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A Daily Morning Exercise · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Yesterday in our Navigator's Bible reading plan, we read Psalm ninety together, or
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  maybe you're catching up with a reading still. That's fine, no problem there.
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  When you get to it, you'll see why Psalm ninety is the special,
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  much beloved Psalm that you pastor John have referenced in thirty different episodes in
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  this podcast already to answer all sorts of listener questions. Psalm ninety is so
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  rich. Sometimes you'll focus your attention on verses twelve or seventeen. As you
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  approach eighty years old, verse ten looms more and more on your mind.
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  But no verse in Psalm ninety gets more mentions from you than verse fourteen.
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  And that's just it. It only gets mentions from you, brief mentions,
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  usually simply listed in the text that you string together in a prayer you called
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  IOUs IOUs an acrostic, a one minute prayer that you pray before you read
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  the Bible in the morning. You've told us about that prayer in several episodes,
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  which you can see in that new ABJ book if you have that,
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  pages sixteen and seventeen. I put those episodes together on that IOUs acrosstick.
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  So you often mentioned, but rarely dwell on Psalm ninety, verse fourteen.
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  Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and
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  be glad all our days. Love that for Christian heedenis dedicated to the daily
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  discipline of seeking our joy in God. This text is so huge, So
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  draw out ten minutes of insights from what you see in this text alone about
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  our daily desire for God. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
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  that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Wow, there
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  are few things, tony that I love to do more than to take a
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  Bible verse like this a word from God, and I want to underline that
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  this is a word from God, and then squeeze it like a sponge that
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  has been dipped in the river of God's delights, and see how many cups
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  I can fill. That's what I love to do at my life. So
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  sometimes a sponge is so big and so squeeze you with glorious truth that you
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  have to squeeze one end and hold that, and then squeeze another end and
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  hold that. So I'm gonna squeeze this first four times. Satisfy us,
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  Gonna squeeze that in the morning, gonna squeeze that with your steadfast love.
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  And then number four that we may rejoice and be glad all our day.
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  So that's the plan. Satisfy us. Number one, squeeze that end.
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  This is a God inspired prayer to God. That's what the psalms are.
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  This means that it is God's will for his children for us to experience satisfy.
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  It is God's will that Christians live with hearts that are deeply content and
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  satisfied. That He does not will that our hearts be continually restless or fearful
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  or joyless. God's will for us is that we be able to say with
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  complete authenticity with the Apostle Paul, I have learned, in whatever situation,
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  I am to be content, that is, to be satisfied, to enjoy
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  peace, contentment, confidence, gladness, joy. And notice that he's not
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  equating satisfaction with pleasant circumstances. They may be pleasant and they may be devastating.
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  God's will is that we be satisfied. The rest of this psalm is
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  pretty devastating. And don't miss that this is a prayer, which means it's
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  a battle. If it came naturally, we would not need to cry out
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  for satisfaction. This is a gift from God. It's not something we can
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  make happen with food or caffeine or drugs or sex, or wealth or health,
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  or friendships or family. So the question then is, well, what
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  kind of satisfaction is it? What's the actual source of the satisfaction? And
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  before I tackle that, because he does answer that, he says one other
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  thing first. So number two, squeeze the sponge again in the morning,
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  satisfy us in the morning. Why does he say that in the morning,
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  Because the morning is when we face the day. And according to this Psalm,
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  our days are filled with toil and trouble verse ten. We're like grass
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  that is renewed in the morning and then in the evening fades away. Verse
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  six. We are about to walk into a new day and experience the consequences
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  of sin in this world, the limits of our own finiteness, the opposition
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  of evil people, the futility of the fallen world system. That's what the
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  day is going to bring as we get out of bed and go to our
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  kneeling bench and cry out to God. So what do we cry out for
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  in the morning? Facing that kind of day? We cry out in the
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  face of sin and finiteness, and opposition and futility, we cry out for
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  satisfaction. We don't expect all the circumstances to change. It's just the fallen
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  world we live in. We won't be of any good to anybody, As
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  George Mueller taught us, we won't be of any good to anybody if we
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  all share in the moaning and the groaning of this sinful and broken world.
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  Good is that to add to the world more of our own moaning and groaning.
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  God's will is that we'd be satisfied in the face of all the trouble
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  every new day will bring, which now brings us to the third squeezing of
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  the sponge. Where does the satisfaction come from amidst all this trouble? And
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  the answer given is with your stead fast love. Satisfy us in the morning
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  with your steadfast love. So when you get up in the morning and you
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  see before you a day of trouble and problems, problems upon problems which you
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  cannot solve, and you feel weak and sick, and the things you thought
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  were going to bring you some happiness have all crumbled, where do you look
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  for satisfaction and Moses. This is a psalm of Moses. By the way,
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  Moses answer was I look to the love of God for me. Isn't
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  that amazing? God loves me, Moses says. God chose me before the
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  foundation of the world. We Christians say to be his treasured possession. God
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  gave me existence. God sent his son and paid for the failures that I've
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  committed and offenses against him. God opened my eyes to see the worth and
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  greatness and beauty of Christ. God promises to be my treasure. God promises
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  to make everything, including all my troubles and problems, work together for my
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  eternal joy. God loves me. That's the source of his satisfaction, his
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  steadfast love, and we pray for the ability to taste it. That's what
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  he's asking. Satisfy me in that, help me enjoy that, Help me
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  be satisfied in that every morning, because His mercies are new every morning.
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  And now comes the fourth part of the sponge to squeeze, namely, that
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  we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Satisfy us in the morning
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  with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
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  So with the words rejoice and be glad. He underlines the emotional richness
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  of the word satisfaction. God is telling us to ask him to make us
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  satisfied, to make us happy, to make us glad, to make us
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  rejoice no matter what. And the amazing thing is that he says all our
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  days, not just sunny days, happy days, all our days. The
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  reason it's amazing is because in the first thirteen verses of this psalm, our
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  days are being swept away like a flood. We are returning to the dust.
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  We are fading and withering like grass. We pass away like a sigh.
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  All our days are full of toil and trouble. Those are words from
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  this very psalm. And yet now Moses, praise God, do your amazing
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  internal miracle work of satisfying us with your love, so that in all those
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  days, all those terrible days, including the very last one, short or
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  long, whether the days last a long time or whether it get blown away
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  overnight, we might rejoice and be glad. Psalm ninety fourteen is a glorious
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  word of God to his children in the midst of their troubles in this real
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  world. And I pray that you and I Tonian, all of our listeners
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  would take hold of it and ring out of it every cup of blessing that
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  we need, indeed squeezed out like a sponge dipped in the river of God's
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  delights. I love that image, Thank you, Pastor John. And one
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  of those texts that is in your IOUs acrostic in that one minute prayer that
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  you pray before reading your Bible in the morning, which you can read more
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  about in that new APJ book on pages sixteen and seventeen. Well, John
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  Piper is an industrious writer, so we get a lot of questions from writers
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  about how to write better? How do I write a sentence? That's the
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  next question up in that line of questions. I'm always Tony RANKI. We'll
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  see you on Thursday.