Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Psalm 63, emphasizing David's deep thirst for God amidst his wilderness experience. He highlights that true satisfaction comes not from God's gifts but from a personal relationship with Him, urging the congregation to prioritize their pursuit of God above all else. The sermon challenges listeners to reflect on their own spiritual hunger and to seek a closer connection with God, especially during trials, as these experiences can deepen faith and reliance on Him.
Welcome and Housekeeping
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Great job, young people. They only practiced that just a couple of times before today, and so that was great. If you have a child who wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, they can be dismissed at this time. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in Psalms 63, Psalms chapter 63,
and we're going to look at the entirety of this psalm this morning, 11 verses, and we're excited about how the Lord worked this psalm into where I'm preaching at and what we just learned at camp.
There's a lot that overlapped, and I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful that the Lord is sovereign over those things.
And so if you have your place there in Psalm 63, let's stand, and we'll read these 11 verses
out of honor and reading. Let you stretch your legs just for a moment as well. But the Bible says in Psalm 63,
God, you are my God. And when I think of you as I lie in my bed, I meditate on you during the night watches. Because you are my helper, I will rejoice in the shadows 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, and 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. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you've done for us. Thank you for the reading of your word.
Thank you for the young people as they sang and led this morning. And we pray that your name will be glorified today. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
I want to ask you a question. This could happen to you on multiple times. You may say, Pastor James, this has never happened to me before in my life. You may say, this is every single day of my life in this opening illustration.
What I want to present to you is a picture or an idea. And it could be a real life scenario for you. You're out on a hot July day. It's been 117 degrees.
It feels like it's 125 with the North Carolina humidity. And you've been working and you've been sweating and you've been working in your garden. You've been taking up hay. You've been taking care of the animals. You've been mowing your grass.
Desiring More Than Physical Needs
And you come inside and maybe it's a husband that's doing this. And your wife has prepared a full steak dinner, mashed potatoes.
She's got the salad there for you. She's got the bread. And you walk in and you go, this is great. And she welcomes you at the door. She tells you, look what I've made for you. And you sort of bypass her. And you walk to the fridge.
And you bypass this wonderful meal that was prepared for you. And you go and you say, I only need right now a glass of water. Or maybe it's a Pepsi. Maybe it's a Diet Coke. You go to the fridge.
You grab your bottle of water. Because in that moment, the only thing that satisfies you is liquid in that moment.
Like the meal was perfect and it was great and it would have been delicious. But the bag of chips laid on the counter wasn't appealing because you were dehydrated.
And you needed and you thirst after something more than just substance. This is what David is feeling and looking at in this passage.
He's saying, God is not just one of my desires. He's not saying God was the desire of my life. God's not even an addition to my life. He's saying that God is the necessity of my life. Just like in this moment, I need water.
Psalm 63 is most likely one of the most personable Psalms David ever wrote.
If you look at the superscription, if you have a Bible that writes in above it there what it says, most of them say this. It was a praise God who satisfies a Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness. So this gives us the idea David was away from Jerusalem.
He's away from the tabernacle. He's away from the public worship of his people.
And he's even been abandoned by his own people. And yet in this moment,
he is looking at what is going on. And his first expression is this. It's not, Lord, give me safety. It's not, Lord, give me comfort.
And it's not even, Lord, give me revenge on the ones that are facing and coming after me. But look what it says here. God, you are my God and I eagerly seek after you.
When David is in the wilderness, when his soul is being chased by either Saul or it could have been his son Absalom.
We don't know which one it was, but he has been chased in this moment. He could have prayed for refuge.
He could have prayed for safety. He could have prayed for all of the wonderful things that can come with life with God. But yet he stops and he says, God, the thing that I truly want from you in the moment that I need you the most is you.
Prioritizing God's Presence
It's not the things that you can give me, but it's you. And I want to challenge us as we walk through this. Is your heart thirsting after God the way that David's heart is thirsting after God?
This is why in the New Testament it says that David was a man after God's own heart.
Because when everything was going the opposite of what he wanted, he didn't pray for those things to be taken away. He prayed that God would be closer to him then than any other time of his life.
And so how do we have this? How does this look like in our life? And I've got to quickly walk through.
You see there's a lot of notes there and you may be looking at your watch and saying, how are you going to get done in time? I don't know, but we're going to see.
The first is this. It begins with our relationship with God. It begins with how we view this God who is the creator of the world, who sent his son to die for us. It begins with how is our very own relationship with the Lord.
