Have you ever come to the end of your day and of yourself and wondered why your head is pounding and your body’s dragging?

And then realized that you didn’t drink water except to brush your teeth and slug down coffee – which doesn’t even count with its contrary diuretic designs!

Getting to the end of a day and saying to my husband, “Wow, I have such a headache.”

And his first question to me, “Honey, how much water have you had today?”

What about your parched spirit?  Do you find yourself in moments, when your heart is pounding with pressures, burdens, parched soul-thirst that you know in your head can be quenched? But your heart, because it’s in a critical state of stunned, desert-like thirst, is weary, suffering and even partially paralyzed, without strength to reach out for refreshment?

Moments of:

• “I believe, help my unbelief!”(Mark 9:24)
• “How long will this last?” (Psalm 13)
• “What is this sense of forsaken suffering in my soul?”

Not unlike these recorded heart cries, and for Jesus Himself on the cross in Mark 15:34 – at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

His holy refreshment comes especially in those tortured words. Jesus took all of the pressures, burdens, soul-thirst created by my sins, and by every sin of every soul, and He suffered beyond any other human capacity, shouldering the burdens of EVERY sin upon His beaten being.

And what did He say to fulfill the soul-quenching Living Water of His Word? After crying out to God, knowing and willing in His eternal Spirit  why He was being momentarily, yet starkly forsaken, He said for our mortal needs, “I thirst.”  As Jesus Himself was poured out like water in Psalm 22:14, Psalm 69:21 then was fulfilled, with His cracked-lipped, depleted body thirst.  To show us our desperate need for the “woman-at-the-well” water.  Water described that Jesus “gives and becomes in us a spring of water welling up to eternal life!”

What if all that your spirit can drink is a phrase for one moment?  Caught in sorrowful suffering, worn by worldly deceits, irreparable relationships, or a sad place somewhere on that spectrum, what if diving into deep waters of verse upon verse is an overwhelming, drowning hydration of your dry spirit?  God is compassionate and gentle.  Beside us alongside the still waters.  Whatever your spirit can drink, “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether” Psalm 19:7-9.

God revives, makes wise, rejoices our hearts, enlightens our eyes, inspires clean, enduring fear in us forever, and instills truthful righteousness for us all.

Refreshment in every soul-quenching word, each a refreshing drop from His gently pouring Spirit. He pours in perfect measure.

“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” Psalm 42:1-2.

As you cry out longingly, if your spirit is languishing, Jesus gives lasting heart hydration.

His soul-quenching is always enough, spirit crying to Spirit, “I thirst.”