Title: Thirst for God
This poem was written in the time of David. David's son Absalom rebelled and took some of his close associates to an exile across the Jordan River. It is believed to be a poem written by one of the descendants of Korah, one of David's loyal servants at that time.
Originally, the descendants of Korah were synonymous with cursed names. When Israel was a church in the wilderness, Korah rebelled against the leader Moses. When they rebelled and slandered the leaders whom God had established, God brought an unprecedented judgment on them. The land in which they were located was extinguished, opened their mouths to swallow them all, and the ground was closed again. From then on, the descendants of Korah have always followed the shameful name of a nation that was punished by God for rebelling against the servants God had established. Despite the shameful shame, his descendants prospered and were given the opportunity to restore their honor, which was when David founded the kingdom.
When David re-established the kingdom, he embraced the wounded, the resentful, the debtor, the poor and the sick, and the low-class peoples who were weak and suffering like sheep without a shepherd, and built a new kingdom with them. At this time, God placed the descendants of Korah under David. And he gave the descendants of Korah a special mission to serve the temple of God. David exalted them to lead the people of Israel to worship God in worship, to assist in worship, and to attend the service of the temple. But suddenly a rebellion broke out, the kingdom fell into the hands of the wicked, and David, the anointed king, was humiliated and despised by the people, and left for exile across the Jordan.
How many prayers must have been in the heart of such a poet. However, the poet pushes all of these aside and pours out the uncontrollable longing and longing for God that arises in his heart before God. “As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.” It was an unbearable longing for God Himself. And the poet compares this longing to the deer's thirst for a stream.
In Palestine, autumn is the mating season for deer. During the mating season, changes occur in the deer's body, which is said to be a burning thirst. At first, they came out to the wilderness to mate, but as time passed, they couldn't overcome the onslaught of thirst, so they looked for water. But what water is there in the wilderness? It is said that deer die while searching for water. In the wilderness, the poet saw a lot of deer falling down and dying like this. To them, a sip of water was life. Just as a sip of water was life for a thirsty deer in the wilderness, for this poet who longed for God, one encounter with God was the life of a soul that was about to collapse and die.
Today we think of life's problems as if they were only in the resources of this world. But by filling them, our lives are never completely resolved. Even though we have physical things, we suffer a lot mentally, and the reason we found the Lord while living without God was not because there was no water or bread, but because of the suffering of our souls. This is the reality of our life.
Just as a dying deer could live without dying with just one sip of water, just as one encounter with God revives our dying souls and makes our human beings happy. There is. Nevertheless, many people do not have a thirst for God. However, looking back on our lives when we met the Lord and received great grace in our lives, we had a strong thirst for God. In this way, God came to us who were thirsty and longed for us, poured out such wonderful grace and allowed us to meet with God.
God is most glorified in a heart that longs for Himself. The Lord is more glorified in the broken and broken heart of the Lord's saving grace, even if he has lived in sin, rather than having an unbroken heart toward God even though he has lived upright and morally righteous. God in heaven does not look at the great achievements of human beings, but rather on the heart of the person who made all these things possible. That is the heart of God. If we are living in an age where God's grace is not present, the experience of the Lord's great love has dried up, and the truth is powerfully approaching us and shaking our souls, it is because we do not have a longing for God. is.
When was the last time you truly yearned for God? Rather than greedy for the world or things in the world, the earnest desire for God's grace, so that the Lord finds me like a deer longs for a stream. The Lord Himself came to the heart of this humble life and touched me and touched me. I want to ask you, when was the last time I asked you to come into my heart like a little child with tears in my eyes while I was so thirsty that I wanted to fill my empty heart with the Lord Himself.
When God created man, he created it to communicate with Him in man. Therefore, there is nothing more pleasing to God than that God gives love to everyone and is loved by everyone. It is with such a heart that God created man. Therefore, God still wants us to love Him, and He is the one who gives Himself to us so that we can enjoy it in love. Because of this kind of heart of God, He Himself took on human flesh as a substitute for our sins, came down to this world, suffered contempt and reproach, and died on the cross. This is a passage that shows how much God wanted to give Himself to us.
A person who has never been broken in heart even after going to church 365 days a year, a person who has never been thirsty for the Lord’s grace even after worshiping every week, a person who has never cried for his sin and strength in his heart despite praying every time. How can the Lord come into the hearts of these people?
The body is made to demand food as long as it is not sick. The soul is bound to miss God as long as it doesn't get sick. However, those who do not know God are living in sin by pursuing the pleasures and flavors of this world because they do not know whether the thirst that arises in their soul is longing for God. The soul can never be satisfied with such things. Augustus confesses in the first chapter of his confession, 'My soul could not find rest until I returned to the bosom of God.' The soul is constantly longing for God.
Think of a time when you experienced God's great love and lived under grace. Worship time was always waiting, and the meeting with the Lord gave my soul satisfaction, but didn't it lead me to the expectation of a greater meeting with the Lord? Because I was so thirsty for God's grace, wherever I prayed, it was a prayer filled with longing for God, and the service we served with our hearts was a service that came from love for God, who wants us to be glorified in our own lives. The more we serve, the more precious the Lord is, and the more we are broken, the more we are able to cast away the infinite sin that has taken root in us. When the soul is in sin and ignorance, it loses all these senses, the love of God turns into cold duty, and the thirst for the Lord turns into greed for the world. What we really need is a thirst for God and an earnest longing for the Lord. Love is a longing that springs up like a fountain, a thirst that never goes away until you become one with the object you love.
What kind of God is this poet longing for today? “I long for the living God.” He is literally the living God. The problems of life that surround us are not really problems. The real difficulty is that we do not see the living God. The enemy that surrounds us, the many circumstances surrounding us and these fearful walls are not the problem, but the living God, the great God who appeared in the history of Israel and showed His existence, delivered them from their crises and gave them the ability to overcome their afflictions. The problem is that the God of power, the living God, cannot be experienced in our lives today. This thirst is what we must earnestly desire within us.
Think of how the vivid and earnest longing for God within us disappeared. Even if it is not a sin, our heart can never thirst for God as long as more things other than God fill our minds. That is why we must become people who constantly meditate on the glory of God and think more about the excellence of Christ. The difficult days of my life when I lived without the Lord, the wonderful love of Christ who appeared in the midst of the crisis and rescued me from that suffering, and the wonderful grace of the Lord’s extraordinary sweetness and mercy when I returned to the Lord. You have to think constantly. You have to fix your heart there and let it come down to your heart by thinking and meditating on it a lot. Then we realize that we desperately need God's grace. There are many problems caused by the lack of many resources in this and that life, but there is only one solution, and that is to realize that we are turning to God.
The most beautiful creation in this world that God sees is the heart of the saint who misses God. That's enough to get God's attention. Although people do not know me, people criticize me, and people condemn me, my heart thirsts for the grace of the Lord, the longing of the saints who put their hope in life not in the world itself but in the throne of Christ and its glory, tied up in time and space A person who desires to go beyond this with his soul and to fellowship with God in love in love no matter what in life, a heart full of longing to be happy with him and to please the Lord by being on this earth, this is what we desperately need. is.
In the end, what happened to this descendant of Korah who sought God with such a thirsty heart? This man, by the great power of God, destroyed the enemies who had resisted the anointed of the Lord, and brought him back to Jerusalem in the greatest glory. How full of joy must the descendants of Korah be when they return to the sanctuary where they used to serve, praise the Lord with the people who keep the holy days, and lead them to God? Even now, God is the God who comes and gives Himself to those who miss His grace with such a thirsty heart and want to be changed in the Lord. *