When it comes to David, I read this statement somewhere this week and it totally transformed my mind because David looked at God almost like an addiction. Not an addition.
He looked at God as like, I have to have you. I can't survive another moment of my life without you near me.
Not, God, I'm going to add you to my life. I'm going to add you as like a ranch dressing on top of my salad and hope you work out. No, it's God, I have to have you. I wake up in the morning and you were there. You have to be there.
I have to have you near me because you are the very source of the life that I am living. I'm not going to add you and say, God, here's my schedule. Where can I fit you into my schedule? It's God, you are here.
Let me fit my schedule around you. And this is how David is going through his life. His relationship with God is so important. And we look through a couple of things. We see the personal nature of his relationship. It says, God, you are my God.
Look at the possessiveness of this. He says, he doesn't say, which oftentimes we see in scripture, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of my fathers. Oftentimes these things are said in scripture. But what does David say? God, you are my God.
God, the intimacy that it says here, the ownership that it shows here, the affection that David is living as he writes this.
He is saying, God, you're not the God of my kids. You're not the God of my father. You're not the God of my, of the king. You are my God.
You are so close to me that, that I know that I am your son, that I know that I am there. And I know who you are because I have this relationship that is so much greater than just having this abstract view of God.
Christianity, I read this this week. Christianity is not merely knowing facts about God, but it's knowing who God is himself. Could we honestly, before each other this morning, say, God, you are my God.
God, you are the God of all creation and you look down from heaven and you solid fit to send your son to die for me. And I have accepted that. And you are my God. As we looked at this week, it says in that prayer, our father,
our father, he doesn't say Brody's father. He doesn't say Cole's father. He says our father, my father in heaven. And we have to look at God and say, is that how God is in our life? He then goes on not only to the personal nature, but the passion of his pursuit. He says here, I eagerly seek you.
That this word in Hebrew, the eager word here carries the idea of diligently or early seeking God. The first thing that David thought of was God. His heart ran to God. His heart was pursued to go toward God.
And many people look at this and they say, this is the idea that David's heart, as soon as he woke up, was running to God. Now, the question I want to ask us this morning is many people, and maybe in this room here, are running to God.
They're running to the relief from God rather than running to God.
They're running to the answers of their life instead of running to God. They're running for the blessings of God that never truly see who God is. They just see the blessings of who he is. David sought God first.
As I was doing that video, some of you may have noticed it. Some of you may have picked up on one specific thing. Did anyone... I'm going to see how well you were paying attention. Okay? Because as I...
So I just throw all the pictures into a photo drive, and then I have it create me a slideshow, and I throw a song to it. And so it does all the stuff. But did anyone notice something that I had in my hand in like 90% of the pictures? My coffee cup. Yeah.
I didn't even notice it. Like half the day, I'm carrying my coffee cup because I need my coffee in the morning,
especially when it comes to youth camp. Like the energy level is down. We're sleeping on like little pieces of foam.
It can be exhausting. And so I noticed this coffee cup in my hand in all these pictures. And it got me thinking of this. A person that's addicted to coffee or caffeine or Pepsi, right, Pat? Love Pepsi.
You got to have your Pepsi in the morning. I'm almost certain that my wife doesn't have to wake me up and say, Hey, James, before you go to work today, make sure you make your cup of coffee. Okay?
Roy doesn't have to walk in and say, Pat, did you have your Pepsi today? No, she's already had it. She's already... I've already had my coffee. I've got my coffee before I wake up. My wife wakes up like it's ready for me. It's there because an addict doesn't schedule their cravings.
They just get up and they take care of it. And all of a sudden we ask ourselves, Are we scheduling this relationship with God because it's something that our hearts are not really truly fit to be? Or are we pursuing after him because we can't imagine our life without it?
If you woke up to me tomorrow and you said, Pastor James, the next three days when you go to kids camp, you can't have coffee.
We're probably not going to be on good speaking terms for a couple of days because I'm going to need that to get me going. I'm going to need these things to get me going.
Would I be as mad as if someone came to me and said, James, for the next three days you can't have God. This is the relationship that David has with God. He's saying, I am so in love with him.
I am so in tune with him that as I wake up in the morning, I am eagerly and I'm early seeking after him. The priority of his presence is number three here. It says, I thirst for you. My body faints for you.
David is using this physical illustration to describe his spiritual longing of who God is. He's saying that my body is thirsting after you. He's not saying that I literally need a drink from the Lord.
He's saying that it's like I was in the wilderness and I was a traveler in a desert and I needed water and God was the only one to supply that for me. And he is saying this is the desire that he has.
