ARE YOU THIRSTY?  

ARE YOU THIRSTY?  

Psalms 63 NET.

A psalm of David, written when he was in the Judean wilderness. ¹ O God, you are my God! I long for you! My soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. ² Yes, in the sanctuary I have seen you, and witnessed your power and splendor. ³ Because experiencing your loyal love is better than life itself, my lips will praise you. ⁴ For this reason I will praise you while I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. ⁵ As if with choice meat you satisfy my soul. My mouth joyfully praises you, ⁶ whenever I remember you on my bed, and think about you during the nighttime hours. ⁷ For you are my deliverer; under your wings I rejoice. ⁸ My soul pursues you; your right hand upholds me. ⁹ Enemies seek to destroy my life, but they will descend into the depths of the earth. ¹⁰ Each one will be handed over to the sword; their corpses will be eaten by jackals. ¹¹ But the king will rejoice in God; everyone who takes oaths in his name will boast, for the mouths of those who speak lies will be shut up.

Seven years ago, when Penny and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail, we had a night when we lacked drinkable water. We traveled over a thousand miles, but that was the only night I recall having trouble finding water. Usually, there’s a stream, spring, pond, or river nearby where we hike. However, that night I saw some deer, and I was so thirsty that I followed them to see if they would lead me to water. They did, but it was just a puddle, and the water looked very yellow. Despite our thirst, we couldn’t bring ourselves to drink it, so we poured it out. The next day, we came off the mountain and into a city. The first place we stopped, I drank so much! I couldn’t get enough. I remember that day when I read David’s experience here.

David wrote this when he was thirsty for God.

He is in the Judean desert, and he describes it as “a land that is dry, desolate, and without water.” But David sings about gazing not on a stream, lake, or river, but on God’s sanctuary. He is thirsty for the presence of God. His experience with living in a place where water was scarce serves as a symbol for the thirst he was experiencing as he writes this psalm. He is thirsty, but not for the water you can get out of a faucet. He is thirsty for the real and powerful presence of God in his life.

He had experienced God’s active presence in his life before. He talks about being in the sanctuary and seeing God, witnessing his power and splendor. But it was not just God’s greatness that impressed him at those times. He also experienced God’s goodness, particularly his loyal love. That is how this version translates the Hebrew word חֶסֶד that we have encountered several times in our walk through the Old Testament so far this year. It speaks of God’s loyalty he shows to his covenant. He is loyal to the agreement he made with the ancestors of the Israelites – the Patriarchs. He is also faithful to the descendants of the Patriarchs because even though they have strayed away from that covenant many times, his love for them and his own integrity demand that he remain loyal to it, and to them.

To David, his relationship with God is better than life itself. An authentic relationship with God can do that to a person. It can make a person seek God above all other pursuits. It can make a person thirsty for the kind of water that Jesus said would make a person never thirst again.

Jesus encountered a woman in a Samaritan village who was looking for that kind of relationship with God. She didn’t know that was what she needed, but he knew. He came to the well and asked her for a drink. But the real reason he was at the well was that she needed a drink—not from the well, but from the living water that only He could provide.

The prophet Isaiah spoke the heart of God when he wrote, “Hey, all who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come! Buy and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk without money and without cost! Why pay money for something that will not nourish you? Why spend your hard-earned money on something that will not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is nourishing! Enjoy fine food! Pay attention and come to me! Listen so that you can live! Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David (Isaiah 55:1-3). As God’s prophet, Isaiah appealed to all who recognize their need for a relationship with God to come to him, because he is available. A real relationship with God is available, and it does not cost anything. It is free because the God of the Bible does not need anything that you and I might own, because he owns everything. So, we have to approach God and ask for this great gift on only one basis. We need it, and God offers it on the basis of his divine grace.

Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well repeated the same message. He used the imagery of thirst because it was a clear metaphor for what this woman was truly facing. She had many men over time, but she had no husband. She was an outcast, never fitting in, which is why she chose to go to the well during the heat of the day when no one else would be there. She had a whole village around her, but she was lonely. What happened when she decided to listen to her thirst? She chose to drink from Jesus Christ himself, the Messiah. Suddenly, she was satisfied—so much so that her attitude changed completely. She became an evangelist, urging others in her village to come and see Christ as well.

