As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Psalm 42:1-2
Oh, the lessons we can glean here!
First let’s look at the word pant. Webster dictionary defines pant as “to breathe with short breaths”; simply OUT of breath. To pant can be seen as a deep yearning for more. To pant is to yearn, a strong desire that causes a narrow vision of a NEED.
Take a moment to visualize a deer who has been running for her life, and then finds a moment where she finally has escaped from her perusing enemy and found refuge.
She is now in a meadow of rest but is longing to quench her thirst. She is filled with yearning and desperately panting for her life. The deer does not yearn for the stagnant water that is infested with harmful bacteria, mold and parasites, warm with a bitter taste, and harmful to her life… No!
She would yearn for flowing streams…moving cool water, water that would replenish her body and restore her strength. The water that leads to LIFE!
The deer was created to be drawn to the moving and loving LIFE-GIVING water, just as the Spirit of the Christian has been created to thirst for God…the God who called us to Himself with His Life-Giving Spirit.
“Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this 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.”
The Christian will never find fullness and complete satisfaction from the water the WORLD gives. Isaiah 55:1 reminds everyone to come who thirsts, come to the waters.
Let me ask you a very serious and personal question, do you find yourself thirsty? Does the image of the deer running from every present danger… sound familiar or seem relatable? Do you have a pattern of running towards Jesus? Or running towards stagnant waters?
Does your heart deeply yearn for Him -not for the things that He does for you, or the things that He can give you, but for HIM? Just HIM.
Too many of His children long for His blessings, His gifts, and His provisions. We must be honest here and admit that we all have needs. Since we have these needs it is good and right that we look to the Lord because He is our source of provision, but that's not all He is.
He is a God who desires and longs for fellowship, communion, and intimacy with us.
I pray that your soul hungers and thirsts for Him, because He will satisfy your deepest needs and desires.
“I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in Him. Then you will overflow with confidant hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13
Amen!
~Monica Hemming
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