Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Survival in a dry and weary land. I'm in the studio day with Dr. Ken Hansen. We've got an amazing topic today to talk about how do we survive in a dry and weary land? It's going to be a fun topic on Psalm 63. This is where it comes from. Psalm 63. The first verse of that Psalm says, Oh God, you are my God earnestly. I seek you my soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you in a dry and weary land, where there is no water. Now David wrote this when he was in the wilderness of Judah. So welcome out to the podcast. Once again, Dr. Ken Hanson, we want to talk now about how as men, how do we survive in a dry weary land? What is a dry and weary land? What are we talking about?
Speaker 2 00:00:59 Yeah. So for David, it was literal. It was a literal drawing where to land. You already spoke to the fact that he was in the desert of Judah, the wilderness of Judah, um, this time of his life, he's running from Saul and he's just out there in bareness wilderness, and he's just crying out to God, right? Uh, for us as men today, uh, in, in our culture today, uh, that dry and, and a weary land is culture. I mean, uh, today, our culture, um, wow. It's a lot out there
Speaker 1 00:01:34 You can think about like device. Um, I don't know if I'd say addiction, but just they're addictive, right? Our devices, we're always looking at a device screen time, FaceTime, screen time, the delusion of just how accessible data is, right. It's like, we can know anything in like three seconds, right? We Google stuff or we become, you know, it, it it's that, that landscape of like where we live. And then you think of like the moral decline, our culture, you think about church decline or the, the lack of heightened alertness in our spirituality. Right. It's still declined overall. That's the dry and weary land. It's like, where do we go? You know, what's our priorities, you know, where do we go? Like, we, we live in Northern Illinois. I don't know where you're listening to this podcast head, but we just we've had, we talked about this morning, the amount of snow we've gotten recently, just massive, right?
Speaker 1 00:02:29 Like there's this big, you know, a foot plus of snow just on the ground, like a blanket covering everything. And, uh, I was, I filmed a video there night when it was like snow storm and I put it on Facebook and the question was, are we having church? And I answered it in the video. Um, you know, you might be wondering this snowstorm. We haven't church. Yeah. We are because the mall going to be open, you know, in, in the church will be open, right. So my buyer four by four truck and make it to church or whatever, you know, I'm joke around. I don't know. Some people couldn't make, it was a lot of snow, but it's just a, this, the landscape that we live in, it's like, it's a dry wary land, but it's kind of a dry Murray land because we, as a culture, we've lost our spiritual appetite.
Speaker 2 00:03:09 Yeah. I think what makes a dry and weary land is where do people go to find meaning and purpose in their life specifically? What do men have determined to, to find meaning and purpose in their life? The problem with our culture is our car culture offers us as men, a ton of stuff. But the promises that all of those things offer us entertainment, sports, drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever. It may be the values. It proposes to us of how we're going to satisfy herself at the end of the day, leaves us empty and unfulfilled. It leaves our lives meaningless and purposeless. And so that's the, that's the landscape that we're dealing with right now. Where do we go to find meaning and purpose? I mean, where are we going to draw that from work? Where are we, how are we going to satisfy the craving inside of us?
Speaker 1 00:04:02 Yeah. So David's in a physical wilderness, you know, he's in it literally like a desert and he's, he's in verse two. We're not going to go through the whole thing. But verse two actually talks about, you know, I looked upon you in the sanctuary. So he's remembering when he wasn't in the wilderness and he remembered what the gathering and the sanctuary was like the plurality of the Ew, the believers coming together. So now he's in the wilderness and he's like, it's powerful that he's saying, he's actually saying you are my God, you know, God, your mind, God, you know, he's even our God in the wilderness. Yeah. And I guess the challenge here as we kind of get into this is like, what you're saying is like, what are the things returning to? Cause David, even in the wilderness, he was remembering the sanctuary and he's like, you're my God.
