PSALM 63:1-4 – O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.”

In the healthy Christian life, there is prayer and then there is prayer. The Apostle Paul tells us “Pray without ceasing” and “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving” (1 Thessalonians 5:17; Colossians 4:2). Our Lord Jesus exhorts us in a parable to consistent prayer with these words,“ And Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart”(Luke 18:1). This type of prayer is what we may call “on the fly” and describes a life of ongoing communion with the Lord through the course of the day in all we do and places we go. It is the kind of praying that recognizes God in all of life and its circumstances giving Him praise for a beautiful sunrise, thanksgiving for provision and protection, and acknowledgment of His goodness in so many of the ordinary things of life. We are to cultivate such a prayer life for it will deepen our relationship with the living God as we learn to walk in His Presence in fellowship with Him through prayer.

Then, there is prayer like from David’s heart in today’s scripture. What we are witnessing is the man after God’s own heart yearning for more of God’s heart. He is pleading to experience more the power, beauty, and glory of his God. His praying is intense coming from a thirst for God that says, “There is nothing I want more in life than You; to know You, to be close to You, to adore and worship You.” And such a thirst always leads to an intense pursuit in prayer to satisfy such a thirst, but there is a catch, and a big one. We must want it. Bad. We must thirst for it. Intensely. Like the story we are about to read . . .

A boy watched a holy man praying on the banks of a river. When he finished praying the boy went over and asked him, “Will you teach me to pray?” The holy man studied the boy’s face. Then he gripped the boy’s head in his hands and plunged it into the water The boy struggled frantically, until finally the holy man released his hold. When the boy was able to catch his breath, he gasped, “What did you do that for?” “When you long to pray as much as you longed to breathe when your head was underwater,” said the holy man, “only then will I be able to teach you to pray.”

The lesson from the story? When we want God more than anything, more than success, more than peace, more than health, more than material things, more than comfort, and more than any other relationship, then we learn the other side of prayer; the intense type seeking the face and heart of God out of thirst for Him, and Him alone.

PRAYER: “Father, create in me such a desire for You that prayer becomes passionate practice seeking You.”
QUOTE: “A thirst for God always increases thirst for God and God always satisfies such thirst in His children.”

Because of Him,
Pastor Jim