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The tool of drool & thirsting well

April 18, 2017 By Rhonda Rhea

No kidding, I had this very conversation with my daughter the other day:

Kaley:  Know what I found just now on Pinterest? Peanut butter cup gooey butter cake.

Me:  I just gained three pounds hearing you speak those words.

Kaley:  I just lost three pounds in drool.

After I thought about it—well, after I laughed, and then after I thought about it—I decided she might actually have something there. The next diet craze? How about “Slobber Yourself Thin!”

I don’t know why that shouldn’t work for me. Show me an even half-decent fudge cake and suddenly I’m a St. Bernard.

On the new diet plan, it wouldn’t even matter that I’m not the greatest cook in town. Nothing would depend on my baking. Just other people’s pictures of theirs. Seems to me as long as there is social media, food snapshots won’t be a problem. Log on any medium and there’s a virtual slobber-azzi.

I’m intrigued by the exercise implications here too. Instead of the tying on the tennies for running, I could just tie on the drool bib. Ready, set, salivate! 

Who knew drool could be a strategic tool in the arsenal of weight loss weapons? I think I’ll start a board on Pinterest for all my spittle-inducing photos. Kaley said I should call it “Pavlov’s Pics.” … That does ring a bell.

But you know what rings truer? The reality of our spiritual appetites. I have to ask myself regularly what my soul might be drooling after. In this fallen world, the temptation is always there: hunger for possessions or pleasure, thirst for enjoyment or ease. Our enemy whispers in our ear, enticing our focus away from things eternal to everything temporary and ultimately unsatisfying.

Our souls are created to be thirsty. The problem is that we so often go after all the wrong things to quench that thirst. We head for the temporary substitutes that leave us more spiritually dehydrated than ever.

It’s funny how as we stay hungry and thirsty for the Lord, we’re satisfied. Hungry and thirsty. Yet at the same time, completely satisfied.  Our thirst—our longing for Him—can be a tool in the hand of God, shaping us into the image of Christ by His Holy Spirit. As we’re reminded of our desperate need for Him and as we ask Him to fill us, any other thing we ever craved make so much less sense. He is absolutely all we need.

David “prayed thirsty” in Psalm 63:l: “God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water,” (HCSB).

Just a few verses later, we’re given a delicious description of what happens after a hungry/thirsty prayer: “You satisfy me as with rich food; my mouth will praise You with joyful lips,” (Psalm 63:5, HCSB).

That leaves me feeling wonderfully full, in the most real, to-the-soul way. Jesus said in John 7:37-38, “If anyone is thirsty, he should come to Me and drink! The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him,” (HCSB).

Father, Son and Holy Spirit—we are complete in our triune God who meets our every need.

No fooling. And no drooling. 

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