The Only One Who Satisfies - Soul Care | Week 3 | A.C. Caswell

Jul 13, 2026

Devotional

Sermon Summary

Bible Study Guide

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52s
#SatisfactionInSavior
“We dream and plan and prepare and save and and think about the next adventure that we're going to take, we finally get there and then we get to the last day and we wish, gosh. I think I could use, like, one or two more days. We get home, and and we're almost worse off because we're depressed that we're not on vacation anymore. There's a lot of people that are gonna be depressed next week because they're not here today. See, the reality is is that so often we we think we know what's gonna bring us this sense of peace, this sense of wholeness, completion, satisfaction. But the point and the big idea for today is that lasting satisfaction is not found in our circumstances but in our savior.”
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44s
#SeekGodAboveAll
“That's what David is doing in his prayer. First and foremost, God, I come to you because I am seeking you and you above all things, not a change in my circumstances, not a relationship I wish I had, God, I need you. I thirst for you. My soul longs for you. How did he get there? How did David learn to experience that? Reality is that we all should be like that. See, we are created with an inherent longing to be in union with our creator, And prayer is a step through the door to coming home to our heavenly father.”
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48s
#RememberGodsFaithfulness
“But even more powerful than that is being able to look back. And now from my vantage point in life, seeing in those seasons where there's been real challenges, real uncertainties, real convictions, real problems. Wow. God has been so faithful. God is good even in the midst of the reality of real life. God will be faithful again because I can look back, I can have confidence in my presence. With confidence in my presence, I can be hopeful for the future. This is the the beauty that journaling has has shown me is I get to see not just a moment how I'm feeling in a day, but the plan that God is working out over a season.”
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38s
#NighttimePrayer
“Your right hand upholds me. What what David's describing is not just in public setting like in this where we sing and we hear somebody talk and and teach the scriptures, but also when we're we're we're by ourselves. In the middle of the night, he's inviting us into his bed as he tosses and turns through his anxieties and fears and wrestles through the things that are weighing on his mind and on his heart. He's showing us he continues to cry out to God. He continues to take it to him. He continues to remind himself of the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, the steadfast love that he has experienced, that he's confident he will experience again in one way or another.”
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50s
#PrayerIsSeekingGod
“What is the point of prayer? What's the purpose? What do we point our prayers to? Why would we pray? David has the opportunity to write these words to to poetically declare to God something that he's experiencing and he doesn't start with God, rescue me. He doesn't start with God, change my circumstances. God, please, I ask you to just make this different. Help me. He starts with declaring to God who he is. He starts with describing his thirst for God, a connection that he longs for. See, prayer is oftentimes just construed. It's it's confusing. It's challenging. Most of us probably struggle with prayer.”
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40s
#PersistenceThroughFaith
“And I can be reminded of how I felt that day and how I felt the next day and how I felt a few months later. That's what David is describing. Hey, I've lived long enough to see God pull me through some amazing things and some terrible things, And I know that whatever my circumstances are, God is the one that I thirst for. God is the one that I seek. God is the one that I need. That empowers him. That's our third point. It empowers him for persistence in peril.”
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46s
#EternalLongingNotStuff
“Whatever it was, I want you to remember that for just a moment. Think about the way it tasted, the way it made you feel, the experience of the atmosphere, all of that in that one single meal. Is anybody not gonna eat lunch today because of that meal you had in the past? No. Of course not. Because you're hungry, which is why you should go to cookout Sunday, but not my point here. What I'm getting at is we we so often put all of our efforts, all of our time and energy into trying to get something like like a meal, but it's these temporary pleasures that we're trying to use to satisfy eternal longings. And so when we finally get to them, we we want something else. We want something new. We want something more. What do we do with that? And what's in us that that we're trying to ultimately satisfy?”
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59s
#TrustGodInBetrayal
“Now I know it's pretty gruesome, but this is supposed to be a message of hope. See what David is describing and we're reminded that he's not just like a a king on the throne who's praising God for in his glory because of all the success he's experienced. He's had those moments in his life, but in this time, he's in the depths of Sheol. Right? Like, this is like hard. Life is challenging. He is a real enemy who is seeking to take his life, and it's his son. Can you imagine the confusion and frustration he must be experiencing? Right? Another enemy, he might fight back. Another enemy, he might just just run away and and leave it forever, but what he's seeing here is his very own son become the aggressor to take his life. What's he supposed to do? He doesn't know, but he knows that God does in real life circumstances.”
