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The God-Thirsty |
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by Ralph I. Tilley
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Thirst and hunger are two appetites and drives that are natural to the human condition. Man was created by God with the need to drink and eat in order to sustain his earthly, biological existence. Without either food or water over a prescribed period of time, death is certain. In satisfying our appetite for food and water under normal circumstances, rarely do we consciously process what we are doing when we take a bite of food or lift a cup to our lips. The acts of eating and drinking are so ingrained in our daily rituals, that they are practically involuntary. For example, just before I sat down to the computer to begin this article, I helped myself to a few nuts and drank a glass of water. Eating and drinking—we do it regularly. Can you imagine what it would be like not to have a healthy appetite for food and water? How would we know when to eat or to drink? Since we know our biological clocks as well as we do, most of us in the Western world eat three main meals each day. As they say, we eat— whether we’re hungry or not! Just as the Creator made man with an appetite for food and water in order to sustain his biological needs and existence, so this same Creator-God made man with spiritual appetites and drives in order to sustain his soul and spirit. When God created Adam, he endowed him with a capacity and need for fellowship with His Creator. In order for Adam to satisfy this innate need, God gave to Adam an appetite to know, worship, glorify and fellowship his Creator and Father. And how was it that Adam was able to satisfy his needs for knowing, worshiping, glorifying and fellowshipping with God? God’s answer? Give to Adam a spiritual appetite for his Creator-Father: the capacity to experience in his spirit a need for God as the counterpart to what he experienced in his body whenever the need for food and water arose. God gave to Adam—and to all of his offspring— the spiritual sensations of hunger and thirst. The sacred Scriptures record a wide range of God-thirsty men and women—in divergent circumstances and cultures—giving expression to an intense desire for the living God. In a passage that has become the classic cry of every God-thirsty soul down through the centuries, the psalmist yearningly cries, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”[1] A Common Denominator I often asked the Lord in years gone by, in one form of question or another, If there is a common denominator that characterizes those Christians who have developed a deep walk with You, what is it? I believe every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ would agree that this is a legitimate question, and if there is indeed an answer to this fundamental question, such an answer should be invaluable to Christ’s Church and every earnest believer. Although I asked that question many times, I don’t need to ask it any longer. Why? Because the Lord has given me—and all of his people—the answer in his inspired Word. The answer does not lie on the surface, but is carefully and clearly woven by the Spirit throughout its sacred pages. Whether in reading Genesis or Joshua, Habbakuk or Hebrews, John or James, we see that those men and women who became intimately acquainted and walked in close communion with God, did so because they enjoyed a healthy appetite for their Father-God. They rose head and shoulders above all others. Why? Because they had an insatiable thirst for God. They panted for God. They were God-thirsty men and women. These giants in the faith never contemplated surviving on a spiritual diet of just having “a little talk with Jesus.” Their appetite for God would not allow them to settle for a meager appetizer or pacifier. They were men and women who ate heartily and drank deeply from the wells of salvation. Their soul capacities were forever expanding. They were God-thirsty saints. As Israel’s sweetest singer and song writer, David repeatedly did his best to preserve on parchment this longing for God he felt in his spirit: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”[2]
A Paradox There is an apparent contradiction in the spiritual realm regarding this matter of thirsting for God. For example: Jesus said to the seeker at Jacob’s well: Everyone who drinks of this water [i.e., well water] will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”[3] On the other hand, Jesus said in John 7, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”[4] The grammatical tense used for “let him come to me and drink” suggests a continuous coming and drinking: “let him keep coming to me and let him keep drinking.” To one person, Jesus said that if she drank, she would never thirst again; to others, he said that they should keep on drinking. The explanation for this paradox is clear. For the woman who was thirsting for salvation, Jesus said that once she tasted the eternal life he gives, she would never experience the desire for salvation again because her need would have been satisfied through the Lord Jesus Christ. This truth is illustrated in the words of 19th century poet Clara Teare: All my life-long I had panted
The audience Jesus was addressing in John 7, to whom the invitation was given: “If anyone is thirsty, let him keep coming to me and let him keep drinking” — to this audience Jesus was speaking of the promised Spirit. “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive (v.39). On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples, and they were all “filled with the Holy Spirit.”[6] Yet, we discover throughout the Book of Acts that these same disciples were filled with the Spirit repeatedly. Moreover, Paul exhorts the Ephesian believers to be “continually filled with the Spirit”[7] ( suggested by the tense). Now what do John 7, Acts 2 (as well as additional Acts texts) and Ephesians 5 infer about this matter of soul-thirst? Simply this: If the earnest disciple of Jesus Christ accepts his Lord’s invitation to pursue a devotional lifestyle and vital connection to him by being continually filled with the Holy Spirit, he must of necessity have the kind of appetite that draws him habitually to Christ himself in order to be replenished in his own inner spirit: “If any man thirst …” Only the thirsty can be filled continually with the Spirit. Only the thirsty will abide in the Vine.[8] Only the thirsty will have a desire to intimately know, worship, glorify and commune with their Father-God. Only the thirsty will discover Jesus as a Friend. A. W. Tozer underscored the reality of this truth when he wrote, “To have found God and still pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.”[9] In the 12th century Bernard of Clairvoix said the same thing in poetic verse: We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, Models and Mentors Living in an age when Christianity is reputed more for its glitter than for its gold, we 21st Century followers of the Lord Jesus Christ would do well to seek out those saints in biblical and Church literature (as well as keeping a keen eye for those among our contemporaries) who evidence a large appetite for God: Men and women who instinctively reject shallow discipleship and cheap grace in all its hues. We should select as our spiritual models and mentors those godly, God-glorifiers who have developed through grace a worshiping heart and a holy lifestyle. They may not be found in every pew or in every local church, but they are out there. And though they are—and have always been—the Church’s mighty minority, they can be found. God still has his seven thousand who have not bowed their knees to Baal, nor to Christianity Lite. You can find God’s holy, thirsty-hearted remnant among the Catholics (no, that’s not a typographical error) and Protestants, among the Pentecostals and Reformed, among the Calvinists and Arminians. The only biblical qualification for getting to know God better is to continually come with a thirsty appetite to the Lord Jesus Christ: “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink.” There are no easy steps or formulas for developing a greater thirst for God, but there are some practices and habits of the soul that are common to all the God-thirsty of all the ages. There is a personal price one must pay; there are disciplines that must be pursued. Here are a few of those practices.
