Daily devotion – As the deer thirsts…
Psa 42:1 To the Chief Musician. A Contemplation of the sons of Korah. As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.
It was a time of drought and the writer of this blessed psalm saw a female deer (hind) panting and struggling to reach water to quench her thirst.
God has given to each of us a thirst that needs to be quenched. An insatiable drive for the water of life to cease the anguish and pain that this type of thirst brings.
I have had in my life; I believe just one dream that I could actually call a nightmare. I was a young boy at the time and was sharing a room with my next older brother who had not left home as yet.
The nightmare I had was that I found myself laying on the floor with an incredible raging thirst. I felt as if I was going to die from lack of drinking such was the insatiable drive my body had at that time that needed to drink to quench this thirst. It was unbearable. I tried calling out to my brother, but he simply stepped over me and did not bother to help me by getting me a drink. So, I lay there getting thirstier and thirstier.
When I awoke from that time, I castigated my brother big time by admonishing him and demanding why he didn’t get me a drink when I was dying of thirst. Off course, he knew nothing about my dream and just shook his head in bewilderment. But from that day I have since known what I believe it would be like to be dying of thirst and not able to quench it.
It is significant that Jesus proclaimed Himself as the Water of Life – Jhn 6:35 And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
Jhn 7:37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.
As with the seasons, there are times in our lives when we seem to come to a place of bareness. As if we are living in a spiritual drought of some kind.
In my life when going through such, they have been times where God is seeking for me to grow and mature. Growing pains, you might say.
For when such moments hit me, they cause me to turn even more so to God’s Word, to seek God’s face and ask Him what I am to learn at this moment. Why is it that God has allowed this dryness to come that I need to learn.
The beauty always is at such times, when I have panted like the deer and sought the Lord through His Word, that the drought breaks, and I am flooded with a newness of how great God is to me.
How He personally had allowed such a time to fall on my life because I needed to grow, to mature, and come to am even greater knowledge of His love for me and for my trust in Him to be stronger still.
Maybe you find yourself today like that deer. You are panting and needing some fresh cool beautiful water from the River of Life. If so, learn from Him at this time and the leading of His Holy Spirit in your life.
Call upon the name of the Lord, as you read His Word, ask God to show you why you have a thirst at this moment. As God answers your prayer, the flood of the River of Life will wash over you. You will see God’s hand has been carefully moulding your life, changing you into His image and growing in you a greater awareness of how much He loves you.
I thirst for the Lord each day now. Not in a drought like mindset, but each day I want God to pour into my life His sweet water.
Our thirst is to know Christ more and more each day.
Remember His promise to you – “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.”