“Thirst Realized; Thirst Quenched: Share the Overflow”

Text: 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. When can I go and meet with God?

How this all started: I woke up one-morning longing for this, that, and the other thing. Then I analyzed my longings and realized that none of the things I longed for at that moment had anything to do with God. Now I began to feel bad as I began to beat myself up. The text passage came to mind.

He spoke these words to me. “Don’t lose heart Grace, I am leading you through your thirst to me. Thirst is a good thing. It’s good to thirst. It’s good to experience your neediness.” Grace I will satisfy your thirst, I will satisfy your hunger. In fact, you would not have recognized how thirsty you were without me!”

He awakened thirst in me. Thank you, Lord, for my thirst this morning. My thirst led me to you! This was His way of initiating a conversation with me.

Praise welled up within me!

Lord, how good you are. You know that the greater the thirst, the sweeter the satisfaction, the sweeter the drink.

Verses 3-4 My tears have been my food, day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul:

Lord I want, Lord I need, these are the words of someone who is thirsty.

I sought the Lord, and He answered Me. Now he reassures me that

“I the Lord will satisfy you with good things. – with the genuine article.

Our topic this morning is Thirst Realized, Thirst Quenched: Share the Overflow

From a biological standpoint, By the time we experience physical thirst, we are already at a fluid deficit. Nurses have a saying. When our patients are at a fluid deficit, we say they are “dry”.

1. First, we realize that we live in a world that is perpetually in a state of thirst or dryness.

Psalm 63:1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry (thirsty) and parched land where there is no water. So, when I read the word “dry” in this passage, I equate that to thirst.

The word parched really drives this home for me. Parched means to be dried out. We live in a world that is beyond thirsty, it is dried out.

While David was in a literal desert at the writing of Psalm 63, he realized that his real thirst, his real need, was for God.
• Spiritually, before we came to know Christ, we were not only living in a parched world, but we were spiritually thirsty. We just didn’t know it until the words of Christ were spoken to us.

a. How do we know the world is thirsty? We see the desperate search to satisfy what the Bible calls the sinful nature.
Examples of a thirsty world/ an existence seeking mainly to gratify the sinful nature is explained in Galatians 5: 19-20 ( Message Bible)It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
• David realized his desperate acts were his attempts to satisfy his spiritual thirst, his need for God. So while in the physical desert, he cries out (You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, ) knowing only God could satisfy his deep inner thirst.

b. Blaise Pascal- noted mathematician, philosopher, and scientist. Attributed to inventing the adding machine, is most noted for stating that “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the creator, made known by Jesus Christ. Pascal also wrote
Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions.
God alone is man’s true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vice, adultery, incest.
Retrieved from Harvard Ichthus: Pascal’s God-Shaped Hole – The Harvard Ichthus

c. Nicodemus is another example of someone realizing this deep inner Thirst . John 3: Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night
Nicodemus was a ruler among the Pharisees – distinguished as being separatist, legalistic, but still thirsty. Known for keeping the whole law, but thirsty. wealthy, but still thirsty.
Pharisees- the term means “separated”. The Pharisees separated themselves from society to study and teach the law, but they also separated themselves from the common people because they considered them religiously unclean. (Jack Zavada, 2020)
• But he came to Jesus because even with all of his religiosity, he was thirsty.
• Jesus told Nicodemus” You must be born again” John 3:7
• Anyone who realizes that they are spiritually thirsty, must come to the source of living water, Jesus.
• Jesus told the Samaritan woman, John 4: 10-15 beginning at verse10 “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
• 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Thirst Realized and Quenched through coming to the Savior.
John 3:16” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.

2. As believers we can experience moments of thirst- Moments of thirst happen when we forget who we are and/or what Christ accomplished.
• Article written by Judy McEachran, on Christianity.com as she discusses the roots of anxiety.
“According to studies, the human mind generates up to 70,000 thoughts daily, with approximately 80% being negative. This continuous cycle can lead to a discouraged and anxious state of mind. When guilt and shame are added, mental distress intensifies. The good news is that our minds are adaptable and can be “renewed” (Romans 12:1-2), …and “retrained” (2 Timothy 3:16).”
• I don’t know about the validity of this study, but it does drive home a point. With our minds generating so many thoughts, we must send in the counter measures to combat the high percentage of those thoughts generated by the thirsty world we live in.
• Psalm 139: How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God! How vast is the sum of them!18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—
• (Philippians 4:8-9). “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. . . and the God of peace will be with you”

a. When I experience a moment of thirst in the form of Guilt, A cup of truth- quenches my thirst- Romans 8: 1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”.
• Okay so maybe that verse is too familiar so my sip of that verse, doesn’t quite quench my momentary thirst. I need a glass full of truth to quench my thirst.
• Romans 5:6 You see at just the right time, when we were powerless…this is one of my glass-full verses. I can barely get through it without getting fully satisfied.
• Verse 9-11 ( have someone read this out loud and replace the We with I ) 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!
• 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
• 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

b. When I experience a moment of thirst in the form of worry
Ex: Not ready for retirement
The cup of truth that quenched my thirst that day was being reminded about 1 Peter 1: 3-4 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,…
My response on this particular day was “ AHH…thirst quenched!”

• Our Thirst quenchers are those irrevocable promise verses
You’ve heard of an Irrevocable Trust: It’s a type of legal agreement, that the terms cannot be terminated and the terms of which cannot be changed unless the named beneficiaries agree. It’s a way to ensure your estate goes to the ones designated. Your inheritance is not subject to tax penalties or any claims after your death. Your estate goes to your identified beneficiary, no questions asked!
• Guess what: God has given us his sure and irrevocable promises, confirmed when he raised Christ from the dead.
• Peter called them 2 Peter 1:4 – Whereby are given unto us exceedingly great and precious promises:
• But I call them my thirst quenchers
2 Cor 1:20 For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him, the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.
• So when everywhere I turn, there is a “No”, I look to Jesus and receive a “Yes”.
• I will not leave you as orphans John 14: 18
• Come to me and I will give you rest Matthew 11:28
• Page 66 in Promise Pocketbook
• Who has a go-to thirst-quenching promise today?

c. We must also remember that experiences, things, and people cannot quench our thirst. There are many things that are nice to have around but we must be careful not to try to extract from them what they simply cannot produce.
• Vacation paradise
• Ministry
• Relationships

3. Share the overflow
• Expect to encounter a thirsty world.
1 John 2:15- all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the (boastful) pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
• 1 Peter- read the entire book. But in 3: 13 -16 it says. Don’t fear what they fear; don’t be frightened. But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.
• Expect the fear response
• When people insult us-return a blessing- why- they’re thirsty
• Fear manifests in so many ways
• Pour some water on them. Let your overflow refresh the weary, thirsty ones
• I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me, makes the lame to walk and the blind to see, opens prison doors, sets the captive free, I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me.

Thirst Realized, Thirst Quenched, now share the overflow.