Speaker 1 00:04:45 Even in the wilderness. And I'm still, I'm earnestly going to seek you. Yeah. And I think that's what makes the difference of David versus just maybe average people. Right. Because David was a man after God's own heart. So even here he's like earnest, I'm going to seek you. And he's kind of like aching before guys. Like my soul is thirsty for you. And he's like my flesh things for you. Like that's, that's intense language, you know, in a dry and weary land where there is no water is like, God, you are my water. Yeah. You know? So like
Speaker 2 00:05:17 Fully, we live in the United States where we don't have to worry about, you know, physical thirst, physical water, but our wilderness is a spiritual one. And especially with COVID over the last year, it's now an emotional one. And so when we were talking about this, the image that came to my mind out of Psalm 63, one was I thought about in this whole concept of seeking that, which brings life to our life, uh, is a, I thought about the settlers when they were moving out West. And it was just a barren wasteland out there in the West. And you could get a piece of land for free. If you could establish life on that land, you had so, so long to build a house and to establish a residence there. And so all these people moved out to the West because they would get a homestead, a piece of land.
Speaker 2 00:06:07 But the first thing that they had to seek in order to survive was water. You know, they had to drill into the ground. They had to find water. And you know, in the Plains, you know, right. There's not that many rivers. I mean, you know, you're out there in the middle of nowhere. And so they needed water to survive. It was their first priority because you can't live without water. And really what David has seen in Psalm 63 has God, I can't live without you. Right. You're my water. Yeah. You're my water. Your, my sustenance, your what makes my life meaningful? You're what gives me satisfaction and purpose. And so in the same way that those settlers that were going out West had to find a way to find, discover water because it was their source of life. As men, we've got to find a way to discover the living water that Jesus offers in order to survive this dry barren wasteland of culture today. Um, and that's all about seeing
Speaker 1 00:07:13 Speaking of the Lord and you asked a good question earlier, what, what dimen turned to. Yeah. And it's in, David's sane. He's saying I turned, I turned to God, I earnestly sought him. I was even my flesh. Right? Like he's talking about different realms. Like the soulless realm, like even my soul, not just my spirit, but even my soul is aching for the living. God. Like David had some type of connection with God. And here's what I say right. When you talk about the settlers. And I just think of like the simple analogies of we can, the human body can make it about 30 to 40 days without eating food. Like you, you can make it that long. Like that's a long time. That's a month. You can go without actually physically eating food, but you can only go like three days without water and you're dead. Yeah. Like, like three days, like, so think about this and the concept of like spiritual meals, if
Speaker 2 00:08:13 God is our water.
Speaker 1 00:08:16 I mean, it, that actually makes a lot of sense to me in, I like, cause if I go about 48 to 72 hours without like encountering God or like getting into the word or something, I can feel dead. Right. I can feel, Oh dude, I, I did that thing again. I, you know, cause I'm a pastor, I'm a leader. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not like this, uh, like my personality, right? Like I don't know how you are. I think you're probably a little more methodical than me is like just in your wiring. But I'm like, not that methodical I am, but in my own ways, right. Like I don't get up at the same time every day. I don't go to bed. Same time every night. I don't have those types of set rhythms. Like I don't do a Bible study with my kids every Monday at five o'clock.
Speaker 1 00:08:52 And I've talked about all these podcasts before. Like it's just not me. Um, but, but my it's the disciplines, right? So what I'm saying is have I missed a 72 hour period where I haven't been with God, I have, I have missed it. I missed that time in the word I got busy. I got distracted. It's like, and that's why I love gray SOPs. So slow that the five star charts. Cause it's like crash into it again. Realign yourself again, take inventory again. You know, renown some godliness again, live upright again. Let's get this thing going, you know, I haven't mastered it. So it's one of those things like in David, like I love the analogy that David is saying, God, you're my water. God, you're my water. So how do I mean that fits right into this conversation, right?
Speaker 2 00:09:33 Literally you're in my life. God, without you, I have no lie. My source of life
Speaker 1 00:09:38 In a wilderness. Like, you know, you think about the availability, availability of movies, Hulu Roco. However you say that like all these different Amazon prime got all these different outlets. You can watch movies on. I find that tempting sometimes like I could watch a movie, like watch this movie. And then recently in my spiritual disciplines, I've been gone on don't watch the movie go after God, like listen to a couple of chapters of the Bible.
