"Love... With All Your Soul"
Psalm 42, Mark 8
Rev. Cynthia O'Brien
February 12, 2006
For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah.
PS 42:1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
PS 42:2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
PS 42:3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"
PS 42:4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
among the festive throng.
PS 42:5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon--from Mount Mizar.
PS 42:7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
PS 42:8 By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me--
a prayer to the God of my life.
PS 42:9 I say to God my Rock,
"Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?"
PS 42:10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"
PS 42:11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Mark 8:31-38
MK 8:31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
MK 8:33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
MK 8:34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
Love the Lord your God with all your soul
We think of our heart as the place of feeling emotion and romantic love, and our good feelings for God. We see the mind as the place of our intellect, decision making, where we understand theological concepts and believe in God. But the soul is the place of our deepest need and our purest motivations, where God meets us on the deepest level, where God forms our character.
Listen to these words from the soul:
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
We are used to hearing these words in a pretty song, but they are actually very desperate. It’s the difference between wanting a drink of water and having been lost in the desert for days. We don’t often speak to God in this kind of language. What is happening here?
Continue to read and you will see.
Verse 3 My tears have been my food day and night,
Verse 6 My soul is downcast within me;
Verse 7 waves and breakers have swept over me.
Verse 9 I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?"
Verse 10 My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long, "Where is your God?"
These are desperate words spoken by a person in desperate circumstances. This is a person who could sing that praise song “Breathe.” I’m desperate for you, I’m lost without you.
No wonder his soul thirsts for God. No wonder he pants for God. God, where are you? Why have you forgotten me?
He is in trouble, but I wonder why? Did he do something against the law and now he is being punished? Did he lose everything in a natural disaster? Perhaps he stood for righteousness and is being persecuted.
I believe that this is the suffering of someone who has made a painfully righteous decision, one that is unpopular with the ungodly people. I believe that because in the next verse, in Psalm 43, he cries out to God for vindication.
Many of the Psalms spring from the soul and speak comfort to our souls. The words of Psalm 22 came to Jesus’ lips on the cross when he cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Many people are comforted by the words of Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd… He restoreth my soul.”
When you love the Lord your God with all your soul, you will not experience constant happiness and contentment. The love from your soul is the place where your deepest need and your worst suffering finds rest in God. This is where the peace that passes understanding touches you. This is where the green pastures and still waters bring comfort.
I think most people want to avoid suffering. That’s why I keep painkillers in my purse, in my car and in my office. We want to avoid suffering, but we may ignore the soul in order to do it. Peter certainly was in that situation. When Jesus said that he would be killed, Peter took him aside and said, “Don’t talk like that.” This provoked Jesus to say “Get behind me, Satan!” Satan meaning “adversary, one who opposes.” Why would Jesus talk this way? Because Peter was trying to avoid suffering at any cost. He was thinking of the concerns of this world. Preserving Jesus’ life was most important to Peter, but that was not Jesus’ mission.
This prompted Jesus to say …
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?
Here we are, talking about the soul again, but instead of a soul’s longing, this is about the difference between gaining the world and preserving one’s soul. Apparently, you cannot have both.
Has anyone seen the new movie Nanny McPhee?
In the movie, a widower cannot control his seven children, unlike the captain in the Sound of Music. They have chased off 17 nannies since their mother died. Nanny McPhee appears like Mary Poppins but not as pretty. With magic and wisdom she begins to bring them under control. But when the father is ready to remarry, the oldest son, Simon, approaches Nanny McPhee and begs her to let him chase off the bride to be.
“Please, Nanny McPhee,” he says, “will you let me do whatever it takes to get rid of her, and not interfere?”
She responds, “Are you willing to accept the consequences of your actions, whatever they might be?” She knows what Simon doesn’t: that scaring away the bride will mean the destruction of their family. But she says she will not interfere with Simon’s plans.
When Simon succeeds, and the bride is gone, then he finds out what a terrible mistake he has made. His success was fleeting – now the consequences will ruin him.
What good is it to gain the whole world, yet forfeit one’s soul?
This is what the book The Kite Runner is largely about. The Kite Runner, as you know, is Multnomah County’s choice for this year’s “Everybody Reads” program. The idea is that when everyone in town is reading the same book, we can talk about it at work, in coffee shops, at school and in church. Let me tell you the beginning of the story.
