The Bible Study Podcast, episode 398. Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the book of Psalms with Psalm 63.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

Psalm 63 is another Psalm of David,

and it's written when he was in the desert of Judah, and it starts this way.

You God are my God. earnestly, I seek you. I thirst for you. My whole being longs for you in dry and parched land where there is no water.

Thirst is a theme in the Bible that we can see in several places. And as David is walking through this dry land, he turns this thirst that he has, this literal thirst that he has, into a metaphor. It reminds him of his

longing and desire for God. David is not just wandering in the desert on a holiday. This is one

of those difficult times in David's life, one of those times where it's

easy to feel separate from God. And so there is this urgent need, this earnestly I seek you,

I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you. I think of two specific themes in the Bible that have to do with thirst.

The first one is more drought. I think of Amos, for instance, where I was just reading through

Amos four, for instance, verse seven, I also withheld rain from you. When the harvest was three months

away, I sent rain to one town, but

withheld it from another. One field had rain, another had none, and dried up. People staggered from

town to town for water, but did not get enough to drink. Yet you have not returned to me,

declares the Lord. So in one case, God is using thirst. God is using the drought that he sends to the people of Israel during

the time of Elijah. God is using drought to drive people to him. Water is one of those things we can't

get by without for very long. We are, as some people have said, self-propelled bags of water. We are mostly water.

And when water is withheld from us for even a relatively short period of time, we have a great

desire for it, this great thirst. So David is saying, that's what it feels like. And I like the

idea here that one of the reasons we thirst for water is that we are mostly water.

One of the reasons that we thirst for God is that if we're disconnected from him,

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