Continuing our study in Psalm 42
Psalm 42:1
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
This is how David felt. King David, the same that killed Goliath, the same called a man after God's own heart. He felt just as a deer very thirsty, parched and panting after water, cool fresh water. The deer, dry to the bone, running all night from the hunter perhaps, fleeing the wolf, now spent and thirsting to the point of PANTING is how DAVID SAYS, speaking in prayer to GOD, HIS OWN SOUL PANTS AFTER GOD. God my soul pants for thee! I'm thirsting for you my GOD.
Something is wrong for King David - he is thirsting as one who cannot be satisfied and the only satisfaction to refresh his soul is to drink deeply of GOD.
To add to these thoughts from Spurgeon's Treasury of David I found the following:
As after a long drought the poor fainting hind longs for the streams, or rather as the hunted hart instinctively seeks after the river to lave its smoking flanks and to escape the dogs, even so my weary, persecuted soul pants after the Lord my God. Debarred from public worship, David was heartsick. Ease he did not seek, honour he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an absolute necessity, like water to a stag. Like the parched traveller in the wilderness, whose skin bottle is empty, and who finds the wells dry, he must drink or die - he must have his God or faint. His soul, his very self, his deepest life, was insatiable for a sense of the divine presence. As the hart brays so his soul prays. Giro him his God and he is as content as the poor deer which at length slakes its thirst and is perfectly happy; but deny him his Lord, and his heart heaves, his bosom palpitates, his whole frame is convulsed, like one who gasps for breath, or pants with long running. Dear reader, dost thou know what this is, by personally having felt the same? It is a sweet bitterness. The next best thing to living in the light of the Lord's love is to be unhappy till we have it, and to pant hourly after it - hourly, did I say? thirst is a perpetual appetite, and not to be forgotten, and even thus continual is the heart's longing after God. When it is as natural for us to long for God as for an animal to thirst, it is well with our souls, however painful our feelings. We may learn from this verse that the eagerness of our desires may be pleaded with God, and the more so, because there are special promises for the importunate and fervent.
No comments:
Post a Comment