Bible Studies

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Psalm 42:1-2 – “As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and meet with Him?” & Psalm 63:1 – “O God, You are my God, earnestly I search for You. My soul thirsts for You as in a dry and weary land without water.”

How many of us can truly echo these words with complete sincerity? Perhaps every now and then, but shouldn’t this be the constant cry of our hearts? God has made us for Himself and created in us a place that can only be filled with Him. He is the living water (John 4:10) and He is the bread of life (John 6:35) so why aren’t we truly thirsty? Why aren’t we more hungry? Perhaps, like the rest of the world, we are filling up on other things. These other things don’t really satisfy us and they can never sustain us. It’s more like eating junk food all day and ruining your appetite for dinner. Then junk food doesn’t necessarily fill you up and it certainly won’t sustain your body for long – that’s why it’s called “junk food”. But what it does do is take the edge off of your hunger so that when the time comes to eat a real meal, you don’t eat as much as you should of true nourishment. If you were to continue with this pattern and constantly fill up yourself with only (or mostly) junk food, soon enough you’re going to start feeling sick and weak. We are all smart enough to know this (perhaps by experience) and we are able to exert enough self-control to not be eating junk food all the time. Yet how often do we do this in our spiritual lives? We fill our days with junk – some of it more truly junk that others but none of it what we really need – and then we wonder why we don’t thirst for God like we should, or why we have so little strength spiritually (like weak faith and self-control) and then we fall under pressure and temptation. The reason we are weak is that we haven’t been giving our spirit what it needs.

The most common kind of spiritual junk we consume is entertainment. This includes tv, movies, video games, novels, radio, and magazines. Though it is possible to find a version of these things that provides genuine nourishment, most of what is out there is pure junk and some of it is just plain poison. We all need to be far more discerning about what we allow into our minds. The first thing we must do to become really hungry and thirsty is to fast. This might mean actually fasting from food, but most importantly, we should fast from all the spiritual junk we’ve been feeding ourselves. So put down the newspaper or novel or magazine. Turn off the tv, dvd player, games systems, and computer. Then get away from other people as much as possible and rediscover silence and solitude. So there in the quiet, ask God to renew in you a hunger and thirst for Him – for His will, His Word, and His presence.

We pray, “Oh, mighty God, our God – our strength, our life – thank You for Your Word. For through Your word we come to know You. Through Your Word we are encouraged. Through Your Word we are convicted. Your Word shows us the right path and Your Spirit helps us to walk in it. Help us now, O Lord, to begin to truly thirst for You. Stir in us a desperate desire for You. Show us the junk we should cut out of our lives – whether permanently or temporarily – and help us to focus on You instead. Remind us how important it is to have time alone with You. We thank You that You hear us and You will answer us. Amen.”


Thesaurus Fun:

Thirst – longing, desire, craving, yearning, appetite

Junk – rubbish, trash, garbage, useless


See these songs: Desperate for You, I Want to (want to)

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