The book is told from the perspective of Amir, a 12 year old boy whose mother died giving birth to him. Amir lives with his father, Baba, who doesn’t like Amir very much. All that Amir wants is for Baba to love him.
It is time for the annual kite contest, when Amir and the other young people send up kites on glass strings and use their kites to cut other strings until only one kite is left in the sky. Amir enters the contest with his kite. Baba sets up his chair with the other spectators on the roof of the house. Amir wants nothing more in the world than to win. Not so he can win bragging rights, but so that he will win Baba’s love.
Amir does win the contest, but before he can get home to his father’s admiration, his best friend, Hassan, is assaulted, and instead of standing up for him, Amir runs away. He would rather pretend that nothing happened, so that he can preserve his moment of glory with his father.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting his father’s love, but Amir is so desperate for it that he makes a decision that not only ruins his best friend’s life, but ruins him as well. He has to keep the terrible secret, and live with the increasing pain of what he did. For the glory of winning the contest and receiving Baba’s temporary admiration, Amir has paid a terrible price.
That’s why the book begins with these words:
“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking nito the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.” Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner, page 1
What good is it to gain the whole world, if you forfeit your soul?
One mistake at age12 affected this man all the way into adulthood. His character could have been shaped differently – he could have become a righteous person, but he took the cowardly path in many small decisions, trying to win the world’s approval, until the moment when he sealed his fate as a tortured soul.
You know people who are living with compromised souls. They are so concerned with having what they think they need, with winning people’s acceptance, that they keep making decisions that take them further from God.
A TV commercial for a cellular phone service shows a top executive sitting at his desk in his high rise office. He shows his assistant his new phone and praises its features and its value. He says, “It’s my way of sticking it to the man.” The assistant says, “But you are the man.” The man says, “Yes I am.” “So you’re sticking it to yourself?” “Maybe.”
This is a dead end, and people who attain the world find an emptiness at the top.
This is not a new feeling. Lucius Septimus Severus died in the year 211. Before he died, he said: I have been everything and everything is nothing. A little urn will contain all that remains of one for whom the whole world was too little.” In David Lodge’s novel Therapy, the main character’s therapist asks him to make a list of all the good things about his life in one column and all the bad things in another. Under the good column he wrote: “professionally successful, well off, good health, stable marriage, kids successfully launched in adult life, nice house, great car, as many holidays as I want.” Under the bad column he wrote just one thing: “feel unhappy most of the time.”
There is a longing there, among those who are losing their souls. They may not know it is a longing for God. But there is a natural void in us that only God can fill.
How can you avoid compromising and even losing your soul? Jesus says, take up your cross and follow me.
In just two weeks, on Wednesday, March 1, we will have our Ash Wednesday service and begin the season of Lent. The colors in the church will change, the songs will be different and our focus will be to draw near to God and cultivate the soul.
In the book of 1 Peter, Peter shows he has learned a lot since the day Jesus rebuked him.
1 Peter 2: Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
Every decision you make, every action you do, shapes your character and your soul. That’s why the Bible recommends that we practice spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, fasting and studying the Scriptures. The season of Lent, 40 days before Easter, has been set apart since ancient times for us to get back on track, to deepen our connection with God.
Start thinking now about what it will take to preserve your soul. I recommend a daily discipline, something that will remind you of God every day. Perhaps you will pray every morning. Tape a note to your bathroom mirror or your car steering wheel. Maybe you’ll read the Bible every morning – Put the Bible on your breakfast table. You might give to the poor – Put a jar next to where you usually put your purse or wallet at night, and drop money into it every night after work.
And what will you have to give up to make room in your life for that discipline? Maybe you’ll turn off the television at 9 p.m. instead of watching until midnight. Or turn it off during the day when it is just filling the silence. Or turn it off altogether.
By practicing a spiritual discipline, you can put yourself in a position to draw closer to God. To fill the emptiness inside. To preserve your soul for eternity. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, have mercy on our souls as we struggle between the things of earth and the ways of heaven. Satisfy the longing of our souls, through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
HYMN: Take time to be holy
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