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SERIES BUILDERRefueling Your Spiritual JoyWhat to do when you're running on emptyDavid Daniels
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Series Text: Assorted Psalms
Series Subject: Seeking and securing joy in the life of the believer
Series Purpose: To help listeners who are running on empty refuel their spiritual joy
Series Relevance: All believers experience a time in their journey where they feel like they're running on empty. Such a time calls for a refueling of their spiritual joy. But how do they do it? They must explore the troubling feeling, gain a renewed perspective of God's awesomeness, and then allow the rediscovered joy to consistently manifest itself in their daily lives.
How do you seek and secure a joy you don't currently possess?
Series Big Idea: Believers can refuel their spiritual joy by adopting a new perspective on God that manifests itself in their everyday lives.
Sermon One
Title: Running on Empty
Subtitle: Finding contentment in spite of current circumstances
Text: Psalm 42:1–11
Subject: Why we feel like we're running on empty and what we can do about it
Purpose: To help listeners understand why they feel like they are running on empty, and offer the most crucial step in remedying their current state
Relevance: God not only offers us a joy-filled life, but he commands it. When we're running on empty, it's our responsibility to partner with him in refueling our spiritual joy. We must learn how to biblically examine the reasons why we feel the way we feel and make the necessary changes in our attitudes and actions.
Big Idea: Joy begins with a change of perspective about God.
Sermon Strategy
Introduction
• Illustration: Idaho Farmer and His Truck [see Illustrations and Quotations below]
• Some of you have a spiritual life that feels like that truck: tired, run down, little horsepower, pistons aren't firing, and the carburetor's clogged.
• God not only offers us a joy-filled life, but he commands it in the Bible.
• It's possible for a person to seek and secure a joy they may not presently possess.
Psalm 42
• In Psalm 42, we see the evidence of personal emptiness.
• Unending despair and sadness (v. 3)
• Faded memories (v. 4)
• Drowning in life's pressures (v. 7)
• A feeling of being abandoned by God (v. 9)
• Feeling that the world is against you (v. 10)
• Illustration: No Reason to Live [see Illustrations and Quotations below]
Four things that drain your joy
• Your tank leaks. You encounter brokenness or a leaky loss in life.
• You've put the pedal to the metal. You've spent too much time racing around.
• You've filled up with the wrong octane. You're designed to run on a relationship with God, but you've pursued the wrong fuel.
• You've had too much city driving, too many starts and stops.
Panting
• It is possible to have inner contentment and purpose in spite of our circumstances.
• Total change begins with transformed thinking—specifically, how we think about God (Romans 12:2).
• The Psalmist was thirsty, gasping, longing, and knew that the source of his refreshment would only be found in God (14 times in this Psalm, he thinks about God).
• The Psalmist's joy may have been jeopardized, but he knew the one who was the fountain of all joy.
• Many scholars believe that Psalm 42 and 43 were originally connected (42 shows man's great despair, while 43 shows man's great joy).
• 1 Peter 1:8
• Joy begins with a change of perspective about God.
• Illustration: Receiving the Reality of God [see Illustrations and Quotations below]
Conclusion
• Psalm 107:9—God satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.
Illustrations and Quotations
Idaho Farmer and His Truck
A Texas rancher was visiting an Idaho farmer. The proud farmer showed him around.
"Here is where I grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash. Over there I built a playset for my kids, next to the doghouse," said the farmer.
The land was tiny—maybe 2 acres—and the Texan rancher was surprised by its relatively small size. "Is this all your land?" he asked.
"Yes," the farmer said proudly. "This is all mine!"
"You mean this is it? This is all of it?" the Texan wondered.
"Yes, yes; this is really all mine!"
"Well, son," said the Texan, "back home I'd get in my pickup truck before the sun would come up, and I'd drive and drive and drive, and when the sun set, why, I'd only be halfway across my land!"
"You know," the Idaho farmer quickly replied, "I used to have a truck like that."
David Daniels, "Running on Empty," PreachingToday.com
No Reason to Live
Hunter S. Thompson, the so-called gonzo journalist, committed suicide on February 16, 2005, leaving instructions that his ashes should be shot out of a cannon, which happened in August of the same year. Thompson was 67 when he died, and his family and friends said that he was in pain from hip replacement surgery, back surgery, and a recently broken leg. He had talked about suicide for years.
February was a particularly grim month for him because football season was over. The brief suicide message, scrawled in black marker and titled "Football Season Is Over," reads:
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always [cranky]. No Fun—for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax—This won't hurt.
At the bottom of the page, Thompson reportedly drew a "happy heart," the kind found on Valentine's Day cards.
Reuters, on AOL News (9-8-05); submitted by Lee Eclov, Vernon Hills, Illinois
Receiving the Reality of God
"God's reality in our world is like gently falling rain. We each have a bowl in our hearts and minds in which we can easily catch God's reality—if we just hold it before us. But it makes all the difference in the world whether our bowl is turned upward—or downward. A person without guile will turn their bowl upward—ready to receive the truth about God, if God really exists."
Rich Hansen, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Visalia, California
Sermon Two
Title: Topping Off the Tank
Subtitle: Tapping into the reservoir of holy joy
Text: Psalm 65:1–13
Subject: How we can rediscover joy by simply standing in awe of God
Purpose: To help believers tap into a reservoir of holy joy by renewing their perspective of the awesome nature of God
Relevance: One of the chief ways a person can refuel their spiritual joy is by renewing their perspective of the awesome nature of God. They must learn ways to behold the beauty of God, reflect on the salvation of God, wonder at the works of God, and harvest the bounty of God.
Big Idea: True joy is the overflow of our renewed perspective of God's awesomeness.
Sermon Strategy
Introduction
• Happiness is found when our circumstances change. A sick family member gets better, a financial debt gets paid off, or we finally land the job we want.
• Joy is a different experience. It isn't based on our changing circumstances or dependent on things getting bigger, better, or brighter.
• Joy is a distinctly spiritual disposition, an attitude or a deep-settled confidence that God is in control of your life.
• While happiness precariously teeters on the external conditions of my life, joy can overflow not because circumstances have changed, but because my perspective of God has.
• True joy is the overflow of our renewed perspective of God's awesomeness.
Transition: Today, we learn how to top off the tank—how to refuel spiritually—with a look at Psalm 65, a harvesttime psalm of joy and celebration of an awesome God.
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