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59s
#SabbathAndCommunity
“That's why we do this. That's why we have our kids worshiping in in their classes and hearing the gospel being proclaimed by their volunteers. That's why we have Espanol service so that they could do that in the in their, like, mother tongue. Right? The language that might be most close to their heart. That's why we continue to to raise up other volunteers who serve and like, on this team, it's incredible how many people serve just out of out of the gifts that God has given them and a desire to lead us in gathering and worshiping and singing, and we are called to do this in a regular rhythm. The old testament word for it is Sabbath, which means like to stop, to rest. It's an opportunity for us to each week reflect and say, am not God, but there is a God and he is good. And to do that together with others, to remind one another in the midst of whatever our circumstances, whether we are celebrating or mourning, that God is at work, that he is alive, that he is living and active and we are doing this together right now.”
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68s
#MadeToWorshipTogether
“And the first way that we praise is publicly. We don't do this just for, like, fun. Like we have a staff at our church not just to like keep a few people busy throughout the week but we do this because we are created for it. We are made for this and our souls long to come together. Right? There is a reason that music stirs us. There is a reason that the words that we sing, these are declarations to God first and foremost of who he is. And then as others are joining in, we begin to hear them also bearing that testimony. One of my favorite things is sitting in the very front because I get to hear everybody singing along. Alright? And whether you're on key or off key, I'm not gonna tell you, but, like, just the participation of it, the congregation, the gathering of God's people, the ecclesia, the church coming together and singing his glory, singing praises to him. We are made for this. To experience his presence, to experience the spirit working among us, and there's something unique and special when we come together in a group of believers that we get to experience that together as one.”
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41s
#SoulThirstForGod
“And David absolutely has that opportunity, but instead, he starts with this. Oh god, you are my god. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Look, we live in Phoenix, and we can gloss over the idea of being thirsty, but let's just take a moment to really think about that. What does it mean to thirst? What does it feel like? Not just in our mouths, but like in us. This longing to to to bring satisfaction to us, the satiated like, the need to satiate it, to to drink water.”
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47s
#OnlyGodSatisfies
“the constant thirst that that creates when you're just out in the sun all afternoon and then in the mornings and then you're working out and you're just trying to do all of these things and and just the sense in which, like, you can never get enough water. Like, I remember 15 year old kids carrying milk jugs full of water in class, like, just drinking constantly and needing to fill it up and drinking more. And like because you're out in the sun in the desert, you're just so thirsty. There's this sense of longing that David is experiencing, the sense that he knows only God can satisfy. He's crying out to him in the midst of his peril, right, in the midst of his circumstances, in the midst of the challenges that he faces which are real and dangerous.”
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40s
#PrayerForChange
“Would you please come through and change this thing right now that I don't like that's causing me pain, that's challenging, confusing, or frustrating? Would you just change those circumstances and then I'll be able to do the things that I feel like you want me to do? Then I'll be able to live the life like I feel like you want me to live. Then I'll be able to obey. we look at prayers as this, like, conversation, but really it's more of just us going to God and asking him to change something about our lives. Going to God and ask him to give us something. Going to God to ask him to to make things better for us in the way that we define better.”
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70s
#PraiseBuildsCommunity
“There's a public praise and there's purpose in that for changing us, convicting us, challenging us, encouraging us, equipping us, and leading us to deeper and richer faith together. It's God's purpose and plan. That's why we do cookout Sunday. Like, like, you may or may not like hot dogs, but it's an opportunity for us to connect with others. It's an opportunity for us to spend just twenty minutes or thirty minutes talking to somebody else that maybe we haven't had a conversation with. Maybe it's a a way for us to reconnect with someone that we we were talking to but we haven't seen in a few weeks or or so. It's an opportunity for us to build community that goes beyond the walls of a service because we want people to be in relationships with one another like iron sharpening iron, encouraging each other in our faith. We do that when we sing together in the congregation, we do that when we meet together in small groups, we do that in our homes, when we have dinners together. That's what we're called to do and our souls begin to be satisfied when we make that investment.”
