Drink Deep, My Soul

This morning I am reflecting on Psalm 42:1-2, 7-8 NIV:

[1] "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.
[2] My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?
[7] Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
[8] By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me---a prayer to the God of my life.

I was thinking about the deep need we all have for God. There is a longing in each of our lives to know Him and to be loved by Him. It is the same internal need that causes men everywhere to worship a god, or animal, or something greater than themselves, for we have a deep longing that can only be met by something or someone greater than ourselves.

I think we have within us a need to belong, a need to know that our lives matter, a desire to connect to something greater than ourselves. Some people give themselves to causes, some to different pursuits, some to adventure, some to people groups, all of this is just a symptom of the greater longing, to connect to God (at least that is what I think). Verse 7 describes this perfectly to me; the deep (God) calling to my deep (need for God).

In our relatively shallow western lifestyle, we often times don't understand this deep flow within ourselves, so our answer is to try and find something to quench the thirst. We run after things believing they can still the hunger inside us, the thirst for the deep, but all things fall short. The problem is that this thirst, this longing, can only be filled by God. Other people, our jobs, money, food, drinks, movies, television shows, sex, drugs, adrenaline, cars, houses, none of these, not individually, nor if they were all piled together, can fulfill our deep longing.

So let us choose to drink deep from the only fountain of life that can truly satisfy. As Jesus said in John 4:13-14 NIV: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, [14] but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”