Do you pant for God like a deer near water?

Good morning all-

I had a tremendous day yesterday starting with church and ending with a drive home as the sun set and the moon shown as a sliver in the sky.  Kansas sunsets are beautiful, the open roads allow a spectacular view to one of God's most beautiful paintings.

I've been working on getting fit over the last couple of weeks.  Traveling doesn't always allow you to eat right, exercise or do what many can do when they are at home. So I'm working with the best girl ever and she is training me long distance and it's working out so great.  It comes down to mind, body and food.  I think the thing I love about it most is that I think a lot about God, war, peace, love and prosperity.  I am more aware of the birds, the sunrises, the sunsets.  I feel better because instead of working to the bone and then falling apart; I'm off the couch and taking care of the vessel God gave to me.

And when I'm done, I'm very thirsty.  The thirst that I have had in the last years is not a thirst water can quench.  This thirst is powerful its my soul needing to connect to my maker.  So yesterday when we were at church and our pastor was speaking about the soul, it resonated.  I know exactly what he was trying to say to the congregation.  Our hearts and souls search for the quenching of the Holy Spirit.  They both need the tremendous drenching and infusion of God.  And if they aren't fed, they are fickle and will find something else to drench it and often that's something dangerous and destructive.  So when the Psalmist is writing in Psalm 42:1-2 NIV, "As the deer pants for the streams of water, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God," I get it and it depicts exactly what we all know, that we will pant for something and that something has to be the Word of God that flows from the crevices of our mind to our heart and soul.

If you had asked me a couple of years ago, do you pant for God?  My answer might have been different. I had gotten to what I would call coasting, some might call it, apathetic.  I was half-way in and of course I loved God but did I thirst for Him.  I can't say that beyond the year I got saved that I had thirsted for Him.  Over the last couple of years I have found myself thirsting for Him and drenching myself into Scripture.  I have read more devotionals in the last year than in my whole life.  I have needed Him every morning where before I would just jump out of bed and run out the door.  I have spent countless hours reminding myself that I am His and that this is His life I lead, not mine.  These are the things that have kept me seeking, thirsting and immersing myself with anything Jesus.

And as I have sought, I have definitely found.  I don't have it as bad as some of you but I've definitely gone through my own trials.  I have watched God's hand in every circumstance and I've learned to forgive so much more.  I have quit looking at myself as myself and am now doing things for Him.  This fitness challenge isn't about getting into a smaller dress size.  It's really about mind, body and soul.  If God fulfills the vision for my life that I believe comes from Him, I have to have stamina, energy and I need to take care of what He's given me.  That's my real goal.  I need to use the time I've been given for something more than myself.  This preparation time is about getting healthy from my mind to my heart to my soul.  We age and things will age with us, that's just a fact but trusting that God can do anything through us is so important.  And as I write today, He is doing things through me.  He has given me a purpose to care about people, to love those that no one else wants to love, to forgive and forget and to be there for people that are hurt, broken and just a wreck. 

The questions you must ask yourself today is: Do you pant like a deer at the stream?  Do you hunger for a God that is mighty?  Do you feel like your empty in your heart?  Does you mind tell you that your just not worthy? Do you destroy the good in your life because you don't feel like you should be happy?  Do your choices weigh you down? 

We can be saved and do all the good things on that question list and all the bad things.  We can hunger for Him and still feel such shame we can't step into a church.  We can yearn for our hearts to be whole and make choices that weigh us down.  We can know what His Word says about forgiveness and not being able to earn it and still hear in our minds, "Girl, your not worthy."  It's nonsense.  We didn't earn Christ's sacrifice on the cross, it was given.  He gave His life so we would have eternal life.  Every journey in this life will have hardship.  No one escapes losing a loved one.  No one escapes needing to be forgiven.  No one escapes moments they regret and no one escapes feeling empty inside.  God leaves a hole in our heart and soul that only he can fill and on top of that, only He gave His life to show all of us that we are forgiven.

Life is a series of choices.  We choose to fill our time with destructive behavior.  We choose to fill our time with television.  We choose to fill our time with work until it beats us to a bloody mess and then what, guess who gets a call and it's always the last call we make, Christ that's who.  Don't let life take you to the brink of destruction.  Stop, drop and kneel to the King of Kings.  Give Him the glory for everything.  Read your Bible, enjoy the birds and the sunsets, take care of the vessel He gave you and reach for the stars.  If you only realize one thing today, realize that we must all pant for water.  We must seek Him and find Him to fulfill our purpose and to give Him the glory He deserves.

Have a great day my sisters and remember, if you don't do anything else today, spend time with God and thank Him for His life, His sacrifice, His council and His love.  There are no regrets at the foot of the cross!

Psalm 42 NIV BibleGateway

For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah.

¹ As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?
³ My tears have been my food
    day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”
⁴ These things I remember
    as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
    under the protection of the Mighty One^[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
    among the festive throng.

⁵ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.

⁶ My soul is downcast within me;
    therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
    the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep
    in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
    have swept over me.

⁸ By day the Lord directs his love,
    at night his song is with me—
    a prayer to the God of my life.

⁹ I say to God my Rock,
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
    oppressed by the enemy?”
¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
    as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”

¹¹ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.