“As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” – Psalm 42:1b-2a

As human beings we spend our entire life trying to prove that we are self-sufficient. As children we long for the day when we can get our drivers’ license and not have to rely on our parents to get us to where we want to go. Even as we grow old it pains us to admit that we may need help and can’t do everything we used to do by ourselves.

In the Psalms we see one thing repeated over and over- that we are desperate without God. We long for relationship. We long for financial independence. We long for personal gain yet deep down there is a longing in our souls for more of God. God has created us all with a longing for Him. The trouble is that we so often try to satisfy our longing with the wrong things. We all tend to have a do-it-yourself attitude and we are deceived into thinking that if we rely on someone else then that is a sign of weakness.

There is nothing wrong with admitting to God our desperate need for Him. He longs for us to surrender our self-sufficient ways for His all-sufficient care. It takes humility to desperately call out to God and confess our great need for more of Him and unfortunately we tend to run short in the humility department. Are we too convinced that we can make it on our own, or can we humble ourselves and cry out to God in desperation to satisfy our longing soul?

“For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.” – Psalm 107:9