The Practice of Solitude Aloneness and solitude are not the same. A Christian may be the only one in a building and yet may never truly be alone with God. Nevertheless, it is important for one who is vitally interested in developing a healthy appetite for God to regularly separate himself from the company of all others. Jesus observed such a practice, for example, by spending time alone with his Father on the mountainside. The Practice of Meditating on Scripture Note, I did not say reading the Scripture. A person may be a regular, systematic Bible reader and be woefully ignorant of spiritual truth. In order for the truth of God to take root in our lives, we must slowly contemplate what we are reading, asking the Spirit for understanding. This takes time. It is far better to read one verse of Scripture with understanding than to read three chapters and remain unchanged.
The Practice of a Worshiping Heart Whether on our knees, driving down a highway, studying for exams, preparing a meal, mowing the lawn, or cleaning the house; whether we are in the home, at the office, in the classroom, or on a vacation, the God-thirsty carry with them everywhere they go—a worshiping heart, a praying heart, a grateful heart. And they have learned that any attitude or action that disrupts communion with their Companion and Friend, must be corrected immediately. That leads us to our next point. The Practice of Confession While we should not buy into the “miserable sinner” theology on the one hand or “sinless perfectionism” on the other hand, every authentic, God-thirsty soul—who knows himself better than any other person and knows that God knows him even better than he knows himself—knows when he kneels before the holy God that he has nothing to boast of, but can only acknowledge his short-comings, failures, omissions, trespasses, debts, and failures to love God and others perfectly at all times. The biggest souls and the humblest saints—irrespective of their theological understanding and personal biases—have practiced confession before God. Augustine did; Martin Luther did; John Calvin did; John Wesley did; George Whitefield did; Andrew Murray did; F. B. Meyer did; A. W. Tozer did. And so will we . . . if we are truly serious about cultivating a healthy appetite for God.
The Practice of Authentic Fellowship One of the most powerful means of grace God has give to his Church for maintaining a healthy appetite for God is fellowship—authentic Christian fellowship. When the New Testament speaks of fellowship, it makes reference to believers coming together in Christ’s name for mutual edification. And this is most effectively achieved in small groups. While not every believer, for one reason or another, has the opportunity to involve himself in a small group, where it is properly practiced, great blessings follow and one’s thirst for God is thereby enhanced. An Example On this theme of thirsting for God, I recall the adventure of a black African by the name of Samuel Morris. Following his remarkable conversion to Christ, this young convert wanted to know more about the Holy Spirit than the missionaries could tell him. His biographer, Linley Baldwin, noted, "He came so often to visit the missionaries and asked so many hard questions about the Spirit that one was finally compelled to confess, ' I have told you everything I know about the Holy Ghost.' But he persisted, 'Who told you what you know about the Holy Ghost.' “[11] Whereupon the missionary informed God-thirsty Sammy that if he could get to New York City, there was a man who lived there by the name of Stephen Merritt, who could tell Sammy more about the Holy Spirit. Sammy’s faith-driven epochal journey took him to Mr. Merritt, and eventually to Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. Why? Because of a God-induced appetite that cried out for more of God, the fullness of God. His God-induced appetite would not allow him to settle for less than all that God had for him. He was a God-thirsty African young man whose spiritual quest for God led him to another continent. What about you, dear reader? Has this vain world spoiled your appetite for God? Is what you’re feeding on robbing you of your thirst after righteousness and holiness? Or will you identify with the psalmist who continuously cried, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”? To quote Bernard of Clairvoix again: Jesus, Thou Joy of loving hearts, - Soli Deo Gloria -
1. Psalm 42:1-2a. The Bible version used in this article is the English Standard Version. |
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