For those of you who hunt, you know that deer do not stray far from water sources. This is because deer do not sweat but instead pant to cool off when they are hot, thus losing a lot of water in the process. So, the hotter the weather, the more their need for water. For a deer, access to water is not a lackadaisical matter, it is often one of life and death as water is its life source. With this image in mind, lets turn our attention to scripture:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?

Psalm 42:1-2

Let me contextualize this scripture: each one of us has been created with a deep-seated need and longing for God. I have heard this longing described in terms of natural habitat. You take a plant out of the soil, it dies; you take a fish out of water, it dies; you take man (humankind) out of God, and we die- both physically and spiritually. As it is said in scripture Acts 17: 28a: For in him we live and move and have our being.

The psalmist says, as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you. Do you feel a thirst and longing for God? And what are you filling this thirst with? Sometimes we chase after things that do not satisfy that deep longing in our hearts; these things are mirages which leave us thirstier and so we keep searching and chasing in this vicious cycle. Scripture describes this in Jer 2:13:

My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
    broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Jeremiah 2:13

What cisterns have you dug to satisfy the thirst in your life? Fast forward to the New Testament and Jesus meets a woman at a well. She is a typology of many believers today- more concerned with the performativity of worship; chasing after things that do not satisfy; holding on to broken cisterns and trying desperately to quench a God-thirst with man-made systems. And Jesus says to the woman,

“If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”

John 4:10 NLT

To personalize this, it feels that of late God has been speaking to me about idols in my life- almost every sermon in church for the past couple of months have touch on this topic. Most recently, I was listening to a sermon by John Neufeld from back to the bible  he made  profound statement about idolatry- he said sometimes we hold images in our minds about who God is and about what we believe the worship of the true God is-  not what God says about Himself or how we should worship him, but what we think and feel it should be and when I reflect on my life, that is so true- Sometimes I come to church and I close off my heart to be receptive to God because I did not like the song choice for worship, or the opening line of the sermon was not as funny and so and so forth.  That is exactly what the woman at the well was doing… Jesus was offering her something eternal, living waters and she deflects and starts to talk about how her ancestors worshiped on a particular mountain, but the Jews say worship must be in Jerusalem. Jesus gently refocuses her gaze from the broken cistern of man-made rules, from her idol of what she thought and felt the worship of God should be to what it actually is “the true worshippers will worship in Spirit and in truth.” Jesus refocuses her to what is as stake… the living waters that He gives… the Holy Spirit. How do I know this? John 7: 37 says:

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

John 7: 37

Have you been hearing the call of the Jesus to come to him and drink of living water? Perhaps the Holy Spirit has been speaking to you like He has to me to abandon your broken cisterns. How are you going to satisfy that thirst? Will your response today be I thirst for God, the living God, when can I go and meet with God?

I conclude with a prayer from Psalm 63:1

O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water. AMEN

Yours Truly