From J. C. Philpot's Daily Portions
September 9 "For I will pour water upon him who is thirsty."
Isaiah 44:3 Thirst, as a feeling of the soul, in a spiritual sense,
is certainly indicative of divine life. It is as impossible, spiritually
viewed, for a man dead in sin to thirst after a living God, as for a corpse
in the graveyard to thirst after a draught of cold water from the well. I
know for myself that such a feeling as thirsting after God had no place in
my bosom until the Lord was pleased to quicken my soul into spiritual life.
I had heard of God by the hearing of the ear. I had seen him in creation, in
the starry sky, in the roaring sea, in the teeming earth; I had read of him
in the Bible; I had learned his existence by education and tradition; and I
had some apprehensions of his holiness in my natural conscience; but as to
any spiritual thirsting after him, any earnest desire to fear him, know him,
believe in him, or love him--no such experience or feeling, I can say for
myself, ever dwelt in my bosom. I loved the world too dearly to look to him
who made it, and my SELF too warmly and affectionately to seek him who would
bid me crucify and mortify it. A man, therefore, I am well convinced, must be made alive
unto God by spiritual regeneration before he can experience any such
sensation as is here conveyed by the figure "thirst," or know anything of
the Psalmist's feelings when he cried, "As the deer pants after the
water-brooks, so pants my soul after you, O God. My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God" (Psalm 42:1, 2). Now wherever God has raised up in the
soul this spiritual thirst after himself, he certainly will answer that
desire, "the desire of the righteous shall be granted" (Prov. 10:24). His
own invitation is, "Ho! every one that thirsts, come to the waters" (Isaiah
55:1); and Jesus himself says with his own blessed lips, "If any man
thirsts, let him come unto me and drink" (John 7:37). No, he opened his
ministry by pronouncing a blessing on such, "Blessed are they which do
hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled."