Series: As For Me and My House

David Stockton

We’re gong to be in Psalm chapter 42, if you want to turn there. We are going, as a church, into January fasting season. For the last ten years we’ve kicked off our year with a season of fasting. Not because we hate ourselves or we’re some sort of weird-o’s. But we really believed it’s cultivated some good things in us.

So what we’re going to do going into this next year, is we’re going to focus the whole month of January, I’m kind of giving some vision and perspective for it today. But then next Sunday we’re going to start 21 days of a fasting season. So, for sure, what we want everybody to do is join us on Sundays. And I’m going to be helping us get a real vision for the righteousness of God, and kind of what God’s been putting on my heart.

We’ve got these booklets that are going to guide us. You can pick one up on the way out today. Twenty-one days of just kind of some thoughts broken up into three sections. The messages for the next three weeks, I’m going to start with January 10, talking about, “As for me and my house, we will cultivate gratitude.” We’re going to try to cultivate gratitude as we go forward. We have some biblical backing for that, why we would pick that.

The next thing will be, “As for me and my house, we’re going to consecrate ourselves this year.” So we’re going to talk about what it means to consecrate ourselves in the bliblical perspective and narrative, as well as hopefully bring in some application to today.

And the third thing we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Again, biblical backing for that and what that could mean for us going forward, so that we can kind of start off with some sure footing on some solid ground as we go into the rest of the year.

In addition to the Sunday mornings, on Wednesday nights we’re going to be gathering everyone in person who is healthy and comfortable with that. We’re going to be broadcasting over a livestream for some prayer nights. So, on Wednesday, we’re asking everyone who’s a part of Living Streams’ family—it’s probably the worst way to start out the year if you’re trying to grow a church, but we’re trying to grow the church, not necessarily grow a church—we’re going to start off, Wednesdays we’re going to ask everybody to fast from food all day and then join us here on Wednesday nights. We’re going to have some soup at 6:00 and at 7:00 we’re going to have a prayer time. We’re going to pray further into each of these things that we’re discussing. It should be a good time.

So, Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, no eating on Wednesdays, if you want to do that, if you’re able to do that. If not, talk to me and we can figure some things out. But also, as you’ll see at the end of this message, for those twenty-one days, we’re asking you to think about some other things that you could adapt into your life that would be considered some sort of fasting or whatever, as we go forward, so we can cultivate a hunger for God. That’s our goal through all of this, to become hungry for God.

So what are you hungry for in 2021? It’s not third service, so it shouldn’t be food quite yet. What are you hungry for in 2021? A new job because you lost your job? Are you hungry for some healing or a vaccination? Are you hungry for some Acai bowls? Because I’ve been eating those lately. Those are good. They’re like forty dollars a pop, but they are delicious and you feel so good.

Are you hungry for some pad Thai? Anybody seen that new Postmates commercial … besides me? It’s like some elderly living community commercial but then they’re just joking. They’re like, “Wouldn’t you like to come and live here and have some Pad Thai?” And they just kind of subliminally put …. It’s hilarious. I love pad Thai too. Or how about nacho fries? Come on, you’ve seen that one. Yeah? You craving those nacho fries?

Or maybe it’s better to frame this, what are you longing for after 2020? Maybe you’re not even ready to really think about what you want 2021, but what are you longing for? Maybe it’s some good news, some safety, security, some peace, release of the tension, maybe some stock in toilet paper or something like that. Or, as you’re considering your appetites, your longings, your desires going into this new year, do you have desires you wish would go away? That would quit bothering you? Enslaving you? Desires that you’re ashamed of?

Would you say that your appetites at this point are in control? Or out of control? What we’re going to do is talk about longings, appetites, desires, as we go into this new year.

There’s a guy, Ronald Rolheiser, who wrote a book about longing. He’s says:

“There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul.”

He’s basically talking about there’s something within us, and whether it’s our sinful nature, whether it’s just the reality that we’re not made for this world, whatever it might be, the Bible kind of speaks to different realities to it. He says the desire is there and it’s strong.

… Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire.

It’s an answer. It’s a guide to how to navigate the reality of this desire or the desires within us.

“What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain…”

When they go unsatisfied for too long…

"…and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality." – Ronald Rolheiser

That really is the sum total of how we’re getting along in the world. Ultimately the Bible makes it very clear that God has put some sort of longing, he’s put eternity in our hearts. So there is always this longing that ultimately can only be satisfied by him. No matter how hard we try in this world, we will never be satisfied, because, ultimately, God is trying to draw us back to himself.

