A Prayer for the Water Diggers Among Us

God,

I did it again. I dug my own cistern and it broke. I sought solace in the arms of a whore, a cheap imitation of the real thing, a creature instead you, the Creator. I long for the comfort of independence, making my own fortune, building my own kingdom, because I long for respite today instead of someday.

I'm hungry for heaven and for the bread of life, but today I just want to be full, to stop feeling the pangs of hunger in my heart. I ache with all the somedays of our faith. The tomorrows and better days ahead.

Jesus, you said You gave us water that would make us never thirst again, but the only water I know is the kind I need every day, again and again. I don't understand a quench ever being filled and my heart ever being full. I have no concept of fullness, only hunger or the gluttony that makes us fat on the feast of earthly sweets. I starve myself or I indulge myself—fearful of living in the tension of what you have already done and what you have not yet done.

I do not trust you.

And I do trust you.

And I don't know how to live in that ever expanding, ever closing gap.

The more I know you, the more I trust you, but the more I trust you, the more you give me to trust you with and the more I have to know and trust you. It is an endless cycle, this hunger. I eat of your words, they taste sweet and fill me, but I am oh so hungry again and the temptation to eat a lesser feast is always before me.

Fill me to full, Lord, to overflowing, and empty me of me in that process. Empty me, train my palate and my hunger so the only one for whom I thirst is you. Give me a taste for you.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.

John Piper