Speaker 2 00:10:04 Is that movie going to produce life? Is it going to produce meaning in, you know, but spending time with God, spending time with Jesus, but allowing the Holy spirit to speak to you, um, it is going to give you what you really need to live. Um, the problem with spending time with God and seeking him like Dave talks about, um, in these verses, I mean in verse three, David says your love is better than life itself. I mean, David had this experience with God that if he didn't get that experience, he, he felt like he was going to die. Uh, do we, as men feel that way about God or is it easier? Like you said, for us to, to watch a ball game on TV or watch movies or scroll through Facebook or do whatever it is we do or fill our lives with any number of activities. When the number one activity and priority in our life has to be seeking God, seeking that water, seeking that life. But here's the problem. The seeking process involves warfare for us as men, because the enemy knows what the key to success is. It's spending time with God. It's being refreshed by being with him every time I spend time with God, life flows in the me and hope and hope. <inaudible>
Speaker 2 00:11:24 whole. Yeah. Especially in the days we're living in that are so difficult. We live on the dragon in the brighter days. I'm not spending time with God. I'm not going to use for 30 seconds. Yeah. You're not going to make it. Yeah. Hopeless. And, but the enemy wants to do everything he can to distract and determine from doing the thing that feeds them, which is prayer, the word, even relationships, other men, relationships with God relationships, with each other worship. Um, and so we have to understand, um, there's a reason it's difficult to spend time with God because it's a war. One of the five star charges is, you know, to be a man of war, to be a man of God's presence, you know? And it speaks to this. There is a war to get into the presence of God, because the enemy knows if men would spend time in God's presence, they would spend time in his word. They'd spend time in prayer and worship. Right. That he'll lose the battle that men will be victorious
Speaker 1 00:12:29 A hundred percent of the time. Yeah. Yeah. So like you think about it, right? Like what do we turn to? We can scroll for an hour. And then we look at the clock and we're like, dude, what the heck? Right? Like what, like this stuff is potently addictive, right? Like you get on one of these apps and you start flying through it. You're like, Whoa, my gosh. But like two or three hours, like, and you've done nothing. You've been sitting in the same position. Your body feels authentic. It didn't do anything for you. Right. And what we're kind of defining a scene here is that the presence of God is our water. And David said, I'm going to earnestly seek you. So I'm going to put discipline in hunger and ache into finding this water every day. Because like we've said, you're going to go three days without physical water.
Speaker 1 00:13:11 So the word and like worship and, and fellowship and prayer takes us into the presence. So exactly what you're saying. Right. I'm just going back through it. It's like on worship the word, prayer and fellowship. Just think about this man. How much warfare is on those things. Okay. So take like scrolling on an app for an hour. Easy can do that. You know, I had a guy there days, like I re I read about star the stock market for two, three hours. I'm like a day. He's like, yeah. I'm like, well, did you read your Bible today? He was like, Oh, you got me? Good morning. I'm like just one chapters, dude. Yeah. I'm in, I got, you know, it's like, there's warfare on reading that Bible. Yeah. Because it's water. It actually feeds it refreshes.
Speaker 2 00:14:00 I want that. Here's the other warfare. Here's the other problem that we deal with is that, uh, not only has men, but in the churches and, and as Christians, uh, we do not, we're not self feeders. We've been di we've become dependent on podcasts, on teachers, on TV, on radio, on our pastors to feed us. But that's not a biblical model. We're supposed to be feeding ourselves. So that even when we come together on Sundays corporately, we've been feeding ourselves through the week. We're already full. We come together to get encouraged, to encourage others. Sundays is not supposed to be all about us. Right. It's about to be about our corporate expression of worship to get refueled charged up, um, encourage other people. So we can go back out again for another week of battle and war, but we have to be feeding ourselves. And there is not a self-feeding culture in the church. It's a feed me culture. I always think of, uh, of that, uh, of that feed me Seymour, you know, a plant. Yeah. The plant, you know, and he just wants to be fed all the time. And that's a lot of our problems. This is what we become. So if we're not in church and somebody else isn't feeding us, we're not taking the time to feed ourselves during the week. Well, we're going to die. If we do that,
Speaker 1 00:15:27 I'm going to die in somebody else's revelation.
