Do You Thirst? by Nate Hayes

Published February 6, 2026
Do You Thirst? by Nate Hayes
‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them  will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up  to eternal life.’  
John 4:13-14  

I wonder if you thirst for more of God? Is there an ache in your heart to experience more of God  in your life? I know that is the case for me. There have been many moments throughout my life  where I have been brought to tears by the love and nearness of God. These moments have been  both amidst exciting times of worship, surrounded by thousands of other Christians and in the  ordinariness of doing the dishes. And just like after tasting a fine wine or aged steak cooked to  perfection, there is no going back to Coke and chicken nuggets.  

These moments can leave us thirsting for more of God. This is a paradox – in encountering God  our thirst is fully satisfied, however simultaneously stimulates a thirst for more of him.  Experiencing God in this way and longing for more of him isn’t just for the hyper charismatics,  but is at the core of our faith. Jesus invites us all to come and drink deeply from him,  experiencing His love and closeness afresh each day.  

God is omnipresent — he is everywhere, he is in all things, and through him all things hold  together. The Psalmist writes, ‘Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your  presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.’  (Psalm 139:7-8). As Christians, we have the Holy Spirit, God himself living within us  (Ephesians 1:13), we are in Christ and he is in us (1 John 4:13). When we wake up in the  morning, he is there, when we go to work, he is there, when we go to church on Sunday, he is  there.  

However, while God's omnipresence is everywhere at all times, God also makes his manifest  presence known to us individually and corporately. It is like the air we breathe, which is  everywhere, but can also be felt as a strong breeze. As followers of Jesus we should pray, ‘Lord,  make us more aware of your presence that is always with us.’ However, we should also pray,  ‘come Holy Spirit, draw close to us, fill us afresh with your loving Spirit, move in our hearts,  church and world.’  

The problem for many of us however, is that because of our experience, theology,  disappointments or lack of faith we can settle for a merely academic version of the gospel. It is  here that the knowledge and love of God remains in our heads and fails to drop to our hearts. To be a Christian is not just to understand a set of doctrines but is to experience a relationship with  the Father, through the Son by the Spirit, getting caught up in this Trinitarian love.  

Jesus says in John 4:24 that, ‘God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in  truth.’ Orthodoxy is important, however so is orthopraxy, the outworking of our doctrine. To  worship in the Spirit is to let God’s loving presence into our hearts, allow it to transform us, and  let it shape how we worship.  

The litmus test to know if we are growing spiritually and in the outworking of our faith is to ask  ourselves the question, am I growing in love—both for God and others? I personally find this a  confronting question. If we long to have our deepest thirst quenched by the Lord we must create  room for him in our lives and seek after him. A.W. Tozer writes, ‘Acute desire must be present or  there will be no manifestation of Christ to his people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with  many of us he waits so long, so very long, in vain.’  

Everyday the Lord longs to make his manifest presence known in our lives. The problem is we  are often too busy and distracted to notice. And like someone who is dying of thirst drinking  mouthfuls of salt water, we can try and satisfy our thirst for God with more busyness and  distractions. If you are anything like me and thirst for more of God in your day to day life, I have  three encouragements for us:  

Become Childlike   
All throughout the gospels we see Jesus’ disdain for the religious elite. Jesus was not  anti-academia (he knew the scriptures better than anyone), but was indignant towards the scribes  and Pharisees’ pride. Jesus makes a point by praying out loud in front of the religious leaders, ‘I  praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise  and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to  do’ (Matthew 11:25-26). The Father is pleased to reveal himself to those who approach him as a  child approaches a father. This requires a great deal of humility.  
Pick your Cross  
A great barrier to experiencing more of the love of God in our lives is our sin. If we are being  really honest, we can all willingly permit and enjoy certain sin in our lives. Jesus’ death on the  cross bridged the great divide that separated humanity and God. Our sins were dealt with on the  cross. Though we sin and mess up all the time we can live with an assurance that our eternity is  secure for those that profess faith in Christ. However, like in marriage, if we live in a way that  does not honour our spouse and are unremorseful, intimacy in that marriage will be damaged. It  is the same in our relationship with God.
Our sin can close the door on experiencing the love of God in our lives. The call of every  Christian is to ‘crucify the flesh with it’s passions and desires’ (Galatians 5:24) and offer our  whole lives as a ‘living sacrifice’ to God (Romans 12:1-2). Jesus says that those who want to  become his disciples must ‘deny themselves and take up their cross and follow’ him (Matthew  16:24). If we want to taste the living water that is on offer to us we must stop looking back at our  old lives before we were in Christ and look to the one who will quench our deepest thirst.  
Ask for the Holy Spirit  
Jesus says, ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be  opened to you.’ (Matthew 7:7). Ask – Seek – Knock… ASK. Receiving the Holy Spirit is not a  one time event. We receive the Spirit upon conversion but are also to go on being continually  filled with the Spirit. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:18, ‘Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to  debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.’ The word for ‘be filled’ in the Greek is in the  present continuous tense, meaning we are to go on being filled by the Holy Spirit over and over  again. D.L. Moody quipped, ‘I need to be filled again and again because I am a leaky vessel.’ If  we thirst for more of God in our lives, we need simply ask for the Spirit of the living God to fill  us afresh.  The greatest gift we can give to those who don’t know God is the gospel in action – living lives  transformed by his great love. The starting place for this is to thirst after God. To desire him  above all things. As we grow more and more into a people of love, it is here that we will see  lives restored, churches revitalised and society transformed, in Jesus name.  
You, God, are my God,  earnestly I seek you;  I thirst for you,  my whole being longs for you,  in a dry and parched land  where there is no water.  
Psalm 63:1