SWORD OF THE SPIRIT                                                                                               1114

“Soul Thirst”

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. –  Psalm 63:1 

Have you ever suffered the effects of severe dehydration? You feel weak and can hardly function. Your thinking becomes clouded. Your body temperature elevates and you can’t seem to catch your breath. You feel faint. Every fiber of your being becomes driven to get water.

David, in today’s reference Scripture, likens his spiritual thirst to that of the dehydration of his body. How thirsty is your soul?

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God… – Psalm 42:1-2

Let’s examine David’s thirsty prayer.

O God, you are my God – David begins his prayer by affirming that God is the one, true God and that he worships no other ‘gods’. In biblical times as is today people have divided affections in worshiping many false gods. Believers and unbelievers alike can be found praying to mother earth or other false deities. Spiritual thirst can only be satiated by Jesus.

You shall have no other gods before me; You are my witnesses… that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. – Exodus 20:3; Isaiah 43:10

earnestly I seek you – Is satisfying your soul thirst a desperate priority in your life or have you rendered your relationship with Jesus to an afterthought, when you have time? Do seek Him only when you need something? How thirsty is your soul, really?

Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually! – Psalm 105:4

…my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. – We live in a dry and weary land. We have taken prayer out of public places and have enacted laws to remove and hide references to Almighty God. In exchange, we have elevated and protected the worship of false gods. Our souls should be thirsting for righteousness like never before.

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

The people of our dry and weary land need the Living Water of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. We, the church, the Body of Christ, are commissioned to help bring those who thirst to the water of life in Jesus. We cannot do that when we have let our own soul thirst go unsatiated or worse yet attempt to satisfy our spiritual thirst with the created things of this world.

May you earnestly, desperately and continually seek to satisfy your soul thirst in Jesus Christ. Jesus said to them, “…If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink; …but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”-  John 6:35; 7:37; 4:14