“Knowledge about Him will not do. Work for Him will not do. We must have personal, vital fellowship with Him; otherwise, Christianity becomes a joyless burden” – John Piper

When I talk to friends who are more health conscious than I am, they always encourage me to drink more water. Apparently, water lubricates joints, is necessary for digestion, delivers oxygen throughout our cells, makes healthy skin, regulates body temperature and blood pressure. We need water, and when we don’t have enough, our body calls for it by making us thirsty.

Thirst is typified in the Bible as a longing for God. The psalmist said it this way: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1). Do our souls thirst for God? If things are going OK, we just move along sipping here and there, but not really feeling the thirst. That’s when he may take us to the desert for a time so we will begin to thirst again.

I have a friend in the desert right now. She’s not sure how she got there; the journey there was just a little at a time. She’s beginning to feel God’s absence, his quietness, and she wants to sense that connection again. She’s getting thirsty!

God wants us to want him. He wants us to be dependent on him, to know how much we need him. And we do need him, but we don’t always realize our great our need is. The desert, as much as we resist it, creates the thirst that will bring us back to the still waters. He is leading us there.

“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