“A Story of God’s Transforming Power”
Easter Sunday April 4, 2021
I. Introduction:
A. Have any of you ever been thirsty before? I am not talking about a physical
thirst, but rather a soul thirst! A soul that craves to be satisfied?
1. A thirsty soul is the best way to describe my life before I knew Jesus
Christ.
2. All I know is that my life was driven by the need to satisfy this
unidentified nagging thirst.
a) I found myself doing all sorts of things trying to quench this thirst,
but everything came up empty, it only gave temporary satisfaction at
best, but the thirst kept coming back even stronger.
b) Jesus said in John 4:13-14
B. Today I want to tell you my story about how Jesus Christ quenched the thirst
of my soul with his living water. I shared this on Easter Sunday 24 years ago
and it is time to do it again.
II. Life before Jesus Christ
A. As a young boy I thought that I would go to heaven because I was a Catholic
and if I lived somewhat of a good life. The problem though was that I was
not a very good Catholic nor did I live a good life!
B. The real trouble started when I went away to college and all of the parental
restraints were off of me! I broke loose. I partied hardy.
1. Beer, wine, whisky, along with marijuana, hash and acid became what I
used to quench the thirst of my soul at that time!
2. I would go out and party almost every night, then sleep during the day.
Since I missed most of my classes I became a mini expert at cheating my
way through the first 3 years of college.
C. I remember one night being at a party and I was high on acid. I was walking
down the hallway and I ran into another man who I never met before who
was also high on drugs.
1. We began a conversation with one another and I discovered that we both
felt the same way. We were searching for something and we did not know
what it was.
2. We shared the common feeling that if we were at a party on the south
side something inside of us felt like we should have been at the one on the
north side. If I was with one person, something inside of me felt like I
should have been with someone else. I felt like I was always at the wrong
place, with the wrong people at the wrong time doing the wrong thing:
and to quench the thirst of my soul something had to be different.
D. In my junior year of college I transferred to Western IL Univ. A friend of
mine there was named Greg. He was the star of the baseball team, was good
looking and had a gorgeous girl friend who was a quality woman.
1. I thought “if I could just have a girl like Greg does then I know that I
would be satisfied - the thirst of my soul would be quenched.”
2. One night Greg and I went out to drink and talk.
3. As we talked, Greg told me that he had broken up with his girlfriend that
day. I was stunned! This guy had something that I thought would make
me happy and he was letting it go.
4. I said Greg, “Why did you break up with her?” He said “Pat, I had to
do it so that I could have peace of mind.” I said “peace of mind, what is
that?” He said “peace of mind is knowing that you are in the right
place, with the right people at the right time doing the right thing!
5. That hit my heart like a sledge hammer. That is what I had been looking
for, ‘peace of mind.’ This unidentified nagging thirst in my soul was a
thirst for peace, contentment and satisfaction deep down on the inside.
E. A few months later at what we called a kegger, I got seriously drunk and got
in the car and hit a tree on the way home! The car did a complete twirl
around in the air and amazingly with 6 of us in the car no one was seriously
hurt, just a few bumps and bruises.
F. This accident not only sobered me up physically but also in my soul as I
became deeply aware something was wrong inside of me and I was trying to
fix it in all the wrong ways!
1. First thing I did was go to church and try to be a better person – back to
where I started when I was growing up - religion and trying to live a good
life.
a) The problem wa