Speaker 2 00:15:30 Yeah. All the time. You know, we, we have to, it's our responsibility. According to scripture to feed ourselves, it's not the pastor's responsibility to feed you. Right. It's not your husband or wife's responsibility to feed you. Right. It's your responsibility. You have to seek after God, you've got to be like those settlers. You've got to seek that water because you believe in your heart. That, that water is
Speaker 1 00:15:56 First thing we have to do is identify that this is right on target. What we're seeing is real. We don't have to prove it to, you already know it. When we say worship word and prayer, there's warfare on it. And you're like, yep. Yep. I got that. You know, like, we're you and I are in church leadership. You've been in church leadership, uh, 15 years, probably longer than me. Maybe, maybe longer than, I don't know I've been in around the church culture, but it's insane to me when, if a person thinks they're a mature believer, but they come to church or that community cause in the community, the gathering of the saints is actually where we're coming together, corporately to that water. You know, we are coming together and we're really expressing worship. It's very vertical. You know, Sundays are very vertical oranges. Like, God, we love you.
Speaker 1 00:16:48 We're honoring you. We're worshiping you corporately. Um, we're, we're opening our mind. Heart will emotions to the word to be, you know, to come into us. But not every Sunday for every person. And the more mature you are in the faith, you need to realize that you're there really not for yourself. You're there to help the new believers. You're the help, help them find the way, help them earnestly seek the Lord, help them grow in their discipleship, in their finding this water. It's not, it's really hard when like someone claims to be mature and they may or may not leave your church or like this whole concept of like leaving a church. It's like, I don't get that. It's like, or I wasn't fed there. Well, you already got the wrong idea of what church is, right? Like if you're right and that's so prevalent, our culture is in an annoying Mont. It's annoying. It's very annoying. Like they didn't feed me their feed. This is the plan. Right. Feed me too. It's like, it's selfish, like die to yourself. You know that, you know? So it's just another set. It doesn't lead you to maturity. If you think you're mature and youth in your going to church to be fed, I'm going to say you're not mature. Right.
Speaker 2 00:17:53 Cause it's another symptom of our post-modern narcissistic culture. Everything's about me centered feed me. I want it to be all about me. Right. But the kingdom isn't all about careless is other centered. It's crazy. Like
Speaker 1 00:18:06 The rating cards, pastor, Ken, your message was an eight today. It's 10 today. It's only a four,
Speaker 2 00:18:11 But in a lot of places, that's kind of how people view the service. It's stupid. What did this service do for me today? The question is not, what did the service do for me today? That the question when we gathered together is what did I do for God and others?
Speaker 1 00:18:24 Yeah. How did this, how did this day advanced the community? How did this day bless the name of God and how was my participation in it? Holy yeah. Right?
Speaker 2 00:18:32 And so as guys, you know, the thought that we have today for you guys is, are you a self feeder? Are you like those? Sutlers are you, do you understand that you need the water of the spirit. So to speak, to survive, to stay healthy, to stay encouraged, to stay hopeful, to stay faithful, uh, all of that stuff. What are you doing? You know, every week to, to feed yourself, to put yourself in the presence of God, because you need that water. That's where you drive your meaning and your purpose from that's that's, what's going to satisfy the craving of your soul. Not all the stuff that this world offers you, the porn, the everything that says, Hey, you know, do this. And you'll feel satisfied. You'll feel satisfied for two seconds. And then there'll be an emptiness in your soul. That is unbelieve.
