The Thirst and The Thrust

UV 3227/10000 The Thirst and The Thrust
O God, You are my God; with deepest longing I will seek You; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh longs and sighs for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Psalm 63 v 1

The desire to know God personally is the deepest longing in any human’s heart. Scripture says that God is a jealous God. We need to make Him the topmost priority of our lives and desire Him above all and above all things. There can be no competition for our attention and devotion with any other human or any other idea or material thing of this world or the world beyond. This world with all its attractions is compared with a dry and dreary desert in comparison with the Lord. Even if all the desires of our flesh are satisfied, there is an aching pain in the human heart. The thirst for God becomes the thrust or the driving force of our lives. The word or Jesus holds the water of eternal life that satisfies our souls and even the needs of our flesh are met in Him. This is the reason that when people thronged to satisfy their hungry souls, He chose to meet their physical need too by doing the miracle of multiplying the few loaves of bread and fish.

The empty philosophies and man-made religion cannot satisfy the deep longings of our souls. These can have a deceptive placebo effect for a time but we will realize in the end that we are as hungry and thirsty as before. When the Lord is the grand obsession of our lives, all of our need a la Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – our physical need, our need for security, our need for esteem and self actualization are met in Him. He fills the gaps in our resources and our aspirations, our abilities and our goals, our relationships and our happiness. Our thirst for God becomes passion and zeal, not mis-directed but guided and channelized by the Word. Whenever we feel exhausted, stressed, confused, frustrated, defeated, hopeless, we should return to the fountains of the Lord to drink deep and long from Him. He renews, reinvigorates, rejuvenates us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Instead of the spiritual dryness, our souls or our inner being will be watered by the nine rivers of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self control. When the soil is watered, it becomes ready to allow all manner of plants to take root in it and bear fruit. When our souls are watered continually by the Lord with His word, we become fruit bearing trees of faith and righteousness.