Article by Kristin Tanner

You guys have all lost something before right? I mean we can all testify to an experience with the car keys for sure. When you lose the keys what is your response? Well, if you have a spare you get that and you do not worry about the lost key until you have time to look for it. You have found a substitute that will work for the time being so you do not focus your energy on finding the other set. But sometimes the spare is not available and the search is on, and we will turn the house upside down searching for those keys because we know we can not get anywhere without them. Usually we realize they are missing when we are ready to go out the door which makes the search even more frantic. We throw a fit, maybe throw a kid, we pray for divine intervention from God, we stop and try to retrace our steps. We will do whatever it takes to get those keys!

Is not this true of our relationship with the Lord as well? I know it has been true with mine. God is the key. He is the key to all of life, but sometimes we lose Him. This is no fault of His mind you, the bible says “He never leaves us or forsakes us.”  But oh how we leave Him. How we set Him down in our life and forget that He is even there. And for many of us it is not that big of a deal because we have a spare: family, career, ministry, television, books, relationships etc. We find enough satisfaction in something else so that we never even realize our need for God.

At some point in our life we are faced with the fact that there really is no spare. We go to get our spare and it fails us. Somehow it fails to satisfy us and we start searching. We realize that something is missing and we begin our search. We search and we search and we search and usually we stubbornly search in all the wrong places. For some of us, eventually we cry out for a divine intervention of God or we began to retrace our steps. When we do, we find our Key!

How refreshing is that time in our lives where we realize that we thirst! We realize we thirst for what only God can give us, that gift of being in His presence and knowing that only God and God alone will satisfy us. Have you gotten to that place? Have you realized your thirst? If so, we cry out with the psalmist:

”O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;  To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.” Ps. 63:1-2

If not I pray that God would bring you to the place in your life that a spare will not work any longer. I will pray that through whatever measure He chooses to use, you will behold His glory! A taste that will leave you thirsting for more!