Speaker 1 00:19:22 It says, you, you know, if you turn to the dry land, those things you just mentioned, it'll make you weary, dry and weary. You get discouraged. Fortunately, that's more so the spiritual condition of the men of our country. Yeah. Bored. Yeah. Dry weary doll doesn't mean they're bad. Doesn't mean they're not loved and not empowered. And, and see for me, the presence of God is where it's at. And it's easy to get to the presence of God, because all I gotta do is pray getting the word or worship. It's the avenues to get there easy. But the warfare to actually pray like Steven Pressfield, right? I love his book. The war on art and in the warrant already says, he says, writing a book is, is easy. So the hardest part about writing a book is actually sitting down to write the book. Yeah. It's like prayer is easy.
Speaker 1 00:20:15 The hardest part about prayer is actually praying. Reading the Bible is easy. The hardest part is reading it right? Worshiping God is easy. We love the fruit of all that stuff. We love what it does for us, but we're dull. Gotta be intentional and we've gotta be sharpened. We gotta be forged right? With this, this anvil that we create in our culture, the five-star charging. We're highlighting that as something for you to consider, to engage with war like David is David is this language is using a boat. I'm earnestly seeking you. Well, that was like him saying, I war on this dry land. I'm going to remember my God in the sanctuary. And I'm going to be, I remember beholding him. And I remember the beauty of who he is and I'm going to experience them even here in the wilderness. I mean like that was a warfare mindset. He had a powerful mindset to actually go after God in the wilderness and not to succumb, to like whining and complaining. And my God it's so I'm so thirsty and hungry.
Speaker 2 00:21:11 I think another problem that we have in our culture is we want everything to be easy for us. We went everything. We're so used to being waited on hand and foot. You know, we want information. It's at our fingertips instantly. We know we're in this instant culture, but God isn't instant and you have to dig. You have to mine, you have to, you have to put some effort into it. So I go back again, those settlers, you know, water didn't just appear in the Plains. They were smart people. They looked for signs where, where might the water be? And then they'd have to dig down into the ground to access the water. There was some work involved. That's the discipline, but it was worth it, man. When they hit that water, they realized we're going to be able to stay here. We're going to be able to live. Life can go on. Yeah. Life can go on. Otherwise they were heading back East. Um, and so we shouldn't think it's strange that, you know, to pray, to worship, to read the word is going to require discipline or effort on our part, that the enemy is going to battle us. He's going to try and make it. So we think we don't have time, but we've got to deliberately and intentionally carve out the time to be with Jesus because we know if we don't we'll die
Speaker 1 00:22:28 And to, to survive in a dry and weary land, we do need to engage these, these tactics. And for me, if I, if I, if I have like a Bible reading plan, whatever that plan is, it's something I can continuously go to. Uh, if I have a timeframe of the day where like, Hey, I want to pray at this time. You know? So it kind of like what I'm saying is like scheduling it is going to help you be more successful in doing it. Yeah. And, and, and getting it done versus just like, well, I'll just do it whenever. You know, like I know guys that get up way before they go to work and they read their Bible for an hour, pray, get time with God. And that they're, they're on fire man. Like they're doing good, you know? And that's a sustaining thing, you know? So it's like that, that these are the survival tactics of the drawing where he spiritual land that we live in. Right.
Speaker 2 00:23:24 And I want to just say to guys, you know, if you set a schedule for yourself, if you have a Bible reading program and you miss a day or two, don't quit and give up, just go back to where you left off.
