Have you ever been thirsty? I’m not talking about ordinary thirst, you know, the kind you can quench with a quick drink of water. Rather, I’m talking about the aching, desperate, so dry thirst that you just can’t stand it kind of thirst. It’s the kind of thirst that if you don’t get a drink in a short amount of time, your body is going to dry up and start looking like an old dried-up raisin?
I found myself in that situation one day…back when I used to run daily. I was traveling and had arrived at my hotel in Phoenix, AZ in the middle of the afternoon. For some reason, I thought it would make sense to go for a run, while it was 107 degrees outside. And I must say, the bellman warned me that if I wasn’t acclimated to the dryness of the desert, that I needed to take water with me. But unfortunately, I decided that I would be fine and didn’t heed his advice. Well, long story short, within about 20 minutes, I was so thirsty and so overheated, that I thought I was going to collapse.
As Rev. Billy Graham would say, “I was seeing things that I know not of” but in my case, they were hallucinations of cool, clear water. The good news is that I managed to make it back, and when I did, I must have drank a couple of gallons trying to quench that thirst. All of that said, I know what it feels like to thirst….and I know there truly is nothing on this earth today, that can quench the sort of thirst that comes from your soul.
In the Bible, Psalm 42 begins with an image that portrays our need for God as desperate thirst. It pictures a deer in dry country, longing for “streams of water.” The rest of the psalm explains the cause of the psalmist’s yearning and as he suffers, his enemies taunt and oppress him. When he wonders if God has forgotten him, his opponents scoff, “Where is this God of yours?” (v. 10). Thus, the psalmist’s thirst for God comes both from his own pain and from a nagging fear that God isn’t there for him.
Undoubtedly, we all go through “thirsts” in our lives like those described in Psalm 42, when life is excruciating, and God feels terribly distant. But the good news is, when our thirst for the Lord is extreme, we certainly can find encouragement in the promise of Jesus to give us living water, water that quenches our deep need for the Lord:
Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14 NKJV)
Do you find yourself thirsting for Jesus? I am sure each of us have at one time or another. But remember the Good News: Jesus has promised us that He will never leave nor forsake us, and therefore, we know that we each have access to His living waters every day of our life. We just need to seek Him in all that we do, never allowing ourselves to wander into the deserts of life.
Remember, Jesus Loves You and So Do I!!
Pastor Jeff