James chapter 4. James, who’s kind of the big jerk of the Bible. I shouldn’t really say that but it’s funny because he’s really intense. James chapter 4 says this about desires:

1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.

James is just saying all of the tension in the world is because you have these desires that are being unmet and you just take it out on everybody else. Desires are a big deal in our lives. They’re driving forces. Our appetites really do add up to what our life does, or what our life is. It’s important for us to talk about these.

Psalm 42 (ESV) , this is what I want us to kind of take away. This picture of the writer of Psalms here, and as he’s writing this Psalm, this is what’s in his soul. This is what he’s speaking out. This is what he’s singing out.

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
    so pants my soul for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God,
    for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?[b]
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
    “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember,
    as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
    and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
    a multitude keeping festival.

This writer is basically describing how he’s so hungry for God. He pictures it as a deer who’s thirsty and is trying to find water. He’s thirsty for God. He’s longing for God. And where does this longing come from? It’s coming from hard times. Tears have been his food day and night. He’s fasting. Maybe because he doesn’t have food. Maybe because he’s so unsatisfied by food. Maybe he’s so troubled he can’t even eat. But what it has cultivated in him is this longing for God.

The people around him are saying, “Where is your God?” He’s going through hard times. And then, it’s interesting, after coming out of 2020, he says,

“how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God”

There are many among us, those online especially, who used to, in these times of uncertainty or trouble, they used to come to this place to come be with then people of God, to come be in a place where the praises of God are sung. And they’ve been deprived of that for whatever reason, because of health concerns or health concerns of people they love. And yet, they find themself in this trying time. My hope is that they are hungry for God, hungrier than ever for God.

And then, if you’re not feeling hungry for God, if that’s not the first thing that comes to mind when I ask what you are hungry for; I like this from a guy named Meister Eckhart. He said:

The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love; …

It’s good and right. We need to cultivate this longing.

…but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God. – Mesiter Eckhart

That’s a relief right there, huh? I love that because I don’t know if I can say that right now I’m longing, hungering for God like I want to, or like the Psalmist is describing. But I love that he says, “it’s okay, it’s okay, child, to long for the longing is a good start.” That’s what I really hope happens as we go through this month. I want us to at least get to a place where we are longing for the longing. We are hungering to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Because I think that’s a prayer that God would love to answer. That’s a promise given to us in the Beatitudes. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled.

Hungering and thirsting for righteousness and we will be filled. God loves to fill the hungry with every good thing. So it’s important for us to allow that hunger to be there, and actually to cultivate that hunger, but make sure it’s pointed in the right direction.

A picture in my mind is the garden. Where God said to Adam, “You can eat of all the trees,” but there were two special trees in the garden. Two special trees, right? There were all the trees that were good for food. And they could eat of all of them except for one. The two special trees were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The one tree they were not supposed to eat from: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But every other tree they were allowed to eat from.

And the picture in my mind is of Adam and Eve, they had access to the tree of life. They could eat from the tree of life, the sustenance, the life of God. But if all they ever did was eat of the other trees, they would have been missing out on the tree of life. And we have before us in our world—God has given us so many wonderful things to enjoy. But if we forget to really enjoy him, we’re really missing out. Really missing out.

A picture that I always go to about this kind of longing for God, a place I want so badly for my own soul; I talk about this story a lot. So if you’re sick of it—sorry, it’s in the Bible. But it’s Moses on that mountain in Exodus 33. He has gone through life where, at first he was hungry for the full authority and power of the Egyptian empire, right? He was raised that way. But then, at some point, he had this desire, this longing, this conviction of some sort, rise up within him to see his people not be oppressed or abused. It even got him to a point, where James says, he killed a man, literally.

After that, he was hungry to get away from it all because now he felt guilty. So he ran to the land of Midian just to kind of forget it all, to get away from it all, to start over, to not be known, to hide, to be at peace, hopefully. But then he met this burning bush, and the burning bush began to talk to him about his own deep challenges and problems and past and longings. Now he had this longing to set God’s people free and lead them to the Promised Land. That was the desire that was ignited in him.

And he brought them out of Egypt. He brought them across the Red Sea. Now they’re camped around this mountain called Sinai. And he’s called up into the mountain, and he goes up there. For forty days and forty nights, he’s got no food or water that we know of, yet he is completely sustained by the presence of God.

