of. And when those things come crumbling down, do you know what God is doing? He is driving you to that inner circle, and he is saying, here is the place you can be satisfied. Here's the place you can drink. Here's where the deer has to go to find water. And what he says is, I will arrange the circumstances and I will arrange the relationships in your life only to a point. Only to a point. And that point is that your circumstances and your relationships push you and draw you and impel you to the place where you long after and thirst after God so that you can fulfill his purposes in life. We exist to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And we will lack wisdom every time, every time when we lose sight of our identity in Jesus Christ. And those crucial, crucial longings. He goes on and he says, this kind of promise obviously does not guarantee us pain-free living on every level. On the contrary, because his intention is to draw us deeply to himself, and because we were designed to enjoy what only God can provide, we must honestly admit to deep sadness and disappointment, sometimes reaching the level of soul-wrenching despair as we contemplate our human relationships. Boy, I underline that. Not my four kids. Never. If ever there was a man who could stand up and say that he had a family rock solid in Christ that gave him complete unmitigated human joy, it was me. But you know, even in those relationships, I was disappointed because my son died. That relationship ended because he died. One day, my wife or one of my other kids will also die. Or I will die. And the relationship at that point becomes memory. What does that do to the thirst of the soul? Can you depend on that relationship to quench the thirst? No. Can my wife depend on me to quench the thirst of her soul? No. Can you depend on any other human being to quench the thirst of your soul? And the answer to that is no. There's only one who can satisfy. And the disappointment that we have and the sadness we experience, even as what he calls the soul-wrenching despair that we have in broken human relationships, always have the design in God's eyes of driving us to that inner circle where the deer can find water. He says, what we want simply is not there. But as a fallen being, we naturally seek joy in every relationship except in our relationship with God. The result is inevitable frustration in our deepest parts. That frustration, which is what the Psalms is all about, that frustration, when properly handled, that's what the Psalms is all about, the gut-wrenching, soul-wrenching despair, that frustration of the psalmist properly handled can drive us toward God. Those who walk closest to God feel their disappointment most keenly. The awareness of how things should be, and one day will be, makes the reality of how things are truly ugly. You know what we need to do? We need to get rid of the idea that the obedient Christian is supposed to feel good all the time. Crab goes on and he says, the springs of living water, bathing our deepest longings with his presence now and with his promises for later do not eliminate the pain of unmet desires at other levels. We therefore should not measure the quality of our walk with the Lord by the absence of unhappy feelings. When children rebel, parental pain is not only normal and real, it's healthy. And spiritual depth only intensifies the pain because it more keenly discerns how tragic the rebellion is. In other words, sin grieves. It grieves. In spite of life's inevitable pain, it is possible to remain intact no matter what troubles crash into our life, because nothing, nothing can rob us of God's love. The very thing a self-aware, discerning soul wants the most is the love of God. To be changed from the inside out means to learn how to drink from the living water of God's unchanging love, so our purpose, identity, and joy give us the courage to respond well, whether our life is smooth or rocky. I think he's hit the nail right on the head. And I think that's where the abundant life is to be found. Do you know what has to happen? We have to look at ourselves as onions. You know what an onion is? You have to peel it away layer by layer, layer by layer. You have to start reviewing your casual circumstances. And layer by layer start peeling them away and asking yourself this vital question: have my casual relationships driven me to thirst after and to find satisfaction in the living God? Or have my casual circumstances become my God and am I now living in idolatry? And once you start peeling through those casual circumstances, then you need to move to your critical circumstances, to your relationships. And one by one you have to start peeling off the layers and asking the same question: have these relationships driven me to thirst after God? Or have these relationships become my idol? You know, we learn to respond. Even as children growing up, we learn to respond to our casual and critical relationships, don't we? From the time you're a little baby, from the time you're an infant. I mean, little babies, they don't like their diapers dirty, do they? I mean, as soon as they're dirty, what do they start doing? They start, wow, start balling like a baby, right? Because they want that need met immediately. Immediately. And it doesn't take them long in those casual circumstances to spill over that desire for satisfaction and peace and contentment in their relationships. They want everything to go well. But it doesn't. The problem is that as parents, we don't teach our children where the real satisfaction is to be found, where the real thirst is to be quenched. That is in a longing after God. And so our casual circumstances and our critical relationships become in and of themselves an idol. And we worship them. And when they're going well, and we seem to be spiritual in our outlook on life, we seem to be