Qustion 1: Do You Thirst For God?

So Holy desire, exercised in Longings, hungerings, and thirstings after God and Holiness, is often mentioned in Scripture as an important part of true religion.
--Jonathan Edwards

“Lord I want to know You more…”

Didn’t Paul at near the end of his life write about the passion of his life:
“that I may know Him.” Philippians 3:10

What is meant by this statement? I mean didn’t Paul already know Him more closely than just about anyone else who had ever lived?

Psalm 42:1-2

Three Kinds of Spiritual Thirst

Everyone has a thirst for something more, what separates these people is the kind of thirst longing in their soul.

Thirst of the Empty Soul

The natural, that is, the unconverted man or woman, has an empty soul. Devoid of God, he is constantly in pursuit of that which will fill his emptiness.

Ephesians 2:3
3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

Thirsting and searching…the empty soul is blinded to his real need.

Ecclesiastes 1:9
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:14
14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

The empty soul cannot understand his longing.

John 4:14
14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

God inspired both King David and Paul to write:
“there is none who seeks after God”
Psalm 14:2 Romans 3:11

Until and unless the Holy Spirit touches the spiritual tongue of the empty soul that soul will never want to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Psalm 34:8

Jonathan Edwards said:
“So Holy desire, exercised in Longings, hungerings, and thirstings after God and Holiness”

Luke 12:19
19And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."

Thirst Of The Dry Soul

Many think that there isn’t any difference between the dry soul and the empty soul, but there is a lot of difference.

John 4:14
14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

Pastor and author John Piper was reading this verse one day and started to shout, “What do you Mean? I am so thirsty! My church is thirsty! The pastor’s whom I pray with are thirsty! O Jesus, what did you mean?”

John Piper:
When you drink my water, your thirst is not destroyed forever. If it did that, would you feel any need of my water afterward? That is not my goal. I do not want self-sufficient saints. When you drink my water, it makes a spring in you. A spring satisfies thirst, not by removing the need you have for water, but by being there to give you water whenever you get thirsty. Again and again and again. Like this morning. So drink, just drink.

A Christian soul becomes arid in one of three ways:

1) The most common is drinking too much from the desiccation fountains of the world and too little from “the river of God” (Psalm 65:9)

2) The second cause of dryness in the child of God is what the Puritans used to call “God desertions.”

While there are times that God does flood the soul with His presence there are at other times we feel dehydrated by a sense of His absence. Let me say rather quickly here that it is merely our perception, for the reality is just as Jesus promised:

Hebrews 13:5
because God has said,
"Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you

3) A Third cause of spiritual aridity in a Christian is prolonged mental or physical fatigue. Both the cause and the cure should be obvious enough so I’m not really going to elaborate here.

Thirst Of The Satisfied Soul

Unlike the dry soul, and as self-contradictory as it may sound at the moment, the satisfied soul thirsts for God precisely because he is satisfied with God. He has tasted and seen that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8

The apostle Paul put it this way:

“that I may know Him” Philippians 3:10

But let’s look for a moment what he says right before that:

Philippians 3:7-11
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

The Blessing Of Spiritual Thirst

“How blessed are all those who long for Him,” declared the prophet Isaiah (30:18 NASB). “Blessed are those,” reiterated Jesus, “who hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6). A thirsting desire for the Lord and His righteousness is a blessing. How so?

God Initiates Spiritual Thirst

Man cannot create this on his own, and God initiates this so He can fill it.

Do you not know that you have two people living inside of you? You and the Holy Spirit

I Corinthians 6:19
19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

And the Spirit is not passive within you.

Practical Steps For Thirsting After The Thirst-Slaker

Meditate on Scripture—spend 20-50 percent of your bible intake time meditating on some verse, phrase, or word from your reading

Pray through Scripture—Let the words of the section of scripture you are reading through become your pray, go back and as you read it a second time let it this time be your prayer to God

Read Thirst-Making writers—Look for Godly writers that cause you to thirst more for God, look for time proven Godly people