Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary

spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and

Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

So, we've all been there. We're sitting in the waiting room in some

random office, or we're perusing the aisles of a Christian bookstore, or we're, you know,

walking down the hallway of a random church. And there it is on the wall. A painting of a deer.

What's the deer doing? Standing there peacefully by a body of a deer. What's the deer doing? Standing there, peacefully by a body of water.

And somewhere on that painting is the inscription that reads, as the deer panteth for the water,

O my soul it pants for thee. And you might actually think to yourself, yeah, that's nice. Oh, but to be like

that peaceful deer. And if you've had that thought before, you need to smack yourself, okay,

because you miss the boat entirely. So let's dig in a little bit here. The Psalm of Lament that we're

covering today is Psalm 42. So let's read the first two verses here in the English standard

version. As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, oh God. My soul thirst for God,

for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Now, I grew up not really understanding

what's going on here because I didn't grow up in a family of hunters.

In fact, I didn't hunt for the first time until I was in my 20s, and now I try to hunt as often as I can so that my two sons will grow up knowing how to hunt so that they can provide for themselves, their families, and others.

But Pastor Jobi actually taught me this because for years and years, I completely missed the all-important word

in this verse. And that's pants or panteth, right? Because in Psalm 42, this deer isn't just

chilling, enjoying the serenity of the water. This deer is exhausted. I mean, this deer is

I mean, panting from exertion, right? I think we've all been there. Some of us haven't been there as much as we would need to, right? You need to be in shape, guys. But let me digress a little bit. But again, going back to those dumb paintings, in Psalm 42, the deer hasn't found water yet.

It's panting for the water, the water that it so desperately needs but does not have.

When we're in that position, what is it that we desire?

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