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69s
#SingThroughSuffering
“When we sing, we get to declare God's glory. We sing praises to him, bear witness to one another, and that's despite our circumstances. Every single one of us is facing challenges. Every single one of us is is struggling through some type of decision that we have to make or the regret of a decision we already made. Every single one of us has suffered loss and grief and mourning, and maybe this season seems better than the last season, but we all know what it feels like to have pain. Let's just be honest, and let's sing like we know those things. But we as as leaders, like as pastors, directors, we meet every week. We pray for our church, and our church is experiencing you are experiencing some amazing things in your lives and some really, really hard and challenging things in your lives. And everybody volunteering is experiencing that. People on stage, we don't all just, like, have it together so we get to be up here. Like, some of the people on our stage are gonna be experiencing the worst things in their lives and yet they praise God because they also feel compelled to love him and to lead others to love him in the midst of that.”
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63s
#EternalHopeInGod
“``Look, I don't know your boss. I don't know what mistakes you made last night or last year that you're still carrying the shame or weight of. I don't know if your doctor doesn't know what to do with the diagnosis you just received. I don't know. But I know that God is faithful. I know that our souls are made with an emptiness that is only satisfied by his fullness because he is eternal. And he has invited us into a relationship through his son, our savior Jesus, that we can continue to pour out and cry out and seek him above all things. And in the midst of our circumstances, we can find peace. In the midst of our challenges, we can find joy. In the midst of our lowest points, we can find hope because there is a god who sees us and knows us and loves us and is working all things for good, maybe not always in this life. Let's be honest because that's true. But god is eternal, and he gives us an eternal hope.”
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67s
#WorshipInPeril
“Lasting satisfaction is not found in our circumstances but in our savior. Psalm 63 is written by David. He's a king of Israel. He has seen military victory. He has seen financial success, prosperity for him and for so many of his people. He has seen conquests and things go amazing, and he is in a position of power and authority and a reputation that precedes him and will outlive him because he has brought so much to the people of Israel that they praise him as the best king ever. But it's not written in the midst of any of those successes. It's written while he is being, chased down, literally fleeing for his life from his own son who wants the throne. And so he aims to take his father's life so that then he can take his power, take his authority, and be king himself. It's a circumstance of peril, of tragedy, of grief, confusion, and frustration.”
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46s
#SeekAndLeadOthers
“Sing together with that in mind. Let me pray. God, thank you so much for your for your, grace to give us the opportunity to sing, to lift up your praises, to trust that you are a God who's faithful, to know that you are God who brings transformation in circumstances, whether it be in this life or the next, that above all things that you are a god who is with us through it all. God, we pray that you would help us to recognize the thirst that our souls have to be with you and to seek you out because of it, that at the forefront of our lives, the epitome of what we do and strive for is to be in connection and relationship with you, and we'd be able to lead others into that as well, father. In the mighty name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.”
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44s
#PrayerIsNotABargain
“So for some of us, prayer is confusing. It it's just this, like, rhetorical exercise. It's something that we we feel like we should be experiencing like transcendence, but we don't really even know how to start. And for others, it's kinda like a letter to Santa or it's like a bargaining tactic. We just just close our eyes and cross cross our fingers and say, God, like, if you would just help me pass this test, then I will study next time. God, if you will give me this promotion, then I'm gonna tithe. God, if you would just help me in this circumstance, then I'm gonna be a better person. God, I trust that you are gonna come through.”
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42s
#PurposeInPraise
“when God continued to raise him up and equip him to be the leader that he would become. He's reminded of the the victories that he's seen, the time that God delivered him from the hands of of his enemies, the time that God has been faithful to provide for his need. He's reminded of his deepest and gravest sins and the times that God showed him mercy and forgiveness in his repentance. And so when he writes this psalm, he's remembering the experience he's had through praise. This this is the thing. He gives us two examples. Our second point, there is purpose in praise. There's purpose in our praise.”
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