And it's our prayer life that's so deep that our desires are so thirsty for him that if we don't get something from God, we are spiritually dehydrating because we don't have God.
Worshiping God with Joy
Our relationship with God begins there. Our priority of his presence. We look at number two here, the worship toward God. Verses three through five lay out this worship that David has. He says, my lips will glorify you because of your faithful love is better than life itself.
David is teaching us a couple of things about worship here that I think we can truly understand that worship begins to be a delight rather than a duty.
You see, I said at the very beginning as I was talking about being raised in church and I truly was on a church bus when my mom was pregnant.
My mom was driving the church bus to go pick up kids and my dad was on the bus and there's a picture of me in my car seat on the church bus going to pick up kids to bring them to church.
I have never been a day of my life, a Sunday out of my life that I wasn't in church, I wasn't around church, I wasn't around what was going on in God's house. For 37 years of my life, almost every single Sunday morning I've been in church.
Of course there's some vacations and there's some sicknesses, but traditionally and who I am, I am in the Lord's house on Sunday. Wednesday, Sunday night, I never thought the Lord would have called me to preach, but this is what I am doing. And as I think through that, I begin to ask myself,
is this a duty or is this a delight of my heart?
Am I just going to church on Sunday morning because I have to go to church with someone? That's what I've done for 37 years. If I'm not in church, it really feels awkward and weird that we're not in the Lord's house.
Is it a duty or is it a delight to where I wake up and I say, I can't wait to go to the Lord's house. I can't wait to hear what God has for me. I can't wait to be around God's people.
This is what it means when we become enjoyable worship towards God.
Last night, we were getting the kids in bed and Hudson looked at me and he goes, Dad, we're not going to church tomorrow. We're going to camp, right? Because last week he didn't go to church because he was with the grandparents. And he was there and they watched us online. And I said,
no, no, tomorrow's church. He goes, oh, I can't wait to go to church, Dad. I can't wait to see Hampton and Hank and Holt and be around my friends. He said, I missed them last week. Is that how we are when it comes to church?
Like, I can't wait to be around God's people. I can't wait to be around what he has for me because this is who God has designed us to be in worship toward him. A couple of things I wrote down is, do we delight in his love?
Your faithful love is better than life. I truly believe that this statement in Psalms chapter 63 is one of the most powerful, highest statements that we can ever look at in our life. Many people put statements and scriptures on their walls, right? That are verses. Psalms or Philippians 4.13.
I can do all things through Christ. Your thanks to me. Like the Lord, build this house in strength. We write a lot of verses. Why is this verse not on our walls in our house? Look at what it says. If I have life, but I don't have God, I've lost everything.
I'm putting this in the James Safer version. If I have life, but I don't have God, I've lost everything. And if I lose my life, but I don't, but I have God, I have everything that life can give me.
If I have life, but I don't have God, I've lost everything. Jesus said it like this in the New Testament. You can gain the whole world and lose your own soul and you've gained nothing. Is this how our life is? One commentator said like this, David valued the covenantial love above survival itself.
He is literally saying, God, I need you in my life. And if this life on earth perishes, but I have you, nothing else matters. I don't want the blessings from you. I don't want the goodness from you. I don't want to be the king of this nation. I just want you.
This is what I consider a mature worship life.
Dependence on God's Satisfaction
When we are delighting so much in who he is that our world depends on who he is. Number two, we depend on his satisfaction. Look at what he says. He satisfied me with rich food.
David is physically in the wilderness. He has been chased by people who are trying to kill him. He is likely hungry. He is likely exhausted. And yet he says this, my soul is satisfied in you. The satisfaction is not found in the circumstances that he's in.
He could have said, God, I'm not satisfied because look at what you've done. You've called me to be king. You've called me to be the ruler of this nation. And now these people are chasing after me to kill me. How can I be satisfied?
And yet he said, my satisfaction is in you because I have communion with you, my God. Many people, me included, are overly physically fed.
I eat a lot. And oftentimes, because we are so physically nourished, we are spiritually starving ourselves. And I want to challenge us. Have we got so much entertainment?
Have we got so much things in our life that we are beginning to be so little satisfied with who God is and who God has called us to be? I heard this illustration this week.
I'm going to divert my notes just a minute. I heard this illustration this week, and it was this. If you were to imagine going back in time about 70 years ago, go back 70 years, and you go and you transport a group of people from 2026 to 70 years ago, 2056 or whatever.
