“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” Psalm 42:1
I think it was in Mr. Smith’s 9th grade science class that I first learned about Newton’s first law of motion. It’s called the law of inertia. It simply states that an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion unless something acts upon it. Some external force is needed in order to bring about change.
That’s true about physics. It’s also true about our spiritual lives. Unless something comes along to challenge our spiritual inertia, we will seldom have the motivation to do anything about it. Christ-followers experience this as well. They can easily slip into patterns of living that are robbing them of real life without even realizing it. In some cases, they get caught up in the frantic pace of life, the pursuit of things, the striving for recognition, or the quest for pleasure thinking that these things will ultimately satisfy them. In other cases they find themselves overly engaged in church activities believing that this is the path to abundance. In either case, they convince themselves that it’s working even though it isn’t.
But then something happens. They become unemployed. Their marriage falls apart. They have a health crisis. These things and others like them knock the props out from under them and force them to face the hard truth that their lives aren’t working despite the fact that they thought they were. And that brings a sense of desperation. That desperation is depicted by the Psalmist as panting for water.
Panting here is not a mild thing. It is an expression of desperation. The deer is in such a state of thirst that it must have water, or it will die. The Psalmist said that his soul was like that. It was panting, longing for something. That something was God Himself. It wasn’t what God could do for him to change his circumstances that he wanted but to be connected with God who alone could satisfy his thirst.
You may be in a season of life where all of this sounds a bit strange and ethereal. Your life is going fine. You’re not aware of thirsting for anything that you can’t satisfy on your own. If that’s where you are, I’m not going to argue with you. Just know that seasons come, and seasons go. Today’s good season can change to tomorrow’s harsh season in the blink of an eye. When it does, you’ll understand what the Psalmist is saying.
But you may already be there. You know your life isn’t working as well as it could be. You may even be a Christian and attend church, but deep inside there is a yearning for more in your relationship with God than you are experiencing. You are tired of singing worship songs that don’t match the reality you’ve come to know. You are weary of drinking from the dry fountains of religious activity. You want more. In fact, you are desperate for it.
If that’s you, then you’re in a good place. It may sound strange, but God has a way of meeting us in our desperate moments. Because when we’re desperate, we’re more willing for our spiritual inertia to be impacted. As that new movement begins in your soul, your thirst for God will begin to be satisfied.