Speaker 1 00:23:34 Right? No big deal, no big deal. Don't let the enemy
Speaker 2 00:23:36 Say, well, you missed a couple of days. So now you're off the schedule. And I can't tell you how many people just like give up because they missed a few days. Right. Who cares? And what I tell people,
Speaker 1 00:23:46 Sometimes if you're OCD about it, the two days you missed, just skip them. Yeah. If you, if you got to stay on track with the thing and you got to do the thing, the way the thing was designed, then just, they're like, really? I'm like, yeah, you're not going to, if you miss two chapters of Luke and you, you miss, you know, chapter one and two, and you read chapter three, it's still going to impact your life. You know what I mean? And they're like, Oh, I never thought about like that. You know, I was like, um, for me personally, I know the way I'm wired. And, and uh, now I'm not, you're, you'd blow me away in this area. Now I can listen to auto audio books. I can listen to the Bible. Um, but to, for me to read more than a chapter of like anything blows my brain cells, like I can focus on a chapter a day. You know, if you want to get me reading a hundred pages a day, college, all that stuff, no way. There's no way my brain off and tell her. I often tell her people, in fact are Bible readings
Speaker 2 00:24:33 Program church is designed around just reading one chapter a day, you know, to go through the whole Bible in a year, you got to read three chapters a day. I don't think there's any of us that get anything out of the three chapters a day five, a day, three chapters a day. But three chapters is a lot, right? I mean, I want to get something out of what I read, right? And if I'm reading three chapters, I'm, I'm blowing through it just to get through it. So I checked off the list early surviving. No, the goal of being with Jesus is not to make the check it's to actually be with him and to get something. So we do just one chapter a day. And I tell our people, if you can't get through the one chapter, if you read three and you get stuck at a verse, then stay at that first and let the Holy spirit minister to you. It's about getting some guy it's about encountering God and get something out of it. Not checking a box, dear Lord. That's right.
Speaker 1 00:25:24 So as we, as we kind of wind down here and close out our topics simple, but we're hitting something that's so important in this hour because we live in this drawing where he lands spiritually. So engage, engage the, the five-star charge of war and look at yourself as a man of war. Like we've described David in these areas of declaring you are my God, and I'm going to seek you. I'm going to find you even in a dry and weary land to realize that without God, without that water, we really are thirsty. And we're really hard.
Speaker 2 00:25:58 It says in verse five, he interrupts it up. And he says, he goes through this whole thing about he's seeking God. And he is finding him in the sanctuary and his love is better than life. And then verse five, he says, I will be fully satisfied. Isn't that where we want to be? You know, as a, as a man, I want to be fully satisfied. And the way to be fully satisfied is to spend time with Jesus. Yes. He's the only one that can satisfy what I really need. He's the only one, let's be honest. That knows what I really need. I don't even know what I need.
Speaker 1 00:26:29 Right? So Christ is the water that we must be seeking in this spiritually dry Murray land in which we live. It's what will change the culture. It's what change the atmosphere. So guys today shift your mindset into a warrior mindset. Don't be narcissistic in your spiritual growth. Now, if you're young and you're just starting off, you're, you need to develop, you need to grow. You know, you go from milk to meet, you know, and then it takes time. But if you're, you've been around this for a while, keep your eyes fixed on the things that matter. Um, so identify God as your spiritual water and do the disciplines of going after the presence of God, be a man of war today. That's how we survive. And that's how we turn into people who thrive in the land. And we become people who other people will come to.
Speaker 1 00:27:24 You know, it's, it's a whole nother analogy of the wasteland becomes the whole thing of in Getty. Did you ever go to and Getty and Israel? And it's a, it's an Oasis in the middle of the wilderness. And if we are going after the living water, we become an end Getty. We become a place of refreshing for our world. That's in a parched and dry scorched land, which honestly guys look around. It's not that hard to be refreshing around this loss broken down world. It's not that hard to be, you know? So here's in Getty, there's live lush, green everywhere in the middle of the wilderness, right? It's an Oasis. And so that's what God wants us to be. If we, if we are really good men of war and we're disciplined in these areas, we will become an Oasis of water to this dry Murray land. And that's really the goal of it all. Or it's one of the byproducts of it. What's been great to be with you, Dr. Ken, thanks. <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:28:18 love what we're doing here in gray SOPs. I'd like to invite you to check out our social media. You can find us on, uh, almost all the social media platforms at grace ops two 12. So just search us. Grace ups, two 12, subscribe to the podcast, share it with some friends. Love to have you engage. We've got all kinds of fresh gear and apparel coming out. It's the stuff looks hot, man. It looks hot. So, um, go to our Facebook page. I'll be posting some pictures soon. You can find some of the stuff there. Anyway, we, we love you guys. We care about you. We're here to empower you to live upright.
Speaker 0 00:28:54 <inaudible>.
