I have an odd obsession about water. I must, under no exception, have a water bottle with me at all times. Yes, I know, a bit “non compos mentis,” but true nonetheless. I cannot recall when such infatuation started, but I know it was fully entrenched by high school.
I think it had something to do with a desire to never be thirsty. You know what I mean. You’re sitting in a room where you cannot politely excuse yourself and without warning – wham! – an overwhelming desire to quench a parched mouth. So to never be in such a horrific and nightmarish situation, I carry a water bottle…everywhere. I’ve noticed that my fascination with water has overflowed beyond mere water bottles. I have a fountain in my room, ocean waves on my ipod, and I absolutely must stop what I’m doing to smell the air if rain is a’pouring. There is just something about water. If I was to have a nightmare, it would be stranded in the middle of the Sahara with no water for hundreds of miles. I have never experienced “dying of thirst,” and I don’t even want to imagine it. Even the thought has caused me to grab and gulp my Nalgene.
Psalm 42.1 declares “As the deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” This deer’s longing and desperation is for the water in the stream. You could say it is the deer’s hunger and obsession, addiction and compulsion, its one driving force and focus. Water. Like a man stranded in the Sahara who pants, faints and cries out for a single drop, so too this deer yearns for the stream. Water.
Are you that desperate, thirsty, insane, craving with dire obsession for Jesus? Are you like the deer whose sole satisfaction is found in the stream? The man, who even after his fill, longs for one more cup of such pure and blissful drink? Is Jesus your sole source of delight, fulfillment and life? Are you thirsty for Him to fill you … and make you thirsty for more of Him? Tozer once made this profound statement: “O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more…. I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still, that so I may know Thee indeed.”
Does your soul pant for Jesus? Are you thirsty for Him, the living God?