When was the last time you were really thirsty? I mean lips-parched, throat-ablaze, tongue-stuck-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth thirsty. I mean all-consuming, dying–for-a-drink thirsty?
Have you ever been that thirsty?
Thirsty For Water
One day last week I came close.
I had a good podcast to feed my mind and green fields for my eyes. A few miles out, I reached for my water bottle.
I groped, actually.
Because I had no water bottle.
How could I forget? I chided myself. Should I head back?
Finish the course. I answered. You can ride 15 miles without water.
I’d swallow hard and lick my lips when thirst surged. That worked until cottonmouth hit and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Wierd how fierce thirst and force of habit keep me groping for a water bottle that’s not here.
Soon I was deaf to the podcast and blind to the scenery. All I could think of was water—ieven a sip from the ditch. I was consumed with thirst.
Somehow I made it back. My kick up the driveway was a more glorious ending to me than a Tour de France victory.
But in this Yeti-Owala-Hydro Flask crazed culture, that kind of thirst is unfamiliar to many of us. Admittedly, my thirst was partly self-imposed. I could have turned around and been thirsty for the six miles rather than 18.
But that ride taught me a lot about thirst.
Thirsty For God
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1
Everybody’s got a hungry heart, and thirsty soul too.
Every single one of us is thirsty for love and searching for significance. Each soul longs to feel its worth. But the thirst for God himself is a thirst is peculiar to Christians.
The most vital question to ask about all who claim to be Christian is this: Have they a soul thirst for God? … Do they press forward more and more that they might know Him?
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Thirst for God defines the Chistian. The 19th-century English minister Alexander MacLaren wrote before Lloyd-Jones,
Blessed are they who know where the fountain is…and can go on to say, ‘My soul thirsts for God!’ That is religion. There is a great deal more in Christianity than longing, but there is no Christianity worth the name without it...
Dear friends! if you have found out that God is your supreme good, see to it that you live in the constant attitude of longing for more of that good which alone will slake [satisfy] your appetite.
See to it. Long for that good. Cultivate your thirst.
Cultivate Your Thirst
We can cultivate the thirst. In fact, we must cultivate thirst for God by suppressing lesser desires. If we don’t, MacLaren says, our longing will break off into a thousand little channels–Facebook and football and fitness and food and feven amily channels. And all these little rivers will divert the holy flow.
We won’t feel thirsty for God.
Dear friends! Let us not forget that these higher aspirations after God have to be cultivated… with great persistence, throughout all our changing lives, or they will soon die out, and leave us…A man who lets all his longings go unchecked and untamed after earthly good has none left towards heaven. If you break up a river into a multitude of channels, and lead off much to irrigate many little gardens… it will never reach the great ocean…
The soul who thirst for God and his righteousness will be satisfied (Matthew 5:6). Then that same soul immediately renews its quest.
We are at once thirsty for God and satisfied in Him.
Thirsty and Satisfied…
Like a sliver of brownie from the edge of the pan that becomes a slab and then a whole pan, a little is not enough. We want more.
MacLaren again, on how a thirsting for God is a little like that for “the more we have of God, the more we long for Him, and the more we long for Him the more we possess Him.“
That helps me understand Psalm 63, how the thirsty soul in verse 1 becomes the satisfied soul in verse 5: “My soul thirsts for you… My soul is satisfied with you.”
The more we have of him, the more we long for Him. And isn’t this how it is with the best of friends?
…And Thirstier Still
Can’t we can spend time with loved ones and both be satisfied and be “thirstier” for more sweet time together? To be with best of friends both quenches and kindles, satisfies and makes us thirst for more.
When will I see you again? is how time with my best friends ends. This helps me “get” what David felt for God on the run in the wilderness. He thirsted for God and God quenched his thirst so that his soul was more satisfied than even the most lavish feast.
What then?
David grew thirstier still. Beg your pardon for quoting MacLaren one last time,
The two things come together, longing and fruition [satisfaction] … Fruition begets longing, and there is swift and blessed…co-existence of the two.
This is a blessed back and forth of thirst and satisfaction, a co-existence of the two.
God Intends to Keep You Thirsting
I love how Eric Alexander ends his message, “Thirsting For God,”
God in his great mercy by every conceivable means is going to set to work in our souls to set us thirsting after him. Sometimes that may mean…depriving you of the comforts and blessings of life sometimes even a conscious awareness of his blessing upon you, as with David. You might find yourself brought into a desert place, barren, wilderness.
But you know the one thing you can keep hold on and be absolutely certain of is that God intends to keep you thirsting for his glory.
David wrote Psalm 63 when he was in the wilderness fleeing for his life from a rebellious son who would take his life and steal his kingdom. And it was there that David’s soul thirsted so.
This is why barren places are blessed. Jon Bloom says,
They teach us both to want most and to seek most what we need most. This is a painful gift of priceless worth, because it drives us like nothing else to the only fountain that will quench our soul-thirst.
Water and water only could satisfy my thirst that July day. Our loving Lord wants us desperate and thirsty for him. For him alone.
But he might take us into a wilderness to get us thirsty for him.
Are You In The Wilderness?
For months, a dear friend has had serious sleep trouble. She sleeps for two or three hours and then she’s awake for the rest of the night. She’s tried all the insomnia cures.
She told me how hard it is to be a good mom and cheerful wife with so little sleep and wondered,
Why wouldn’t God grant me sleep for them?
I don’t know why.
But we prayed and after Amen, my fatigued friend offered,
Maybe better than a rested mom, God wants me here, desperate for him.
Maybe.
God does send his dear children to the wilderness. His Beloved Son with whom he was well pleased?
Off to the wilderness (Mark 1:11-12).
Adulterous Israel?
Off to the wilderness.
“Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her.” (Hosea 2:14)
Judah, his people, the apple of his eye?
Exiled in Babylon. But, they found grace in the wilderness (Jeremiah 31:2).
We feel thirsty in the wilderness, or in Wisconsin on a waterless bicycle in July.
I Thirst
Once upon a time Jesus said, “I thirst.” He was in excruciating pain when he did. But he drank the cup of God’s wrath so that we could have an eternal, thirst-quenching relationship with him forever. The prophet Isaiah wrote, Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.
That is our Suffering Servant. Because he thirsted and was satisfied, we too thirst and are satisfied.
And get thirstier still.
Yes, pine for thy God, fainting soul! ever pine;
Oh, languish mid all that life brings thee of mirth;
Famished, thirsty, and restless — let such life be thine —
For what sight is to heaven, desire is to earth.
Frederick Faber
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out,
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”
John 7:37
