Still Hungry W/ Pastor Ericka

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I'm eager to jump right into the word of the Lord with you this morning, so let's pray. Father, we are not people that don't believe your word. We believe your word. And we believe that it is living and that it is active. And so it's not something that you gave to write down on notes, but it is living even now. You're breathing and speaking even now. So today my ask is simple. I just ask that you don't just inform our minds, but that you transform our hearts. Show us you. And by your spirit, I ask that you would teach us in this moment, in your presence, which is so thick and so rich right now, to hunger for you above all else. Simple thing we ask in your son's name. Amen. Have you ever noticed how patient the Holy Spirit is with you? How he has a way of bringing us back. Back to the same themes, back to the same scriptures, back to the same invitation, the same truth over and over again. You're almost like, I got it. Except he knows that we don't have it yet. I'm glad you're here, my brother Minus. Last Sunday, he pulled me over to the side and said, sing a little bit of that uh song. Uh take me, what was it? I I go to the rock. And brother Minus didn't know. He said, Sing, get up there, sing up real high. But he said, but what he didn't know, I realized this morning, he said, take it up. Yes. One of the things he didn't know and I didn't know is how I would need that song on my heart. So thank you for letting the Lord use you. I go to the rock of my salvation. When all of the world around me is sinking sand, the word says it's on Christ, the solid rock I stand. When I need a shelter, when I need a friend, I go to the rock. My sister Myrna Anderson helped me with the words in the moment because there's a little pressure with like sing, Pastor, and you can't remember the words. But I go to the rock. As I was preparing for this morning, this morning I stood and I thought, wow, there's another song. The Lord uses songs for me. I stood here. I can't remember how many times and sung turn your eyes upon Jesus. Turn your eyes on Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face and the things of earth, they will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. And I haven't sung that behind a pulpit so many times because it's my favorite song. I was trying to remember this morning where in the world was I when that song captured my heart. It's not because of any of those things, but it's because the Holy Spirit keeps bringing me back because he's not finished forming in me how to turn my face toward Jesus so the things of earth grow strangely dim quite yet. I imagine we all in this room, as I've been talking, you're thinking, what is that scripture? What is that song? What is that theme? How has the Holy Spirit done that with me? Earlier this year, I sensed the Lord inviting me, and I shared it a couple times already this year, to the simple practice, make space, he said, to sit with me. To sit with him, not to produce more, Erica, not to accomplish more, Erica, to sit with him. Sandy, I think you're out here. DeYoung told me last week, our new sister told me, would you just rest, Pastor Erica? All these voices that are echoing the message that the Lord is saying, just sit with me. And I noticed that whenever life begins to feel hurried for me or overwhelming, the Holy Spirit uses the beauty of community to ride remind me, Erica, just sit. Well, two weeks ago I opened up our service and I actually last week I said, the Lord greets us with, I am with you and you are never alone. I shared with you all that I went on a walk, and that was the thing, the Lord was doing it again, not through sit with me, but with this verse that I read so many times, and so short and so familiar, so much so that I won't even ask you to stand for its reading. It's one that I've read through so quickly, probably to get to the next one. It's a beatitude that Jesus spoke on the Sermon of the Mount. Hear these words from Jesus in Matthew. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. My eyes always went to the promise in this passage, for they will be filled. Because that's the part I want. That's the part that gives hope. But this time the Holy Spirit would not let me rush past the beginning. Blessed are those who hunger. And I was struck there for a few, I was stuck for a few days. Why would Jesus call hungry people blessed? Because hunger is usually something we're trying to get rid of. When we're hungry, we do what? We eat. When we're thirsty, we so the goal is satisfaction. But Jesus seems to say there is a hunger that is actually blessed. And I don't hear him saying here it that hunger itself is the goal, but I speculated if the hunger leads us to what truly fills us. And then once I saw it, I couldn't stop seeing it throughout scripture. In Psalm, David writes, Psalm 42, 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. And then a few Psalms later, he says, You, God, are my God. Earnestly I seek you. In fact, I thirst for you. In the Gospel of John, I saw it again. It's recorded that Jesus stands in the temple and he cries out, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Years later, I saw it where Paul writes, I want to know Christ. Do you hear a thread? Hunger, thirst, longing, desire. It says though Scripture and the Spirit bring God's people back constantly as we read to the same invitation. Hunger. And I realize that Scripture is not shy about speaking to us about hunger or longing. It actually assumes it. So the question is not whether we hunger, the question is where our hunger leads us. And I think that the invitation before us this morning is to allow a very simple beatitude to ask us, what am I hungry for? What am I hungry for? If Psalm 42 shows us what holy hunger looks like, I think Psalm 63 actually shows us where our hunger is often relieved or revealed. Listen again to David's words in Psalm 42. You, God, are my God. Earnestly I seek you, I thirst for you. My whole being longs for you. In a dry and parched land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary, and I've beheld your power and your glory because your love is better than life. My lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live. And in your name I will lift up my hands, for I will be, this is verse five, be sat fully satisfied, he says, as with the richest of foods, with singing lips, my mouth will praise you. Do you know where David was when he wrote these words? He was in the wilderness. He wasn't sitting