Glorious Thirsting

At the encouragement of a friend, I'm taking a deeper look at the role fasting plays in the life of a Christian. I've been thinking about prayer lately, so I'm especially interested in learning how fasting relates to prayer. A quick search on fasting at Desiring God led me to Piper's book, A Hunger For God. (Did you know all his books can be read for free online?) This is not really a post about fasting, since I'm still learning, but I found this quote from the introduction and couldn't resist copying it to share...

"When you take your stand on the finished work of God in Christ, and begin to drink at the River of Life and eat the Bread of Heaven, and know that you have found the end of all your longings, you only get hungrier for God. The more satisfaction you experience from God, while still in this world, the greater your desire for the next...

The more deeply you walk with Christ, the hungrier you get for Christ . . . the more homesick you get for heaven . . . the more you want "all the fullness of God" . . . the more you want to be done with sin . . . the more you want the Bridegroom to come again . . . the more you want the Church revived and purified with the beauty of Jesus . ..the more you want a great awakening to God's reality in the cities . . . the more you want to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ penetrate the darkness of all the
unreached peoples of the world . . . the more you want to see false worldviews yield to the force of Truth . . . the more you want to see pain relieved and tears wiped away and death destroyed . . . the more you long for every wrong to be made right and the justice and grace of God to fill the earth like the waters cover the sea.

If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of
the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great..."

Do you have this hunger and desire for the Lord in your life, or have you (perhaps unknowingly) learned to fill yourself with the things of this world, leaving little room for spiritual things?

I have been in both places, and can say (by God's grace) that there is nothing more satisfying than thirsting after God, and finding that the fountain never runs dry, and only grows sweeter with each taste!