My soul thirsts for God, for the living God

Psalm 42  (NASB) from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

Thirsting for God in Trouble and Exile.

 As the deer  pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
³ My tears have been my food day and night,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
⁴ These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

⁵ Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.
⁶ O my God, my soul is in despair within me;
Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan
And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls;
All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.
⁸ The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime;
And His song will be with me in the night,
A prayer to the God of my life.

⁹ I will say to God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
¹⁰ As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
¹¹ Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.

 As the deer  pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;     Jesus says: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)  True hunger or thirst is more than an emotional desire. It is more than something we want or choose. True hunger and thirst speaks of an actual physical need that we have for sustenance. To hunger and thirst for righteousness, is to hunger and thirst for God, through Him alone can we be or have righteousness. Like the psalmist our soul thirsts for the living God. Our spirit seeks after Him. But our flesh at times seeks it’s sustenance in other things.

In John 4:13-14 Jesus says:   “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.”  Just like the things we eat and drink only satisfy our physical hunger and thirst for a time, then we have need again, so too do we continue to desire more when we try to satisfy our spiritual hunger and thirst outside of Jesus.

In Psalm 73:25-26, the psalmist says: Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth.  My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. In today’s text the psalmist is experiencing one of those difficult times where it seems as though God is far off and not answering.  He says: ⁵ Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence….⁹ I will say to God my rock, “Why have You forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”…. While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” ¹¹ Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?

Yet the psalmist answers his own complaint as he closes with:  Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God. It may seem at times like God is far off, like He is not listening or not responding to our cry. When difficult times come and it seems that circumstances are overwhelming us, God assures us saying: "Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you." (Deuteronomy 31:6)  We only truly find our sustenance in God as we trust Him and walk with Him through both the good times and the hard times.

One thing that I have experienced in my own life is that it is easy to feel near to God and praise Him when we experience victories. Likewise at the lowest times in our lives we realize there is nowhere else to turn. God becomes our rock, the one we look to and lean on in times of trouble. Sometimes the most difficult place to find our extraordinary God is in the ordinary. It is in the normal every day routine that we often lose our connection to God. It is in the ordinary, the everyday that we tend to work in our own strength. In the ordinary and mundane we often muddle through on our own. That’s why often the smallest things can cause us to break even when we have withstood great trials. The truth is we need God even in the ordinary. We are created for fellowship with Him. We are created to hunger and thirst for Him. The truth is that the extraordinary God who created the universe cares about the ordinary things in our life. In Luke 12:6-7   Jesus assures us just how closely the God of all creation watches over us.

 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. ⁷ Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  

He knows us that well. He cares about the ordinary things in our life. We need to recognize that we also need Him in the ordinary as much as in the extraordinary. Whether through the highest of highs, the lowest of lows or all the time and space in between we need to walk with God. In Psalm 27:4 the psalmist says: One thing I ask from the Lord,     this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord   all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord     and to seek him in his temple.

May that be your prayer and your confession today, that all the days of your life, the good the bad and the ordinary, you will dwell in His house, you will seek Him. He will sustain and fill you. Cry out with the psalmist: So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;   Amen.