Mim was like in her prime then. And so you transport them back then, and you put them in a football game. And all of a sudden, the football game is going.
The first half is going. Everyone's cheering. Everyone's excited. Everyone's doing great. And then this marching band came out on the field.
The people in the stands would be like, hey, I paid to come to the game, and now I get an additional bonus of the marching band. I get entertainment too.
And they would have all sat there, and no one would have left because that would have been entertained. Now, if you go down to 2026, and you go to a normal football game,
people that don't even care about anything, they don't have to go to the bathroom. They're not hungry. They get up, and they leave during the marching band because it's not entertaining to them. They can go to TikTok.
They can go to Facebook. They can go to YouTube. They can watch all the videos. They can hear the songs on their phone.
The band's playing, and it's not entertainment to them because it has become this side note that we add on. I fear in our modern-day church era, we say,
I come to church, and it's not entertaining because I'm getting entertained everywhere else. God, I'm just coming for the motions, and it's sort of just an add-on for me to come to church.
Where we've got to get to the point where worship becomes so spontaneous that it says here that he turned in worship to his mouth and praised him with joyful lips. He said, I get to worship the Lord today.
Not I should worship the Lord because my mom told me I should be in church on Sunday morning. No, I get to come before God. I get to worship him for who he is, and it doesn't matter the situations I'm going through. It doesn't matter the circumstances I'm going through.
I'm not trying to minimize your circumstances or minimize what you're going through. I'm just coming to tell us that we have an opportunity to worship the Lord, and I want you to imagine a newborn babe in Christ, someone who just comes to know the Lord. How excited they are about Jesus.
How awesome they are to learn about who this man is that came to die for them.
And all of a sudden, as we go through our life, as we go through the understanding of who God is, we get to the point where we lose the wonder of who God is. Yeah, I know the story about David and Goliath. Listen, Pastor James, I've heard these stories before.
And we lose the wonder and the awe of who God is, and God is looking out from heaven, and he's saying, look, I'm here, and I want to have a relationship with you.
Desire for God in Trials
I want you to come and renew that love that you have with me. And it's just become routine for us to come and to know who God is. Number three, our desire for God, verses six through eight.
This is the heart of the psalm in these three verses, because the desire for God becomes greater than the desire for his gifts. I wrote this statement before we went to camp.
And one of the statements in camp was, are we more longing for the bread of God versus the bakery of who God is? And all of a sudden, we as modern day Christians are saying, God, what can you provide for me?
When you provide these X, Y, Z for me, then I'll come and I'll worship you. And God is telling us, no, no, no, don't look at the gifts that the baker gives. Look towards the baker.
Look toward the one who wants to give us these great things. And this is what David is saying. I would rather have the God of the universe than the blessings that God gives me. I don't need any of these things. I just need you, God.
His desire is so closely aligned with who God is that he would rather be with him.
And look at how he does this. He pursues God in private. He starts by saying, when I think of you as I lie in my bed. I think one of the truest gifts of tests of how our devotion is, is what happens when public worship is taken away.
When public worship is taken away, when we're not assembling as the gathered church on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday night for a Bible study, when it's Thursday afternoon, when it's Thursday night, when you don't have anyone to talk to, when no one is
watching us, what is occupying your thoughts? Where is our mind going? Who are we going to?
And really, here's a good way to ask yourself, what does your mind naturally drift to? What does your mind naturally drift to have to go to?
And all of a sudden, when we look at David as he's writing these things down, he says, my mind naturally runs to you any quiet moment that I have.
When I'm sitting there outside walking around or doing something around my house, it's not thinking about all the things that I have to do, even though those things are good. It's, God, what can I do in glorifying you today? How can I run to you?
When you lay down in bed and you're trying to figure out what you're going to do tomorrow, it's, God, I just want to think about you today. God, I just want to think about who you are when I am in private and how I can run toward you.
So he pursues God in private. He remembers God's presence. Look at what he says here. I meditate on you during the night watches.
When those nighttime comes, he's beginning to meditate and to think back on who God's character is. I wrote it down like this. The word meditate means to ponder, to mutter, or to think deeply upon who God is.
Instead of replaying all the fears and all the horrible things that can or even happen that day,
begin to say, God, I just want to trust in your faithfulness. I want to think about how you were faithful in the little things that you provided for me, in the little things that you began to go through in my life. Many of us have become professional warriors.
My wife is one of these. She worries about every little thing. And I'm glad that she does that.
It compliments me because I don't worry about anything. Like I just wake up.
