“You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” — Psalm 63:1
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At least one thing is guaranteed to happen while playing a sport: You’ll get thirsty. As your body exerts effort to perform at your best, you sweat and expend nutrients and energy that must be replenished. Failing to do so will at first simply result in poorer performance. Continued neglect, however, will lead to dangerous dehydration and, eventually, death.
Thankfully, our bodies “tell” us that we need to drink by getting thirsty. It’s a universal human experience, even for non-athletes.
King David, who was inspired by God to write Psalm 63, used the experience of thirst to communicate a deep truth about his need for God’s presence. He writes, “I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you.”
The sensation of thirst is an all-consuming one, and David communicated his all-consuming need for God. His mind fixated on it. His whole body cried out for it. All of David’s other desires retreated to the background when compared with his desire to know God and be known by God.
Also, David recognized that he lived in “a dry and parched land where there is no water.” He wasn’t ignorant about the broken state of the world, as broken then as it is today. He knew others sinned, and he knew the sinful heart within himself (Psalm 51). The world is “dry and parched” and it desperately needs God, like an exhausted athlete desperately needs water. David felt this need deeply, and it added to his thirst all the more.
So what did David do about it? He sought after God.
“Earnestly I seek You,” he wrote. He sought after the Living Water of the Holy Spirit. He sought true spiritual nourishment — the nourishment that only comes from abiding in God’s presence — with his whole body and his whole soul. David needed God more than he needed water.
Do you echo David’s words and long for God like you long for water? As everyday life drags on, we can begin to rely on ourselves alone for our provision, to treat time with God as a luxury rather than a necessity, to call on His name only when we need a favor.
Today, acknowledge your desperate need for God. You need His sustaining grace more than you need water — indeed, more than you need life itself. Seek to cultivate a healthy thirst for God that is only satisfied by abiding in the loving arms of your Heavenly Father.
— Kevin Mercer
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