“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” Psalm 42:2
There is one great certainty about man’s existence upon this earth that determines greatly how he will live. It is the fact that one day every man will meet God, whether in joy or in fear, either way being overwhelmed by what he sees, and consequently how he will respond to Him. For the believer in Christ, who is ready to meet the Lord with no shadow between, and not ashamed, there will be a joy that cannot be expressed fully on this earth, in these earthly bodies. It is a joy that is fathomless and eternal, for it is that of Christ communicated fully to the one for whom He has died, and has now fully reclaimed. Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, and filled to the full with the Holy Spirit, blameless and irreproachable, the believer will know the limitless love and goodness of God in a measure that cannot now be grasped, only hoped for, and certain to be revealed.
For the one who is without Christ, it will be a terrible moment, for all that the lost soul has considered as of worth, and every means for obtaining it, will be swept away. The soul shall stand before a Holy God whose antagonism towards sin, His wrath, is only limited in some measure by His righteous, and perfect dealing with every individual. However, God will be seen as a consuming fire, who cannot abide with sin, nor sin with Him. God the Father would have done everything in Christ to deal completely with the sins of men, to save them out of the kingdom of darkness and Satan, to put within each individual soul the very life of His Son by the Spirit, so that that soul could live forever with Him. However, if there has been the rejection of Christ, the Son of God, the ONLY provision for the forgiveness of sins and this new life, then there will be no hope, no mercy, no second chance. All will be lost for time and eternity. This appearance before God will not be welcomed.
What then about the present moment, and the revelation of the mercy, grace, goodness and love of God? What is the hope of the lost soul, and the certain promise given to the believer in Christ? The “HOPE” of which the Bible speaks is the certainty of an expectation that will be realized. What is the evidence of God working in the heart so that that hope will be owned, laid hold of, and lived by? The proof of God’s working in the soul is very simply, “thirst,” a thirsting for this Blessed God, who is worthy of all praise and thanksgiving, for He is perfectly good in His holiness, having demonstrated it in the giving of His Son to save us all. How important is this thirst for God?
In the manner in which God revealed Himself to Abraham, when he lived in Ur of the Chaldees, among an idolatrous nation having many gods, He “appeared” unto him, and this in such a way as to create a thirst for things above, but especially to KNOW this God. By this revelation of Christ to Abraham, and His living words, God created such a thirst in Abraham that he was willing to leave all to follow Christ, that he might know Him. When Moses was tasked with bringing the people out of Egypt, and leading them through the wilderness for forty years, God put within him a thirst to truly KNOW Him, for nothing else would compare. When the Apostle Paul would write of stretching forth towards the goal of the upward call of God, it was because of the intense thirst Christ had put in his heart to know God, and the “power of His resurrection.” The Psalmist wrote: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” The thirst which Christ gives to know Him is His confirmation of His working.
Dear Father, Give us Thy thirst. In Jesus’ name, Amen.