Then, in Exodus 33, Moses says something so interesting. He says, “God, don’t send us to the Promised Land if you won’t go with us.” A big shift happened in his heart. No longer was he hungry for the Promised Land, although that still might have been there, he was now more hungry for the presence of God. He had realized that the presence of God was everything. Whether he would have to go back to Egypt, stay in the wilderness, or go to the Promised Land, he didn’t care, as long as he could be with God’s presence. That’s what he truly longed for.

And that’s our goal. To find that place where we are longing for God’s presence, satisfied with God’s presence so it doesn’t really matter what place we find ourselves in. Again, if that’s challenging and you’re like, “Oh, no!” Go back to Mesiter Eckhart. It’s okay to just long for this. It’s a good place to start.

Ultimately, that’s what the Bible teaches us. That our primary existence, everything that we have is ultimately so that we can know God. The reason you have a brain inside your head is not so that you can make a lot of money. It’s so that you can know God. The reason that you have emotions and a heart and a soul and all of these things is not so that you can feel good all the time. It’s so that you can feel what God feels. The reason that you have a voice is not so you can tell everybody else what to do or get a lot of followers. It’s so that you can communicate with God what’s in your heart, and sing his praises and tell others about him.

I’m not saying that we need to become some sort of weird, stoic people that never smile ever again. God made all the trees for our enjoyment. We can enjoy all the things in life. That’s great. No problem. But it has to be subsequent, it has to be submitted to, it has to be prioritized underneath knowing God. Like the Westminster catechism says, “The chief end of mankind is to know him and enjoy him forever.” Ultimately, that’s what worship is. It’s enjoying God. Just taking time to enjoy God, however you do that. That’s what worship is. Finding his presence and enjoying his presence, and letting your longings get back in line like his.

Now that we’ve talked about this need to cultivate a hunger for God; and we’ve talked a little about our plan going forward, how we’re going to do this practically as a church, I want to talk about a couple of things for us to think about practically that could maybe help us in the process. And I say ‘maybe’ on purpose; because God is not a genie. You can’t just rub the lamp and get what you want. But there are practices within the scriptures and with church history that help us get into the places where we can see the grace of God revealed. If that makes sense. So God’s the one that gets to decide what kind of hunger is best for you to have. But there are certain things that can get us in the place where we can find ourselves hungry for God.

So there are three things I want to talk about. The first is: We need to limit our intake of junk food. Limit the junk food. You can all hear your mom right now, saying, “Don’t eat that. You’ll spoil your dinner.” Right? It’s just this common, simple thing that, if we want to be hungry for the good food, we’ve got to make sure we’re not nibbling all the time at the junk food.

The second thing is: We need to eliminate hurry from our lives. We’ll unpack that a little bit.

Then another thing that is important for us to do is to spend time with the hungry. That can go a couple of different ways. We’ll talk about that.

First. Limit the junk food. Yeah. This is not fun. My kids hate it when I limit their junk food. Yet, this world is so full of junk food. It’s just that same picture of all those trees. Adam and Eve could have been satisfied by all the other trees and never eaten of the tree of life. And here in our world, God has given us so many good things, so many things to enjoy. Each other. Cardinals (sometimes). Maybe. I don’t know. Basketball. It’s given to us to enjoy. Nacho fries. Acai bowls. There are so many things that we can enjoy. And all those things are good and right. It’s good to enjoy those things. But we’ve got to make sure that we don’t get so satisfied with all of those things that we never have any hunger for the real things.

John Piper tells it like it is sometimes. He says this in a book called A Hunger for God:

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It’s not the x-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality that we drink in every night. … The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.
–John Piper, A Hunger for God

Amen? Amen? It’s hitting home. You can admit it. I’m admitting it. In the world that we’ve created as Americans too, the convenience of all of these pleasures, our ability and our voracious, consumeristic idolatry is absolutely unfathomable to generations before us. Prime now! Not Prime three days from now. Remember that? How horrible that was? You had to wait three days for something. Prime now. It is unbelievable how consumeristic we are. And yet, we’re made to enjoy things. Absolutely. And that’s fine. But we can find ourselves so satisfied our counterfeitly satisfied by the things of this earth, that we are never really hungry for God.

The way John puts it in 1 John 2, he says:

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Now again, this can go a couple of different ways. But, basically, he’s connecting, if we love the world we’ve lost the love of God. That means we’re not receiving the love of God, the love of God is not cultivating a hunger for the love of God, the love of God is not in us cultivating a love for others. And the people around us, when they come hungry for the love of God, we don’t have anything to offer them, if we find ourselves endlessly nibbling at the table of the world. So we’ve got to check those things.

