Desiring God

'...My body yearns for you as in a dry and weary land without water.' (Psalm 63.1)

In contemporary British culture there remains a discomfort, or even prudishness, about the notion of desiring God; perhaps for fear of such desire having romantic overtones. Yet the Mystics, and many spiritual writers, integrated desire with the life of faith, and today those who choose a vocation to the single consecrated life, speak powerfully of the fulfilment they have come to know from making God their sole focus.

A recent study showed that people will desire something more if you increase their focus on it (Kotynski and Demaree, 2017), and we know from human relationships of all kinds, that true depth only develops in response to intentional attention given and received. Desire (romantic or otherwise) is at the heart of human experience. It is rooted in a longing for the intimacy of being fully known, and the comfort and security of being united. Human longing is a spiritual thirst which can only truly be quenched by the living water (John 7.37) and known through intimate and honest relationship with Christ.

God desires us deeply and any desire we feel for God is always responsive: we love God, because God first loved us (1 John 4.19) and our desire can only grow through intentionally cultivating relationship with the One who longs for us to love them back. In some seasons in life, our faith may seem passionate and our prayer is spontaneous; in others we may feel like we are plodding through the wilderness. If we find ourselves in thirsty times, we can take comfort in remembering that our God is the God who causes rivers to flow, even in the dessert (Isaiah 43.19).