Thirsting: Quenching Our Soul's Deepest DesireSample

Come to Me

In a world where we could turn anywhere else, Jesus says “come to me” if we really want to drink. He makes Himself available to us, breaking through the religious barrier of our fears, anxieties, and shame.

Giving our outer life to God can feel far less threatening than opening up our inner one. We may be able to imagine His saving us, His using and even loving us, but wanting us? Pursuing us? That’s something else entirely. And yet, that’s the truth.

God wants you, pursues you, and wants to live inside you—not to make you some kind of “host” for His mission on earth, but to commune in the very depths of your soul where you are your most naked, true, and alive.

Jesus could have said He would simply wash or anoint us with His waters, but He didn’t. He told us to drink, promising that His love, His “living water” (John 4:10). would find its way down into the deepest and darkest places of our being.

Thirst isn’t so much about passion, although it’s a vital part of it. Passion is the intense good feelings we get when we’re with someone we love. Passion ebbs and flows with sickness, circumstance, and seasons. Storms come, challenges arrive, and sometimes our feelings deceive us. Passion is important and God-given, but it’s not always the deepest place to live from. If we equate love for God with passion, we’ll be tossed by the waves of it. Passion is best served by something deeper, more permanent and sure: desire.

Desire dwells in the very core of who we are. It’s the aquifer that feeds the well of passion. It’s underneath. When we touch our desire, we touch a current so deep that the surface swell of life’s storms can’t change it. We touch our thirst.

Coming to Jesus is an all-of-ourselves experience that involves the soul, the mind, and what we do with our bodies (Matthew 22:36-38). Thirsting isn’t a detached, ethereal experience. It’s a deeply human one rooted in our thoughts and actions.

Having it together doesn’t qualify us for Christ. Only desperation, only need, only thirst. The issue is universal, the solution personal. There is nowhere else on earth to go. God alone can quench us.

When have you sensed Jesus calling you to come to Him?