When You Are Truly in Love Psalm 63:1-8

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1 When You Are Truly in Love Psalm 63:1-8 O God, I have tasted your goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want you; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me your glory, I pray, so that I may know you indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, Rise up in my love, my fair one, and come away. Then give me grace to rise and follow you up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of God When you are truly in love, you go to great lengths to be with the one you love. You ll drive for hours just to be with each other, even if only for a short while. You don t mind staying up late talking. Walking in the rain is romantic, not annoying. You willingly spend a fortune on the one you re crazy about. When you are apart it s miserable. She s all you think about; you jump at any chance to be with him. With that sense in mind, listen to today s text (read here). David wrote this while in the Judean wilderness trying to escape from Saul. Even today that area is a wilderness; dry much of the year, it s not easily habitable. You could quickly feel alone and deserted. But, David s situation didn t matter; he was totally in love with God. David longs for the One he is most in love with. John Piper, in his book God Is the Gospel, offers a probing question that essentially asks whether we are in love with God: The critical question for our generation and for every generation is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven if Christ were not there? When we are as in love with God as David was, we could never be satisfied in a heaven without Jesus. The sad thing in America today is that most people who claim Christianity claim it because of what they think they will get out of it after this life is over and not because they can 1

2 have or even want a relationship with God. So many people reason that Jesus died on the cross, to take away their sins and make it possible for them to go to heaven. But in truth, Jesus death atones for our sin and makes it possible for us not to go to hell. What s the difference? The first is focused on ourselves, making sure that we don t go to the place of fire and brimstone. The second is focused on God and our relationship with him. Hell is where God is not. Saving us from hell means that Jesus saved us for God. Jesus death paid the penalty for sin, which separated us from God, and makes it possible for us to again be in love with God. Is any one really in love when that person is simply out for what he can get out of the relationship? NO! That s not love; that s extortion. God s crazy demonstration of love for us was given so that we would know how much God loves us and how we can love God. When we are truly in love with God, then nothing else including whatever form heaven will take will really matter. All that matters is our love for God. When we claim Christianity only to get heaven, there is little joy or pleasure as a Christian, because we fail to realize that God loves us. So instead of being in love, we feel we have to either pay God back for all he s done (and so buy his love) or somehow keep making up for all our shortcomings and failures (and so prove our love). Can you imagine falling deeply in love with someone and spending your whole life trying to prove your love and buying their love? Now can you imagine constantly trying to prove love and buy love when the recipient is already crazy in love with you? That s what happens when your focus is on you. You never see that the love you crave is already yours. The same is true with God. So the solution isn t to try harder, fail, and then make bigger promises, only to fail again. We cannot will ourselves to love God more; this only results in a feeling of obligation. It becomes one of the many things we have to do, and results in us focusing even more on ourselves and not on the one we claim to be in love with. 2

3 So what is the solution? The solution is found in our need to let God help us love. Just as I need Debbi to help me love her and she needs me to help her love me, loving God is a both/and relationship. David recognized this in his relationship with God: Because you are my help my soul clings to you. For all the wonderful things David knew and experienced from God, that caused him to praise [God] as long as I will live, he knew that he needed God s help to love. We need God s help to love God. Jesus told the Laodicean church, who began crazy-in-love with Jesus but later turned lukewarm, that the way to a love relationship begins by simply opening the door. The Holy Spirit needs to be in residence if we are to nurture our love with God. Long distance relationships among people rarely work; with God it never works. God, as we discovered, must be number one, first in our lives. And when God is number one in our lives, a remarkable cycle begins to take place: our prayers for more love result in more love, which naturally causes us to want to be with God more, which results in more love. In fact, we have to stop loving and pursuing God in order to sin. I counsel couples to express their love to each other in verbal, tangible, and creative ways. The more in love we are with each other, the less we will be tempted to compromise our marriage. The same is true with our love of God. When we are truly loving God, the questions Am I doing this right? or Did I serve enough this week? become mute. The more we focus on Jesus, the more loving him becomes natural. It is when we stop actively loving God that we find ourselves easily tempted and attracted toward other people or things to find fulfillment. We are tempted and enticed to think that there is something or someone else who can offer us more than God. In the book of Malachi, God asks, What happened? I thought you loved me, but you don t show me anymore. You no longer give me even the tithes (Mal.3). Though often used at stewardship times, there is something 3

4 deeper going on. When you are truly in love, you will spend a fortune on the one you are crazy about. One sign of what your love quotient to God is can be gauged by how extravagant you give to God in tithes and offerings, time, worship, service in all areas of your life. If you are crazy in love with God you should want him to have all of you. So God challenges us in Malachi 3:10 on two fronts. When we are tempted to think that God can t offer us enough, start giving and see what God does. And when we think that we can t possibly love God enough to give, start loving and see how much God loves back. Go ahead, try to out give, out love God. Nothing has strengthened my faith or my love more than seeing God bless what I give back to him, what I surrender at his feet. If you really want to experience God s love for you, then give God more than you can manage, and see how he responds. When you are truly in love, you are willing to do whatever it takes. Most of the time it takes a willingness to be honest and truthful. Be willing to tell God that you need help loving him. Tell God you want to experience true satisfaction and joy in your relationship with him. Tell God you love him more than anything on earth. Tell him what you like about him, what you appreciate, what brings you joy. Then, as David said, your soul will cling to God, even as God s hand holds you. with A.W. Tozer you will declare: O God, I have tasted your goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want you; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me your glory, I pray, so that I may know you indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, Rise up in my love, my fair one, and come away. Then give me grace to rise and follow you up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of God 4

5 Prayer on screen for congregation to say together: Jesus, I need to give myself up. I am not strong enough to love you and walk with you on my own. I can t do it, and I need you. I need you deeply and desperately. I believe you are worth it, that you are better than anything else I could have in this life or the next. I want you. And when I don t, I want to want you. Be all in me. Take all of me. Have your way with me. Amen. Francis Chan 5