The Good Part
Posted by jerrywhite on Apr 11, 2013
“If anyone thirsts…. “
John 7:37
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Your life is busy with daily responsibilities. Family needs, work schedule, church assignments, household chores, social interaction by internet, phone and texting and other attention grabbing encounters soak up your mind and time like a thirsty sponge. Too soon the day is gone and you are too weary to concentrate in order to pray or to be in God’s Word. You know you should because you need it, and you feel guilty because you let other things distract you. Resolutions haven’t helped except for a short time. What is the secret for those who have discovered joyous communion with the Lord in the midst of a demanding life? How can it be different for you?
The Lord Jesus called it thirst. It is a thirst of soul. It is a profound awareness of need coupled with a craving for what will satisfy. It comes from a sharp consciousness that I must have what will sustain a healthy life—drinking water for the body and spiritual water for the soul.
Distractions of daily life can so rule us that spiritual thirst is dulled and oppressed. However, there is hope. Spiritual thirst can dominate your life so that you are compelled to seek the Lord Jesus above all else, both in time alone with Him and in all your daily responsibilities. Jesus did not rebuke Martha for her serving but rather because her serving distracted her from the one important issue (Luke 10:38-42). Her serving responsibilities ruled her mind and therefore overruled her heart-need. This caused her display of irritation with her sister Mary who was sitting at her Master’s feet drinking in His words to satisfy her thirsty soul (Luke 10:39-40).
Your heart desire can reign regardless of how busy your days are. If it does, then your spiritual thirst will demand time alone with the Lord Jesus on a regular basis, and also you will inwardly commune with Him in the sanctuary of your soul throughout the busyness of your day.
Who has ever had more demanding circumstances than the Lord Jesus? And yet He often withdrew to lonely places to pray (Luke 5:16). In Luke 10:42 Jesus said to Martha, “but one thing is necessary.” Interestingly, in the next verse (Luke 11:1) Jesus was doing the one thing necessary, “praying in a certain place.”
If you will ask the Lord to give you deeper thirst, He will surely answer because it is His will (1John 5:14-15). You CAN grow until your heart-thirst rules your life throughout the busyness of your days. This is the way your family, co-workers, fellow-believers and others may touch the Lord Jesus through your ordinary life. You will remain spiritually fresh like a tree planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:3).
Mary chose the good part, and you can also—if you thirst.
JRW
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Dulling Your Appetite
Posted by jerrywhite on Apr 4, 2013
“The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable and almost incurable.”
John Piper
A Hunger For God, p. 14
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Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Psalm 34:8 (ESV)
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We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.
Bernard of Clairvauz (1091-1153)
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Thirst
Posted by jerrywhite on May 3, 2012
Thirst is need, desire, and even craving. Physically this speaks of a feeling of dryness in the mouth and throat that results in a desire or need for water. While dying on the cross Jesus said, ‘I thirst!’ Water is the most basic need of the human body along with air to breathe. The stronger your thirst becomes the more determined you become to find whatever will quench it.
The Expository Dictionary of Bible Words says, “Famine and drought were among the most feared calamities of biblical times. Hunger and thirst represent humanity’s most basic needs for survival. In a culture that saw God as the central reality, it is not surprising to find hunger and thirst linked in a number of ways with God.
In the material realm, God is looked to as the source of food and drink…Hunger and thirst are extended in Scripture to represent basic spiritual needs that also require satisfaction.’ Psalm 42:2 speaks about spiritual thirst, ‘My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.’ Jesus was speaking of spiritual thirst in John 7:37. Spiritual thirst is a sense of dryness in the soul that results in a craving, which only God can satisfy.
The path to fullness with the Holy Spirit begins with spiritual thirst. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “If anyone is thirsty.” Often Christians are so full of other things they do not thirst for God. Jeremiah wrote, “For My people have committed two evils:/ They have forsaken Me, / The fountain of living waters / To hew for themselves cisterns, / Broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13, NASB). The world’s cisterns never satisfy spiritual thirst. Only God’s presence and His fullness can satisfy the deep longing of a regenerate soul. Spiritual thirst is when you deeply and profoundly know your need for the Spirit’s fullness just like your parched mouth knows its need for water. Trying to satisfy your life with other things prevents you from your drinking living water, and therefore, you don’t experience the quality of Christian life God intends for all believers.
He freely and abundantly gives His fullness to those who thirst and come to Him to drink. If there is a hindrance to your enjoying His overflowing fullness then it is probably on your side, not His, because He is more willing to give than you are to receive.
JRW
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Principles About Thirsting
Posted by jerrywhite on Feb 2, 2012
“I realize there are a number of principles I learned about thirsting after God. Let me try and summarize them:
1. God creates the thirst. We must cultivate it.
2. When I respond, God finds a way to encourage me, often through special people or circumstances.
3. God commands me to be filled with His Spirit, meaning it is my move next. He will respond to that.
4. I’ve noticed less resistance to the Spirit when I am alone, praying and reading His Word.
5. The fresh touch of God’s Spirit can come with or without accompanying physical manifestations.
6. God has already lavished on me the love I so desperately long for. That is why I long!
7. My growing sense of anticipation is actually faith beginning to appropriate that love.
8. The Spirit’s fullness is directly dependent on my confession of sin.
9. The Spirit’s infilling makes me neither immune to sin nor free from temptation.
10. Being filled with the Spirit makes me much more sensitive to sin. In thus seeing my true status, the initial euphoria may be dampened, but the end result is true joy through confession.
11. God uses mountaintop experiences to stimulate further longings, even much later in life.
12. We must not depend on such experiences for our growth as Christians, but when God grants them, each crisis must be followed by a process.”
Keith Price
Thirsting After God, 69-70
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Thirst is need, desire, and even craving. Physically this speaks of a feeling of dryness in the mouth and throat that results in a desire or need for water. While dying on the cross Jesus said, ‘I thirst!’ Water is the most basic need of the human body along with air to breathe. The stronger your thirst becomes the more determined you become to find whatever will quench it. The same is true for a soul thirsting after God.
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