When Jesus stood and spoke at the Feast of Tabernacles, he made the same invitation to everyone who would listen. He said if anyone was thirsty, they could come to him and drink. The truth is, we are all thirsty for this, whether we think we are or not. When John commented on Jesus’s statement, he said that Jesus was referring to the Holy Spirit. He took it as a reference to the miracle of Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit appeared visibly and the church was born.

But I want to ask a fundamental question here because someone might assume that now that we are living post-Pentecost, the Spirit has arrived, and the church has been established, the offer no longer applies. My question is this:

Are you feeling needs you cannot meet?

I’m not asking if you have ever asked Jesus into your heart. I’ll assume most of you did that a long time ago. I’m not even going to ask if you have ever had any experience with the Holy Spirit in your life. Most of you can probably recall a time when the Holy Spirit spoke to you clearly and made a difference in your life. My question is more about all the doors to your house that you might not have thought about opening to God. I don’t know about your home, but I know that in my house, I have rooms I keep more presentable because they are rooms someone might reasonably enter. I also have rooms that are mainly for storage. I don’t spend much time making those rooms look nice because nobody sees them.

Our spiritual lives can become that way, too. We might keep up a respectable religious appearance that everyone notices, but there are parts of our lives we choose not to share with others because doing so might bring us shame. That’s why my question is quite open-ended. “Are you feeling needs you cannot meet?” Some of us might have a strong Christian life in most areas, but we might still have areas where we haven’t allowed God access. We might have needs that we have always considered too shameful to seek God to fulfill. A follow-up question might be:

Are those needs giving you a thirst for God?

If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us would admit that we rarely consider letting God handle many of our deepest needs. He is holy, and many things that truly disturb us we see as unholy, even profane. We’ve learned to compartmentalize ourselves. We tell God he can have us for an hour or two on Sunday, but the rest of our time is reserved for someone else. Could it be that the reason we’re still thirsty for the same things after all these years in Christ is that we refuse to trust him with those needs?

Isaiah challenged all of us to seek the LORD while he makes himself available; to call to him while he is nearby! He said that the wicked refuse to do that because it would mean abandoning their lifestyle and their plans. Here, he identifies the root cause of the lack of revival in 21st-century Christianity. God does not revive us because so much of the way we live reflects a dependence on something else besides the Holy Spirit. It does not have to be a bad thing in itself. All it has to do is take the place of the presence of God in our lives.

I’m reminded of the story of the little boy in Sunday School. His teacher asked him what is gray, lives in trees, and collects acorns. The boy said, “I know the answer is Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me.” Our problem is not the same as that little boy’s problem. We don’t know that the answer is Jesus. We have all these needs that we are looking for the answer to, but we think those needs are off limits to Jesus. But Jesus himself proclaimed that he is the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus calls for all who thirst to come to him.

From the most fabulous kings to the lowest servants, we all need an active relationship with God. It’s what we thirst for even when we don’t realize we’re thirsty. But now and then, one of us becomes like David in today’s psalm. We finally recognize that we long for God himself—our souls hunger for him.

The thing about thirst is that it makes you look outside yourself. You might go through your day, handling everything you need to do, but then you start to feel thirsty. You can’t convince yourself to ignore it. You can’t wish your thirst away. Your focus simplifies. Water is what you need, and your eyes turn toward finding a water source. You decide to obey your thirst – not for Sprite, but for God.

The 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal spoke about a God-shaped vacuum in every person’s heart. Augustine prayed, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” That is why we all thirst for God. His creation reveals His existence, and His word shows what He desires. Every day, you and I meet people who live anxious lives, searching for something they don’t fully understand. But we have met the Savior, and He is what they need. We have the living water within us, and they are dying of thirst. 

LORD, teach us how to share your Holy Spirit with our thirsty world.