My hope and prayer is that, at least as we get out of January, we’ll know some of the idols that we have picked up. Not whether or not you have idols that have stuck in you. But you’ll know how to name the ones that you have. Because it’s so easy for us to let things in this world get a grip on us. Like Mario Kart on Switch. Love it. Trying not to love it so much.

So that’s the first thing. Limiting the junk food. The second thing, we’ve got to eliminate hurry. You are too busy. Who am I talking to? All of you! All of you. I’m talking to every single one of you. You’re American. If you’re not American, you’re still too busy. I don’t know. We’re just busy. We’re way too busy. We’ve got to slow down.

The tyranny of the urgent. You guys have probably seen this. We’ve got a little graph to help. But basically it’s real simple. It’s the concept that we find ourselves filling all of our time answering what is urgent and not what is important. Basically this is the ding on the phone, the incessant emails in your inbox. It’s all of the things that are constantly clamoring for your attention that are urgent, but aren’t meaningful, aren’t important. Yet we find ourselves constantly there, trying to check the emails and never getting to the things that we really need to do—the important things. And our world is full of this. Our world is trying to get our attention and is so good at it, better maybe than ever before with the access that we’re given to it. And we forget times for what’s important.

I’ve had to get to a time in my life where, literally, I schedule every week my times with God. My times to study and get ready for Sunday. I’ve blocked them in. When people say, “Hey, can we meet at this time?” I’m like, “Uh, I have an appointment.” I’m not lying, but I am. I have a meeting scheduled in there that cannot change. It’s locked. I’m meeting with God. And that’s fun to do. Because then they’re like, “Well, who are you meeting with?” If they feel like I’m being a little fishy. I’m like, “I’m meeting with God.” Then they’re like, “Oh.” And then everybody’s mad at each other and there’s ore emails and things like that.

But no. We’ve got to get to what’s important. And if you are not intentional and violent with the urgent, you will never get to the important. I think there should be a lot more amens going on right now. If I’m missing it, that’s one thing. But if I’m hitting it, throw out an amen because it’s hitting me big time. We’ve got to slow down.

John Ortberg wrote a book called Eternity is Now in Session and he kind of popularized this idea from Dallas Willard, who then John Mark Comer wrote a book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, but I love it. This is so important for us. It’s basically this conversation that John Ortberg had with Dallas Willard. He was stressed out. He was wound up. He couldn’t get straight. He was hungry for God but he was feeling no hunger at all. He said to Dallas Willard, “What do I do?” And Dallas Willard thought for a minute and he said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” He was like, “Okay, what else? What else? How do I get hungry for God? How do I grow and development in my spiritual formation?” Dallas Willard thought again and said, “That’s it. Just ruthlessly eliminate hurry,” and walked away. John Ortberg was like, “What? What?” But then he started thinking about it.

Really, the biggest obstacle to our spiritual formation, the biggest obstacle to our longing for God is that we’re too busy. It’s funny because we as Christians, or we as Americans, are like, “All right. I need to long for God. The pastor guy said, ‘long for God,’ so I’m going to long for God. So I’m just going to add that to the list of all the other things I’m doing. I’m going to jam a little longing for God in there.” It’s like, open up the closet and “Where am I going to put this longing for God. There’s a hole. Boom. Jam it in there.” And we can’t figure out why we never long for God. We’ve got to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives.

Remember what Jesus did? It says, often he withdrew to a quiet place. Jesus was someone who was hungry for God. In fact, the night before he went to the cross, he went away to a quiet place to pray and to cultivate a hunger for God. It was so strong that, even there in all of his agony on the cross, what did he cry out? “I thirst!” He wasn’t thirsty for the vinegar sponge that they offered him. No one’s ever thirsty for that. He was thirsty to do the will of God and complete the job that God had given him. He was thirsty to do what his Father wanted him to do.

We’ve got to find ways to stop, to be still. God has promised us he will speak to us in a whisper. And the only way he could get our attention is if he screamed and freaked out. But he promised us he won’t do that. He’s going to keep speaking to you in a whisper until you finally quiet yourself enough to hear what he has to say. This is our opportunity to ruthlessly eliminate that hurry and find a hunger for God welling up inside of us.

The last thing is to spend time with the hungry. Again, this can go two ways. You could find people who are hungry for God and go spend time with them. Tell them what your secret is and they’ll say, “Eliminate the junk food. Ruthlessly eliminate hurry.” And you’re going to think, Man that pastor guy’s always saying that. I don’t know what they’re going to say. But you can spend time with them. That’s something that can happen.

The disciples spent time with Jesus. We just described it. He was hungry for the will of God. He hungered and thirsted for righteousness, and his disciples were totally consumed with that hunger. They did not look at the world at all in the same way. They were not satisfied by fishing anymore. And the other things they did. They were satisfied by God and his presence and doing the will of the One that had sent them into the world.

For me, there’s this guy, Jim Wright, who I remember, right after high school I had a lot of different ambitions and hungers, and he was this guy that took me to Mexico on a mission trip and then signed me up for this school of ministry. I just remember him as someone that was hungry for God. He was kind of goofy, but when it came to the things of the Lord, he was so intense. He was so resolute and focused and hungry for God. It just compelled me to be hungry for God.

Another way that this can go is spending time who are hungry for God, but then, honestly, just spending time with people who are hungry. When you engage in society’s pain, when you go and sit with someone who’s in pain, what happens is you find yourself wanting to cry out to God more than you ever did before. After spending time with all those people, those kids in Belize, and seeing what their pain was, and what they were going through, my prayers changed drastically from what I was praying before. It became a lot less selfish prayers.

When you’re with people who are hurting, people who are struggling, people who are hungry, there becomes a desperation for God to move. It takes you to the Beatitudes, right? Jesus said basically you’re in the right place, you’re ready for what the Lord has for you if you’re poor in spirit or you’re with the people who are poor in spirit. If you’re standing with the people who are mourning or persecuted or meek; or if you’re with those who are hungry or thirsting for righteousness because they’ve experienced so much injustice or unrighteousness in their life, then you’ll find yourselves hungering. And the promise of the Lord is, if you’re hungry for righteousness, he’s going to get you filled. It’s a prayer the Lord loves to answer. So, by spending time in those places, we can cultivate that hunger, as well.

I want to just kind of go through some things, a little bit of practical stuff now, so if you’ve got a pen and paper you can write this down and pray about these later, that’s fine. As we go into this 21 days—you can start now or you can start next Sunday, either way—I want us to kind of think through, under each of these categories, here are some practical ideas of things that maybe you could apply, in addition to your Sunday mornings and your Wednesday food fasts and all of those things, here are some things that you could do.

Limit the junk food intake of your life.

You could think about your social media, your apps, your games, etc. You could think about your news intake. You could think about tv, Netflix, Prime, Hulu, videos.
You could think about your friend group. Maybe there’s a group of friends that you’re spending time with and it’s just junk food all the way.
Maybe there’s a boyfriend or a girlfriend that’s total junk food for you. Now I’m going to get email. “Hey my girlfriend broke up with me because you told her to.” I’ll be like, “Well, quit being junk food, man.” I am trying to get more mercy this year. That’s one of the things the Lord’s been trying to do in my heart. So I’ll try to be more merciful. But don’t be junk food.
Music. The music we listen to really does have a big impact on us, whether you listen to the words or not. Whatever.

Eliminating hurry.

You could dedicate your lunch hour to quiet yourself before the Lord.
You could quit your job. I mean, it might be the problem. You’re losing your soul and you know it. Quit it. Or at least quit the extra hours you’re working at your job, thinking you’re getting ahead.
Dedicate an hour before bed to be still before the Lord. And try and stay awake.
Dedicate all drive time. When you’re in the car driving maybe that’s the time you just say, “All right This is all your time now, Lord. I’m just going to be silent before you.” Find ways to eliminate hurry from your life.

Spend time with the hungry.

Take someone who seems hungry for the Lord out to lunch. Not on Wednesdays, but some other day.
Volunteer with a ministry agency. We can get you connected. There are tons of great places. If you’re having trouble connecting with someone who’s in one of those places, we can find someone.
Spend some time with someone you know is hurting.
Serve in a soup kitchen.
Become friends with someone who is homeless.
Get involved with foster care. Those foster kids are so hungry for righteousness. Because it has not been their experience in a lot of those cases. And as you join your heart with theirs, you find yourself hungering for righteousness on their behalf, let alone your behalf.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, we thank you that you love us enough to forgive us, but you love us enough also to grow us, to move us forward, to shape us, to form us. And we just really ask that you would, Lord. I pray that this would become one of the hungriest churches in all the world. Hungry for you, Lord. And it would show up in our prayer lives, it would show up in our evangelistic endeavors, it would show up in the way that we treat our spouses and families, it would show up in our worship times, it would show up in our church times, it would show up in our life groups, it would show up everywhere, Lord. But we know that it’s you that can cultivate this hunger and we pray that you would. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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