“As the deer pants after the water brooks, So pants my soul for You O God. 2. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before Him.” NKJV
All of us understand what thirst is. If you have ever been thirsty for any length of time without being able to get something to drink, you understand the importance of thirst. What the psalmist is writing about here is a thirst for God. He wrote, “So pants my soul for You.” His longing for God came from the deepest part of himself. The question that we need to ask in our affluent society is that with all of the things that we are “thirsty” for, are we really thirsty for God? I want to share some thoughts that came to me about what we should thirst for in our thirst for God that would satisfy our souls. There is the thirst for the presence of God. When Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life and died on the cross, He promised us that He would be with us all of the time – “till the end of the ages…” He promised His disciples in John’s gospel that He would send the Holy Spirit to live in them, and in us as well. This is a spiritual reality, but there are still times when we feel that God is not as close to us as we need. We need to remind ourselves that the fault is ours, because He is always with us. This is when we should keenly feel this thirst for the presence of God. We need to go immediately to God in prayer in order to realize that closeness. In the latter part of verse 2 the psalmist wrote: “When shall I come and appear before Him.” This appears to me to be a longing for the presence of God. If Jesus is not your Savior, you can have that closeness by asking Him to be your Savior and He will give you His presence through the Holy Spirit. If you are a Christian, you have that closeness and your thirst can be satisfied completely. There is the thirst for His empowerment. Jesus promised His disciples that when He ascended to the Father, they would “receive the power of the Holy Spirit, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” We have been promised the same empowerment. The question is do we really use the power that Jesus makes available to us? I think that we will use it when we develop a real thirst to use it. This empowerment was offered so that we could be witnesses for the Lord. I feel this thirst when I preach. I also feel this thirst when I read articles like the one I am doing now. I pray that God will use my preaching to help people know of their need for Jesus, or for them to realize their responsibility of serving Him. I get excited when writing these articles for CouchPotatoRedux, because I don’t know who is going to read them, or where those who read them will be located in the world. I am thirsty for His power in my daily walk as I encounter people . We need to be thirsty for the power of the Holy Spirit to be at work in our lives in the use of our spiritual gifts. There is the thirst for the realization of God’s great love for us. I think sometimes that we do not realize the profundity of that love for us. It is a love that surpasses anything that we can know from people. It is a love that we have, although we do not really deserve it. I know that God loves me, but I have to admit that there are times that the reality of His love is not as evident in my life as at other times. I realize that this is my problem, not God’s. He loves me, and He loves you at all times. But we need to develop a thirst for that love and be aware of it every day of our lives. We should also be thirsty to speak about that love to people. We should be thirsty to help people know that God loves them. What joy that would bring to their lives. So many people out there feel unloved; therefore, they need for us to share that love with them, and create a thirst for God’s love for their own lives. If you are thirsty, what are you thirsty for? Is it for God, for His presence, His empowerment and His love? Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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