comfortably in a palace. He was not writing after everything had already been worked out. He's writing from a place of uncertainty, from a place of waiting, a place that feels, he's saying, dry, a season of parched life. And yet, as he's writing, what he's writing, it doesn't come out as bitterness. It isn't resentment, it isn't despair, it's longing. The wilderness doesn't diminish his longing for God, it actually clarifies it. His first cry isn't, God, get me out of here. His cry is, God, I'm in it, and I want you. And I think that's what the wilderness does for us. It has a way of revealing what we have been trusting in. And not because God delights in our pain or delights in wilderness situations, but because the wilderness has a way of stripping away the illusion that anything other than God can ultimately sustain us. It's often the dry places, the disappointing places, the painful places, the waiting places that we discover what we've really been looking to for life. Where do we find life? Where do we look for peace? Where do we look for security? Where do we look to for comfort? Because we all run somewhere. Only to find that nothing can satisfy us, nothing can satisfy the deepest thirst of a human soul. Only God can. God, if I have you, even if I'm in the wilderness, you will fully satisfy me as if I'm satisfied by the richest of foods. Still in the wilderness, his satisfaction is rooted in the presence of God with him. I think that's one of the paradoxes of the Christian life that is often robbed of us. We can still be waiting and know peace. We can still be grieving and know hope. We can still have unanswered questions and know the steady presence of God. One of the terms I've heard and learned being among Madison is both can be true. Because our satisfaction is not dependent on everything around us. God wants us to see it's rooted in the one who never changes. So maybe that's why Jesus calls hungry people blessed. Because holy hunger isn't a sign that God has abandoned us. Sometimes it's the very place where we discover Christ is enough. David leaves us with an important question. If our deepest thirst can only be satisfied by God, then where do we go? And I briefly read John 7. It says, I'm gonna read a little bit more, on the last and greatest day of the festival, it says, Jesus answers this question. He stood and said in a loud voice, Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. And it says that Jesus doesn't whisper these words. Jesus stood and cried out with a loud voice, as though he doesn't want anyone to miss the invitation. If anyone is thirsty, anyone, not the people who have it all together, not the people who never struggle, not the people who have perfect faith. The only qualification Jesus gives us, are you thirsty? And I also notice what Jesus doesn't say. He doesn't say, Come to an explanation, come to certainty, come to all the answers you've been looking for. He simply says, Come to me. That's the invitation to receive Jesus himself. I've been thinking about this for the last two weeks. Because there have been moments when I've come before the Lord asking him to speak to me in details. As I shared with you on my walk, I'm like, Lord, I mean, I'm walking, Lord, I need you to speak to this and this and this. And you are the God of infinite wisdom and direction. And you said, in all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he will direct thy path. I'm seeking you, Lord. I need your direction. And he said to me, I said, Okay, God, okay, this is this is everything I want to hear from you now. Speak. And I'm walking on the trail. All right, speak. Okay, let me pray in tongues a little bit. Let me get this going. You know what he said to me? Simply, I shared it with you. I am with you. And you're never alone. I'm with you. And you're never alone. And I'll be honest. I wanted more. I wanted another sentence. I wanted another insight. You are my God. I'm coming to you. I want more explanation. Something to answer all the questions on my heart. But the more I walked, the longer my heart clung to those words. Last week, this week. And I realized they're not incomplete. They are enough. Not because they answered every question, but because they reminded me that whatever I was facing, I was not facing it alone. The Lord was not withholding something from me. He was giving me the greatest gift. He was giving me himself. And he had to withhold his words. Deb, thank you for the way you led us this morning. She led us in the scripture that says that there are times we pray and the Holy Spirit, He He um He intercedes with moans and groans that cannot be uttered. And as he read that, I thought about wow, how many times maybe does the Lord or the Spirit know that you don't really need words? So I'll intercede the words to the Father. I'll intercede with Jesus what you really mean, but sometimes you just need my presence. And I was thinking about when you're grieving, you don't need people's words. You just need their presence. And so the thing that I'm pressing on, the Lord is like, give me your words, give me the words. And Jesus is like, sometimes you don't have the words. You just need my presence. The Lord wasn't finished. I realized with this. He was simply comforting me in the moment. He was changing me. He was reshaping my desires to not need the answers, but to need him. And then that led me to another question. Oh, the questions. How does God do that? Because I can't wake up tomorrow morning and ignore what I desire. I can't easily lay down the things that burden me and simply decide to desire Christ more than what I don't have. I can't zap myself. I can't command my affections to ignore that. I can't manufacture a deeper love for Christ. Only grace can do that. But the Lord began helping me to see something: holy dissatisfaction and holy desire. And they're really two sides of the same coin. Holy dissatisfaction is that quiet work of the spirit that no longer lets us settle for lesser loves. Answers to my questions, solutions, are lesser loves. Holy desire, though, it is what the spirit is leading us toward, which is Christ. So even our holy dissatisfaction is the work of the Holy Spirit through grace. He's leading us from Satisfaction to right desire. Then that leaves another question. How does the Holy Spirit change our desires? I heard that chuckle in the back. Not by making us care less about our lives, but by reordering our loves. He cultivates holy desire as we spend time with him. I don't think the Lord was saying to me the last two weeks, those