praising God. We go to church, we do this, that, and the other thing, we conclude, I have the abundant life. Praise God, everything's well. Honest people touch the inevitable distress of life, Krebs says, sometimes through physical suffering, although through relational disappointment, changed people taste the goodness of God so deeply that they pursue him when life offers the legitimate but blander taste of nice homes, good health, and rich relationships, and they pursue him all the more when those joys are removed. Who are you in Christ? What is your identity? I've had to face that. Done some real soul searching, real struggling on that. You know, it's even been painful for me to share these things with you. You want to know why? I'm gonna be honest with you for a moment. I hope I'm honest with you all the time. I'm gonna be honest with you now. As a pastor, I want to communicate to you the word of God. I want that word to come through loud and clear. I don't want my circumstances to cloud your interpretation of the word. And so there have been times where I have not shared things with you about what I'm struggling with because I don't want the focus to be on me. But I've got to tell you this: the word is filtered through my life first, and what you see is the product of that. I think I'm on the same plane where you are, struggling with the same things that you are, same kind of longing after God that you long after. And what I am discovering is this, that perhaps in the majority of my Christian life, maybe even as recently as two years ago, my longing after God and my first after intimacy with Him has been jeopardized because everything in the other two circles was going so well. I mean, I have a church that any pastor would give his right arm to have. I have a congregation I love and I think love me. I have unity. There's peace and harmony within the context of the leadership of this church. I have a wife who's the best wife on the face of the earth. I have four children who are walking with God, who love the Lord, who have never ever given us reason to doubt their Christianity or the direction of their lives. Relatively great health, physical conditions, what have you. I mean, I suffer with the same things you do, but basically I'm a healthy man. I make a decent living, bills are paid thanks to the way you folks care for our needs. I have a nice home. Everything, for all intents and purposes, when you view it from the outside looking in, you would look at it and say, boy, things are really well. And it isn't until those things are removed that you realize how dry you've been all those years. How the intimacy with Christ has been taken for granted. Taken for granted. And boy, all of a sudden, you're driven back to say, hey, I'm a frog in a kettle. I'm boiling to death and I don't even know it. Then, like the psalmist, you stand up and you say, My soul longeth after thee. As a deer pants for the water, so my soul longeth after thee. Every aspect of those casual or critical relationships will disappoint you. Inevitably they will. No matter how good they're going now, they will disappoint you. But keep in mind, that is not all bad. In fact, it's even good. Because what God does is He uses those things to show you that you're really a thirsty man. And he says, now here, taste of me. Drink from the well that I have dug. Fill your soul with the Holy Spirit of comfort and joy and peace. Taste of him. Peel away all the onions. And boy, I tell you, this past week, I went all the way back. My poor wife had to sit up until I think two o'clock in the morning and listen to this story. We laid in bed and I peeled away every piece of that onion skin I could think of. And I went all the way back as far as I could remember to the time I was a little boy. And piece by piece by piece I started peeling away the onion skin, started peeling it all away to show how over the years I had developed patterns. Patterns that literally blocked me from finding satisfaction in Christ. Love the Lord, walk with the Lord. I think I've been used of the Lord. I think there's been an effective ministry over 27 years, etc., etc. But there's more. There's more. And you can't satisfy it, and my children can't satisfy it, and my job can't satisfy it, and my circumstances can't satisfy it, no human relationship, no casual relationship, nothing in this life can satisfy it. David cried after one who could satisfy it, and that is his God and God alone. I invite you to peel away the onion skin. I invite you piece by piece, by piece by piece, to take a long, hard look inside and see whether or not that middle circle, that crucial longing, is where your emphasis is. Because once you discover that, then you can be changed from the inside out. And not just from the outside in. So you see, if I change my circumstances, things will go well? No. If I change my relationships, will I have the abundant life? No. If I drink from the well of Christ, will my circumstances and my relationships change? Maybe. But will I have peace? Yes. A peace that passes all understanding in this life to be completed, fulfilled, magnified, as I am restored in him in the life to come. That's my challenge to you. Loss of identity in Christ and the failure to adequately understand the meaning of the abundant life will block you all the time from understanding, understanding how to regulate your life in accordance with the direction of God. Would you stand, join hands with those around you? Let's bow together in prayer. Heavenly Father, only you can meet the crucial longings of a man's heart. Only you. Only you. Oh God, forgive us for idolatry. Forgive us for longing after the things that cannot satisfy and never will. Teach us, oh God, teach us how to come to the water that only you can supply.

SPEAKER_02 58:42

Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore.