The Sum Total of Our Hungers

"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:2).


One of the milk companies makes capital of the fact that their cows are all satisfied with their lot in life. Their clever ads have made the term "contented cows" familiar to everyone. But what is a virtue t a cow may be a vice in a man. And contentment, when it touches spiritual things, is surely a vice.


Religious complacency is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days, and its presence is a sign and a prophecy. For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints all have thirsting hearts. Their cry has been, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" Their longing after God all but consumed them; it propelled them onward and upward to heights towards which less ardent Christians look with languid eye and entertain hope of reaching.


Orthodox Christianity has fallen to its present low estate from lack of spiritual desire. Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in a thousand reveals any passionate thirst for God.


Oh, Lord, deliver me from the complacency that is so prevalent both around me and within me. Give me an unquenchable thirst for You that I may cry out for You along with the saints of long ago. Amen


~A. W. Tozer~