things that you're bringing before me don't matter. He knows they matter. He knows what keeps us up at night. He knows the diagnosis church. He knows the burdens that we're carrying, even for our children. He knows the marriages that we're praying for. He knows the uncertainty. He isn't minimizing those things. He's reordering them. He's saying, don't let what you're carrying become greater than the one who is carrying you. That's why the psalmist says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Notice the order taste, then you're going to want more. God never says, crave me first, and then I'll give you the desire and then I'll feed you. No, he says, come, taste, see. And I think again, this is what the Lord has been teaching me patiently. I don't need more answers more than I need him. We don't need more certainty more than we need him. We don't even need a life that is free from hardship and suffering more than we need him. We don't need less waiting, less wrestling, as much as we need Christ Himself. He's the one who sustains us through all of those things. This isn't just our story. I'm including you in my story. This is Paul's story. When I came back to Philippians 3, I realized something. Paul wasn't simply writing great theology, he was describing the deepest need and desire of his own heart. I wanted us to look at Philippians 3, 7 through 14, but I actually only see four verses or four phrases surface that I want us to look at when we look at what God is also teaching Paul. He says, Whatever were gains to me, I consider everything a loss. Pause, I'd leave, I'd lose everything. As we were worshiping, I was thinking, if I know this is a scripture, I know I'm supposed to know every scripture, but I don't. If if the mountains were to fall into the sea, if everything were to fall away, if I were to lose everything, I consider it, yes, a loss, but it's because Paul says of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Paul says, I want to know Christ. Not that I have already obtained all this, but I press on. Four phrases just lifted from that. But do you hear Paul's heart? By this point, Paul has walked with Jesus for years. He's preached the gospel, he's planted churches, he suffered, he sat in prison, he's seen miracles, he's endured hardship. And what's remarkable is after all of that, decades later, the deepest longing of his heart can be summed up in one sentence. I want to know Christ. He's still so hungry. And this is what he said he's pressing on to. Drinking from the living water, and yet he wants to know more. The more experiences he has had with Christ's faithfulness, the more he treasures him, the more he walks with him, the more convinced he is that there's nothing in this world that compares to knowing him. He discovered what he calls in verse eight the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. That's the phrase that stayed with me, the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. Paul saying that knowing Jesus is more valuable. It's more important, more excellent, more profound, that his worth overshadows and exceeds everything else that we might be tempted to place above him. That's why this is my new prayer. Lord, don't let me want anything more than I want you. Don't allow me to evaluate good things above the greatest thing. And so I want to draw us to a close with a final question. Is knowing Christ enough for us? Because if I receive everything, if we receive everything that we ask for, but we miss deeper communion with Christ, we've settled for something less. And I think the Holy Spirit has been patiently seeking for me to realize this. I don't need a life without wilderness. I need the one who sustains me in it. I don't need every question answered. I need the one who says, I am with you, and I want you to know you are never alone. So sit with me and realize that. No, I believe that's what heaven is saying to all of us. The stakes are higher because we are becoming someone every day, with every disappointment, with every success, with every fear we face, with every single wilderness, every ordinary Tuesday, something is teaching our hearts what to love. The world tells us find peace here, find security here, find hope here, find satisfaction here. But the Holy Spirit calls us to somewhere else, to Christ Himself. Because what we hunger shapes who we become. Calling for a generation who will choose the better portion. Like Mary, who chose to linger at the feet of Jesus. Mary chose the better portion. David sought God's face in the wilderness. Paul, he counted everything lost compared to knowing Christ. And even Jesus facing the cross continually withdrew to be with the Father. Not because the cross wasn't real. Our Jesus who bled drops of blood, it was real. But because communion with the Father, it continually reoriented his loves into what he knew to be true. And church, I think this is why heaven is calling not escapism. He's not calling us to escapism, he's not calling us to denial, he's not pretending life isn't hard. But because we are becoming a people who again and again are called to turn our faces toward the Father until his presence becomes greater than what we need. If this is the kind of people that we long to become, then our prayer is very simple. Lord, make us hungry for you. Let's pray. Lord, make us hungry for you. Nothing else matters. Nothing else will ultimately do. I mean, we care about things, but in the view of eternity, nothing else will do but hunger for you. Give us discernment to recognize the ways the enemy seeks to distract us from the joy of our inheritance with you. He can't take it. You've already secured it for us, but he does tempt us to settle for lesser things. I pray that we will choose the better thing. Lord, I don't ask you for an easier Christian life. I hear you saying, Church, go through. Go through. Suffer. Go through. Because you're going to get to the other side. And I'll still be with you. After you have suffered a little while, God, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, he will himself restore you. He himself will confirm you. He will strengthen you. And he will establish you. This is your higher call. This is why we're here. This is the highest call to be yours. Lord, don't let us want anything more than that. Don't let us want anything more than we want you. It's our prayer. And I pray the way that you have not allowed me to let that go. I pray that you would haunt, that you would follow your church until that becomes their prayer. Increasingly. Amen. Amen.