Thirst

This post  is an excerpt from the first chapter of a book called “A Thirst for God” by  Sherwood Eliot Wirt.  I first read it several years ago and am reading it again.  It is hard to find now….might be out of print.  So I wanted to share some of it…I pray it will cause you to think deeply and be blessed.

Psalm 42

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my food day and night, While they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"
These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.

For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the help of His presence.

O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

 Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.

The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me in the night, A prayer to the God of my life.

 I will say to God my rock, "Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?"

 As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, While they say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

If we are thirsty deer, that is a good sign….The 42^nd Psalm pictures a spent deer in an exhausting, dehydrating situation.

The Psalmist says, “That’s where I am.  I am the deer.” 

What is his problem? 

It is the perennial problem of the unsatisfied human spirit in its thirst for God. 

The Psalmist is:

...driven by the pursuit of God,
             ...goaded by the longing for God,
                           ...and he will be satisfied by nothing less than a
                                               direct confrontation with the Almighty…

                                  He wants God himself….

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Today it seems the Christian church is ready to cry out to God.  But not for ‘union’ with him—it hardly knows what that means.  The church senses uneasily that it is being choked by its club life.  It is drowning in decaffeinated coffee.  It knows something is wrong, that there is more to life in the Spirit than what it has been getting.  But it hasn’t yet isolated the problem. 

                               …God’s causes have replaced God.

So millions of Christians are asking--

      ‘Where are you, Lord?...

   ... My soul is dry.  

            ...Reading the Bible leaves me with a flat taste.
                               ...I still believe, but the church bit has gone stale.
     ... I’m bored.  
              ...I’ve heard everything, heard it until I’m sick of it.  
                       ...How can I cut across this dreary desert and find you?”

…We might ask, too, why it is that so many of us seem to take our troubles into the pew on Sunday...and bring them home again.  We are quite aware that whatever it is our souls are doing…they are not panting after God.  Yet we wish to be captivated.  We wish in our hearts to be drunk with the wine of the Spirit. 

Blaise Pascal wrote,

            “There was once in man a true happiness, of which there now remains

    to him only an empty trace which he vainly tries to fill out of his

              environment.  Yet all these efforts are inadequate, because the infinite
              abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is, by

    God himself.”

We want to know the One who made us,

     ...and why he made us,

         ...and why he set us on this strange planet,

            ...and what he intends to do with us. 

We want to know if there is anything he can do with his church—
                or should we bypass it and let it go its antique way?

We know of course that there is more to Christian discipleship than falling on our faces before the altar. 

But many of us have never fallen on our faces before anything. 

                            We’ve just fallen, period. 

So we want to know how to get rid of the things that keep pushing us back and hindering us from following Jesus. 

                           Lord!   Teach us to pant!

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

John 7:37  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.

Revelation 22:17  The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." Let anyone who hears this say, "Come." Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life.

Matthew- 5:6  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.