Far From God
Scripture: Psalms 42:1-4
Do you feel empty? Is there a void casting deep yearning for something greater within your heart? This great burden of desire is not uncommon. It’s something we all experience, but what is that calling?
The authors of Psalm 42 were in exile and unable to attend their temple. They were enduring challenging times, much like many have experienced in recent months. Even though we may not be in exile, there are times when we don’t experience God like we long to do.
God used the inaccessibility to His temple to create an insatiable craving for His presence in Psalms 42. We have to sense a lack in our lives before we can experience a filling. The filling is essential, but the need may be more important as it points us back to our utter dependence on God.
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
(Psalms 42:1-4)
Listen to the recipient of the thirst. He says it three times. “My soul thirsts for God, the Living God, and when can I meet with God.”
Dehydration often happens swiftly and with little warning. As a result, we can miss how thirsty we’ve become, especially when our routines are irregular or broken.
Many of us know what the desert of our hearts can feel like when we think about dehydration. We start living on our resources, and before we know it, we're depleted. Then, the only thing we feel is a dryness that seems to stretch for miles with no hope in sight.
This thirst casts our deep need for God. When circumstances cause us to feel absent from His presence, this awareness of our internal desire for a new start is a gift of God.
“Thirsty hearts are those whose longings have been awakened by the touch of God within them.”
There are two perspectives that describe a believer’s thirst for God.
“I feel distant from God.”
When you realize that you once had a vibrant prayer life but have become careless in your relationship with God, you begin to miss Him. There is a void. You wish you were closer to God and want to feel his presence again.
While we may have physical needs, God's provisions are bountiful and never failing. However, it's only His presence that can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts to meet with God.
The Apostle Paul tells us in Philippians 3:10 that "I want to know God." We are meant to live life with God. Regardless of how many pleasures of the world we can obtain or experience, nothing can satisfy our hearts like meeting with God.
“My faith has waned.”
At one point, you had a faith so strong that it shaped the very fiber of each day. You were conscious of God's presence even in the worst situations. The fire of Christ, almost imperceptibly, was extinguished. Your heart may have even grown to have a resistance to a loving God. Your faith waned because of the evil you witnessed around you. You long for the relationship you once had.
If you relate with either of these two people, what do you think could be the causation in your life? What dynamic do you think led you to this point?
We want to have a life of longing, a life that calls us to something larger than ourselves. Through tales of lacking or struggles, we all have our own story about a deep longing for Christ, the deep urge to know God, experience His presence, and the fulfilling nature of intimacy with Him. That emotion alone, in and of itself, honors God.
If you were God, what would your feelings be towards someone experiencing either of these perspectives?
You see the struggles they have. You're aware of the void created by busyness in the first and suffering in the second. Would it move your heart to know that they wanted you? As a parent, if your child called for you and expressed deficiency within themselves, would you not sweep them up in an embrace and pull them to you?
But that's not how we view ourselves. Instead, we condemn ourselves and question what is wrong within. “Why can't I get my act together?” “Why can't I do better?”
Many of us see God as a tyrant who tolerates us rather than a father who celebrates us. Take your human feelings, as fickle as they are, and remember that we're made in God's image. Multiply them to infinity, and you will begin to experience a hint of God's goodness and devotion to us just as we are, not as we should be.
Some people don't need more spiritual insight; they need a fresh experience of God that transforms how they see themselves and how they experience life. Many Christians believe that God only tolerates them in their sinfulness rather than desiring to draw closer.
But the way we grow is by believing and accepting God's love instantly. So when we get deterred in our walk with God by life's bumpy journey, the good news is that God does not abandon us. Instead, He thirsts for us, and that's why we have the capacity in our hearts to thirst for Him.
We see this repeatedly in the Gospels. For example, the woman at the well did not thirst just for the day but for her soul. And even from the cross, Jesus cried out that He thirsted. Not just physically but spiritually and emotionally.
The enemy is working overtime to create a dryness and separation in our hearts. While we often shoulder the burden in the enemy's tactics, sometimes we can be resistant to God's presence. We know God with our minds but not with our hearts. There's no sense of life within us. We should feel the living water of Christ within us. This fullness enables us not to have to love people but to want to love people. We should fight for this thirst.
Much like we've never seen the Mississippi River run dry, there is an abundance of never-ending living water for us to drink from Christ. We are alive in the spirit of God, a God who thirsts for us. He doesn't want to know about us, He wants to know us.
Is your life marked by a spiritual thirst for God?
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About Christ Church Memphis
Christ Church Memphis is church in East Memphis, Tennessee. For more than 65 years, Christ Church has served the Memphis community. Every weekend, there are multiple worship opportunities including traditional, contemporary and blended services.
