God Thirsts
Before the foundations of the world were spoken into being, God the Father, Son & Spirit were. Their being wasn’t some static, plain existence, but a vital interpenetration of vitality, nuclear joy, self-offering love and perfect security.
God needed nothing because He is everything to Himself. He Himself being perfect community, the very fullness of all fullness, whole and good.
And yet the story doesn’t end there. God creates, and he creates us.
Why? Why did he do that? It’s really is a mystery. If he didn’t need to, if he didn’t have to to satisfy some empty part of himself or prop his ego why create? Whatever the reason, it’s clear that at the very centre of his intention was desire. God created us because he wanted to.
That means something, because if God created us out of desire, out of his perfect self-satisfied communal (in perfect oneness) desire, then his longing for us is based in His nature, not on our performance. Desire is who God is and because of that His desire for us never slows or diminishes. The story of scripture is the epic of this pursuing, yearning love for humanity throughout ages of our wayward and un-returning hearts.
The culmination of which is Christ, on the cross, naked, vulnerable, yet still willing to the very last breathe to make his yearning love wholly available to us. And what were some of His final words? “I thirst”.
Of course Jesus was dehydrated and physically thirsty, but He also said very few things that didn’t have deeper meaning. Isn’t it possible that in this moment Jesus is expressing two profound truths? His very human physical need, and His deeper spiritual longing to reconcile humanity - you and I personally - to this perfect desire?
Isn’t it possible that in these two words God was also expressing His desire, His thirst, for you.
St Augustine saw this continuous longing in the ministry of Jesus. So much so he felt he could confidently say, “God thirsts that we would thirst for Him.” Later, Mother Theresa of Calcutta would have a vision of Christ thirsting for souls on the cross that would propel her into a life of living among the poorest of the poor and a missional movement that would transform the world planting over 600 foundations in 123 countries with the simple vision to “satiate the thirst of Jesus on the Cross for love of souls.”
Theresa would go on to write, “‘I thirst’ is something much deeper than Jesus just saying ‘I love you.’ Until you know deep inside that Jesus thirsts for you—you can’t begin to know who He wants to be for you. Or who He wants you to be for Him.”
God loves us with a profound love. But it’s important to know too that He wants us. That He longs for and pursues us. Until we know just how deeply this is true our vision of His love remains passive, detached, lacking in divine fire and naive to the true gravity of this gospel. We also find no essential vision for our own desire. No divine map for ordering and liberating it.
I don’t think many of us know this gospel. I wonder if we’ve become so overfamiliar with the language of “God is love” or “God loves me” that we’ve domesticated it and lost how vital that statement really is. I wonder if we’ve largely bought into a gospel of “God loves me but doesn’t really like me” and so we live loved but not wanted in the shallow end of the pool.
That kind of belief friend-zones God though. It takes the fire out of prayer, out of communion, and leaves the spiritual life tasteless. It also hollows out our gospel in a world burning with desire and spending it in every other place than the Divine Love it’s blueprinted after.
Without yearning, the church lacks affection and turns her eyes toward churching rather than her Beloved. We become loving in a safe, vanilla way, lacking any real transformation, losing our ache and saltiness.
The way to heal this spiritual short-fall, isn’t through human comprehension. Theology is crucial and gets us some of the way, but in the end this flaming love is utterly beyond our knowledge according to the New Testament.1 This love is spiritually discerned, it’s a gift from the Holy Spirit. A gift received through prayer.
That can be as simple as the turning of the heart and mind continually toward God in every moment we can during the day to simply say yes and to allow this inflowing love to fill and transform us. To then learn to live from that love is the power of the gospel. It’s the very energy that propels us toward holy living, other-love and meaningful work in the world. God’s yearning sets ours ablaze and we find ourselves wanting what He wants too.
Receiving God’s love is as missional an act as it is a relational one.
Learning to pray this way, to live this way, is at the heart of this today’s guided prayer meditation on the Beholding Prayer Podcast. It’s also the longing behind my new book Thirsting (which is out now). If you’d like to truly work out what this journey can mean for you personally, and how to commune with God in your own yearnings, your invitation is there.
I’m praying today that the church awakens to Love, to the vital, burning and yearning love of her Beloved. Not only for herself, but because the world is waiting for it, desperate for it even, that in God’s bride it may see a vision for humanity fully alive.
Come, Holy Spirit.
All my love,
Strahan.
My new book Thirsting: Quenching Our Soul’s Deepest Desire is out now. Find it today here for New Zealand / Australia and here for the US or from wherever good books are sold in your region.
Eph 3:17-19
God thirst that we would thirst for him, is such a good reminder found in the character of God. He never stops desiring relationship with his creation.
The Love and wanting is so Wonderful. I was overwhelmed with His desire and love for me last week in prayer and it is so humbling and deep yet whole. Thank you for sharing this.