I don't like water. Just don't like the taste. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard it before - "Water doesn't have a taste, Leslie. How can you not like the taste when it doesn't taste like anything?" And I always insist that it tastes like SOMETHING. Chemicals, impurities, whatever. Me no like whatever lurks in the H2O.
So when I come in from a summer day in Houston, I'm desperate for an ice cold Diet Cherry Coke. (And when I'm really hot, I'll even take water!) Reminds me of those old Coke commercials where the construction worker took a Coke break. That first taste is just a little bit of heaven.
Psalm 23 pictures the Shepherd leading His flock to a little bit of heaven on earth. In A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, Phillip Keller tells us that an animal like a sheep is made up of about 70 percent water. Sheep require water for their bodies to function as God intended. The Shepherd leads His flock to water so that they can live healthy lives. Sheep, and humans, cannot live without water.
Now let's apply the idea of thirst to our spiritual lives. Just as I'm desperate for a Diet Cherry Coke when I spend time in the sun, our souls thirst for things to the point that we think that we cannot live without them. Just as sheep become restless and set out in search of water to slake their thirst, we enter into all manner of activity to satisfy our soul thirsts.
Ok, enough with the generalities. Let's get specific...and maybe even up in your bidness!
But I'll let you get up in my bidness first by sharing with you some of the things that I've thirsted for:
- Knowledge - I've seen on BooMama's blog this quote from Designing Women that I can't stop thinking about - Charlene saying, "I love knowledge. As a matter of fact, I yearn for it." I've certainly had my share of days of wanting to be the smartest and brightest. Unfortunately, I didn't yearn for knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but for the status that it would give me.
- Affection - I was one of those single girls with multiple cats. Now I'm one of those married women with multiple cats. Married women don't quite have the stigma that single women do when it comes to feline affection. But I've gotta say that my precious kitties helped me to feel less lonely in my single days. (They also gave me asthma, but that's another story for another day.)
- Power - I'm the oldest of four, so I was born to be bossy. I was used to telling people what to do. I even subcontracted chores to my brother once - got him to vacuum the family van for a percentage of what my father was paying me to vacuum the van. True story. Poor kid didn't realize he could go to my dad for the full amount. Some might think that shows the entrepreneurial spirit, but everybody else probably thinks that's just pathetic. But don't worry, the Holy Spirit and marriage are working some of the bossiness right out of me.
None of these things satisfied. There's only one true thirst quencher. Read the following verses and see if you can determine what will satisfy soul thirst:
Trying to satisfy soul thirst with anything other than the Holy Spirit is like taking part in a little girl's tea party and drinking from the empty cups. We can go through the motions, but once we're done with it we're just as thirsty as we were before we began. Maybe even thirstier.
When we drink from the streams of living water, the Holy Spirit becomes such a part of us that our personality is affected. We treat others with more love and kindness. And we discover power to do things that we thought we were incapable of doing. We begin to function in the way that God intended.
But first we need to make the decision to drink.
Now it's your turn:
- What have you found to be sub-par thirst quenchers?
- How do the streams of living water flow through us and affect others? For example, learning to like people even though we may initially not see them as likable.
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