You’re In My Heart, You’re In My Soul

As the hart (deer) pants and longs for the water brooks, so I pant and long for You, O God.

Psalm 42:1 AMP

When deadlines loom, relationships are challenged, and we get weary in the work to which we are called to perform, our souls can feel like dry, brittle sponges in desperate need of the touch of clear, cold water for refreshment.

Most of us reading this give more than we take or receive. For many of us, our Christian beliefs compel us to give, give, give and then give some more without taking the necessary breaks from performing in order to be nourished and replenished ourselves. Because of this, far too many believers in Jesus are operating out of our fumes, running on an empty tank, rather than out of the overflow of what Christ has for us in His fullness.

When we read the above passage of Scripture, we can easily imagine a deer panting for a drink of water. It isn’t hard to visualize and empathize with a deer who has been chased by dogs in the heat of summer, striving for survival – longing, even crying out, for just a drop of water. While the majority of folks reading this haven’t been in those exact circumstances, it doesn’t take much imagination to know what it feels like to be chased down by the ugly experiences in life like unpleasant financial woes, devastating diagnoses, irritating interruptions, hurtful behaviors by loved ones, and even our own struggles with sin and temptation…just to name a few!

Undealt with Weariness Leads to Unhealed Woundedness

What a refreshing drink of cool water it is to remember that we are no longer like David. We are no longer in need of searching for a place to get a drink of cool water when our throats are parched. While we may need to find a place for our minds and bodies to get necessary rest, our souls are no longer separated from the place of our greatest refreshment!

Here is how I know this: when Jesus came onto the scene and into our humanity, He offered a new way of living, a new way of relating to God and others, and a new way to experience God!

He explained this when he met the Samaritan woman at the well. Take a peek with me into their conversation,

“Jesus answered her, ‘All who drink of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever takes a drink of the water that I will give him shall never, no never, be thirsty any more. But the water that I will give him shall become a spring of water welling up (flowing, bubbling) [continually] within him unto (into, for) eternal life.’” John 4:13-14 AMP

Do you see the difference between David’s experience when he couldn’t get to the temple to worship and what Jesus said He alone could provide to the thirsty woman who had been searching everywhere for love, acceptance, validation, and relationship and never ever experience satisfaction, much less a “continually flowing, bubbling up” source of life?

Read the rest of John 4 and I Corinthians 6:19 (as well as so much of the New Testament) and be reminded that we can now experience God’s refreshment and renewal anytime, anywhere because His very Spirit now resides within us and He has made us one with Him!

Our place of quiet refreshment now resides within us!

While I am grateful beyond expression for places like the beach, the mountains, a city park or even a library or local spa to enjoy body/mind refreshment, I am in awe of the reality that those places and those experiences cannot come close to providing my soul what it really needs: a holy moment with the One who created my soul for Himself and is always, always, always available to me in full measure.
(This might be a good time for a “Selah” – i.e. a pause-and-think-about-that moment.)

Dearest Lord Jesus, my friend and Savior, thank you for this new way of relating to you, in the Spirit; this new way that allows me to be with you always; to know I’m never alone, I’m never depleted, I’m never lacking what I truly need and desire. Show me in clearer ways how to tap into this truth for my own life so that I grow and mature in this area of soul refreshment, drinking from the Living Water you’ve placed within me in abundance – and may my life reflect this beautiful reality to others out of the overflow of this ever-fresh spring that is operating in my life.