“My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Ps. 63:1)
For years I have read this verse and marveled at David’s passion for God. How he draws such a beautiful analogy, comparing God with water and the condition of his soul with a parched and arid desert. What a spiritual giant David was! O, to have that depth of spiritual desire!
However, not long ago I woke up on morning around
We know that ultimately the deep longings of our soul has only one true source of satisfaction. My soul thirsts for Thee. After testing many avenues, had David come to a greater realization of what his heart had truly been yearning for all along?
Think about it. Often, when our hearts are denied love, fulfillment, significance; we experience an emptiness; a hollowness in our souls. The thing we really yearn for is not all the failed substitutes our flesh may turn to. What we truly hunger and yearn for is God, Himself. Jesus is the Living Water we thirst for in a dry and weary land.
“Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'" (Jn. 7:37-38)
So, if God Himself is the One we truly hunger for, why would not we, as David, live in constant awareness of this intense hunger? My guess is that, much like Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, our flesh teaches us early in life to experiment with a variety of substitutes. As children our natural desire for God is often pure and unfettered. Yet over the years the temptation of worldly substitutes can serve to deaden and muffle the natural cry of our heart for the Living God.
Jeremiah notes the natural inclination of the human heart. In Jeremiah
“My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
It is this fleshly process that can effectively harden our heart and deafen our ears. Sadly, over time, the passionate love God originally planted in our heart may recede to a faint echo. That is why a sudden crisis or tragedy can often serve to awaken this inner need. It is when we are starved of counterfeits that our true hunger can once again emerge.
What if we called an all-out fast on anything that might dull our hunger for God? What if we starved ourselves of any influence or distraction or substitute that might dull our natural thirst for Him? Isn’t it time we rejected our self-made cisterns; broken cisterns that can hold no water, and exchange our counterfeits for the Living Water. My soul thirsts for Thee.