I throw on some clothes. I don't care if they match. I don't care if they look right. I don't care if they're wrinkled. I throw them on and I go and I come home and she's like, honey, did you wear that today? Yeah. Why?
Well, you shouldn't have walked out the house like that. She worries about those things. She cares about those things where I am the opposite side of this. I don't worry about anything.
And oftentimes, this is what I think. We have become so professionalized in our worrying and our caring about every little thing that we no longer are professional rememberers. Because we worry so much.
God is calling us through this psalm to say, remember the faithfulness of who God is. Remember the faithfulness of what he's done for us.
And keep reminding yourself who God is and what he has proven to be done to you over and over again. And then number three here, he clings to the person of who God is. He said, I follow close to you. This phrase, following close, literally carries the idea of clinging or sticking tightly.
Now, I want to illustrate it like this. Allison was leading and sometimes she gets to lead different classes in Bible school. And she told me, she said, James, this year, I think I want to just lead like the kindergarten, first grade, Hudson's class. We're going to walk around.
And if you know anything about a kindergarten and first grader, what you tell them, they literally do. Like there is no abstract thought in their mind.
And she told them because she had a couple of them that they would be walking from station to station and they would just drift and they would wander and they would go do their own thing.
And she told them, when we're going somewhere, you've got to stay close to me. And she's, I don't remember who it was. It was one of the groups. She said, one of the kids, when she said that was like glued to her hip.
If they, she's like, I'm trying to go to the bathroom by myself and they're stuck to my hip. They literally took this thought of, you've got to stay close to me. Like every single step, everything.
Like, can I just sit down over here? No, no. We've got to pull the chair over, sit right beside you. Because you, Miss Allison, you told me I've got to be close to you to stay tight to you. And this is the idea that David is literally saying here.
Attach yourself to God. Know who he is and be close to him. A.W. Tozer wrote it like this.
Many Christians want the kingdom benefits, but would rather distance themselves from the king himself.
David wanted the king. David didn't care that he was king. And he said, I want to remove everything that you've given me so that I can be closer to who you are. Are we clinging to God as the person? Very quickly, number four, our experiences shape our view of who God is.
I want to bring it home practically and apply it to our life. When we go through things in life, it models and molds who God is in our life. It begins to shape us in every way of our life. The wilderness did not make David doubt who God was.
The wilderness deepened David's faith in who God was. He deepened his confidence in who God was because all of a sudden he's going through a wilderness experience and he's saying, God, I don't care about the things you've given me.
I just need you. Like I'm thirsty right now. I know I'm thirsty, but I would rather have water from you than water from a physical source here. God, I know I'm hungry. I've been multiple days without food.
I don't care about the lion over here. I don't care about the dead wolf over here. I just care about getting something from you today because you are the bread of life.
Trials in our life become lenses through which we either distort God or draw us closer to discover who he is.
The trials in our life we look at and we say, God, why are you doing this to me? And God's sitting back saying, because I love you. I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this so that you will go closer to me. I'm doing this so that you can see this relationship.
And I'm doing this because I know that you're going to bring you closer to me if you come through this trial.
Lessons from Trials
And all of a sudden we begin to ask ourselves what trials do in our life. The first is this. Trials reveal God's protection.
Look at what it says. Those who intend to destroy my life will go into the depths of the earth. David sees that God is sovereignly protecting him because David was promised to be the king.
And David knew he was going to be the king. He saw these enemies that were coming against him. He said they look strong. They look fierce. But God, you're stronger than them.
God, don't let me get my eyes on my enemies. Don't let my eyes be focused on these problems. Allow me to be focused on you, the God who created everything. The God who created all things in this world.
And you are ordaining everything that I go through for your honor and for your good. If I would just simply trust in who you are.
Remember, the wilderness taught him that God was the defender of his life. Trials reinforce God's promises. The king will rejoice in God.
Notice David is calling himself king. I believe this is before he ever became a king. Before he ever sits on the throne. God's promises are more certain than any present circumstance we can go through. I want to read a quote by Warren Risby that is phenomenal. He said this,
faith learns to interpret circumstances through God's promises rather interpreting God's promises through our circumstances. I'm going to say that again. Faith learns to interpret circumstances through God's promises.
God, I'm going through these things. You promised me I'm going to be here. So therefore, these circumstances are making me who you want me to be. Rather than saying, God, you promised me this. Why am I going through the circumstance? God, I'm trusting that you are the maker of all things.
And you're reinforcing what you have done in and through me through your promises. And trials refine God's people.
