Question 1 is "Do You Thirst for God?"
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
Three Kinds of Spiritual Thirst
There is the Thirst of the EMPTY Soul. Augustine wrote, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." We were created to worship. For many, this worship - thirst for God - is not a longing for God in the scripture but for a god in their own image. John 4:14 states, "But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty; but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.” This EMPTY thirst is only truly satisfied in Jesus Christ.
Thirst of the DRY Soul is the Christian soul that knows what he is missing. Whitney refers to three ways the Christian soul can be dry: (1) drinking too much from the "desiccating" fountains of the world, (2) perceived "God desertions," and (3) prolonged mental and/or physical fatigue.
Finally, there is the Thirst of the SATISFIED Soul. Philippians 3:7—11 and Psalm 34:8 refer to this thirst-inducing thirst.
Whitney suggests three action steps to help satisfy this thirst for God. ways to
- Meditate on the Bible. This means more than just reading the Bible. Meditating involves thinking about what the passage says.
- Pray the Bible
- Read Thirst-making writers.
- The Valley of Vision by various Puritans
- Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
- Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent
- Holiness by J.C. Ryle
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