Everyone who swears by him will boast. The wilderness for David became a classroom. David learned dependence upon God.
He learned how to trust in God. He learned how to worship God. He learned how to be content in who God was. And this desert wilderness that David was in became a discipleship classroom for him to deepen his walk with the Lord.
Oftentimes, we must be like the metal that the blacksmith puts into the fire.
Not to weaken it, but to make it stronger, to make it better, to add other things to it, to strengthen it, to make it sharper. And we sometimes must go through that same fire to develop us to be more like God. As Terry comes, I want to say some closing thoughts here.
Psalm 63 teaches us who we are truly thirsting for.
And as we begin to go through our life, the question is not this. Are you in a wilderness?
I believe that every single one of us in here would say, Pastor James, at some point in my life, I've either been in a wilderness, I'm going into a wilderness right now, I just came out of the wilderness, or eventually you're going to go back into a wilderness. It's going to happen.
We're going to go through difficult times. We live in a fallen world. We live in a sin-cursed world where we are going to experience things that we should not experience.
I tell people all the time, I've experienced so much death and so many funerals, and I never become numb to a funeral. Every single time it's like, this doesn't feel right. This is not how life is supposed to end.
Because deep inside, we were created to live forever. And death was never part of that plan.
And God says that sometimes we've got to go through that wilderness, and through that difficult time to mold us and to make us more like Him. The question is this, not God, why are you sending me through this wilderness? The question is this, what am I thirsty for while I'm in the wilderness?
Am I just looking for the end? Am I just saying, God, when am I going to get through this wilderness? When am I going to get through this trial? When am I going to be done with this process that I'm going through? Or are you saying, God, refine me?
Make me like you in this wilderness? I just want to be closer to you so that when I go through this wilderness, as 2 Corinthians chapter 1 says, we all go through trials so that we can help other people in their trials.
Lord, allow me to go through this trial so that I can help someone else.
Lord, allow me to be able to go through this process that I don't understand why, so that one day I can help that person. I told Allison this past week, and I told her this 15 years ago when we were dating.
I said, I remember walking into chapel, and I remember walking in and sitting down, and she was bawling her eyes out. It was like 18 years ago.
And I said, Allison, what's going on? And she said, my dad just found out that his wife's leaving him.
It's his fourth wife. And she said, I don't understand why. He just had his, another, her younger brother's 18 years younger than her. She said, he just had his firstborn son,
and he walked home after spending $400 on groceries, and everything in the house was gone.
There wasn't a couch left. There wasn't a grocery left. There was one pack of Oreos that she left in the cabinet for him. She took the kids. She took everything. And I said, Allison, I don't know why you're going through this.
I don't know why your dad's going through this, but I promise you there will be a day where you're going to go, and you're going to see a teenage girl that's going through the exact same trial, and you're going to say, I know what you're feeling. I know what you've been through.
I've been there. And I said, God promises us in 2 Corinthians that we are going through a trial or tribulation,
not only for our good, but for others that are around us, so we can comfort those that are around us. And I said, one day you're going to be in this situation where you're going to be able to help that young girl out in a way that I can't.
And I have seen it time and time again, young person after young person,
older person after older person, where she has been able to take that story, and I could go on for story and story and story, of times in my life and times in our life as a marriage where God has done things where we say, God, why are you doing this?
And God looks down and he says, not with an audible voice, but he looks down and says, I'm just trying to divert your eyes back to me.
So that when you get through this wilderness, I'm going to bring you through it, you're going to be able to turn the glory back to me. You're going to be able to reflect the glory that God has given us.
Are we asking ourselves to deepen our desire in who God is so that we can be in a proper place of worship, so that we can look at God and we can say, God, I want to have a
Closing Prayer and Reflection
heart that thirsts after you and you only. This is why David was said to be a man after God's own heart. Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. Lord, I am so grateful for who you are.
I'm so grateful for the benefits that you've given us, but Lord, I'm so much more grateful for our eyes that can be fixed on you, as it says in Hebrews, looking to you, our author and our finisher of our faith.
Lord, the one that started a good thing in us, you've promised us that you will see it to completion, whether in this life or the next.
And I pray, God, that we would be a people in here this morning that fall on our faces and say, God, allow me to see you more clearly than I've ever seen you before.
Allow us to have families in here this morning that see you more clearly, that have a heart for you more deeply and more desirable for you,
that we would love and honor and cherish you. Lord, we love you. In your name we pray. Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Clothin' Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week.
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