Soul Yearnings/ Thirst for God
What we notice is that we tend to be entirely too indifferent and uncommitted to the spiritual path. But in looking more closely, we can discern a sense of discontent with our apparent lack of zeal. Jim Finley
Gregg’s Reflection
The prophet Isaiah says,
My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.
What does that look like in your life? In mine, it first appeared as a sad question that haunted me in quiet moments: “Is this all there is?” The American Dream seemed to promise education, career, security, and then death. But that left me restless, empty, and longing for something more. Later, I heard the phrase “spiritual discontent,” which perfectly named my malaise.
Over time, I came to see that my dissatisfaction was not failure, but invitation. Spiritual longing is the soul’s thirst for God. Just as a dry mouth cries out for water, the human heart aches for communion with its Creator. The Psalmist tells us:
As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God”
Restlessness, yearning, desire—these are not obstacles but gifts, placed within us to draw us deeper into God’s embrace.
Mystics across the centuries echo this truth. Meister Eckhart said that if the soul cannot yet feel longing, it must “long for the longing”—for even that desire comes from God. Julian of Norwich reminds us that nothing else will satisfy until we rest fully in Him. Our thirst is holy, because only God can fulfill it.
I’ve learned to stop dismissing my longing as weakness. Instead, I try to see it as God’s own voice within me, whispering, “Come closer. Come deeper. Come to Me.” Spiritual thirst is not a problem to be solved, but a pathway to love, drawing us beyond ourselves into the living water that Jesus promised. Blessings.
Journaling Prompts
When have you felt the ache of spiritual discontent — the sense that “there must be more”? What are the “false wells” you’ve turned to in hopes of quenching your thirst, and what did you discover there? How might you see your longing not as failure, but as God’s invitation to go deeper?What practices help you notice and bring your thirst for God honestly into prayer?
Scripture
My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.
Isaiah 26:9
One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
Psalm 27:4
As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, my God.
Psalm 42:1
Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
Psalm 34:8
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. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift up my hands.
Psalm 63:1-4
A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but fools detest turning from evil.
Proverbs 13:19
You will see me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:13
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:26
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Matthew 5:6
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
John 6:35
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
John 7:37-38
Who is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:35-39
God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made dwell within us.
James 4:5
Ancient Writings
Everyone who longs for the continual awareness of God should be in the habit of meditating on it ceaselessly in his heart, after having driven out every kind of thought.
John Cassian, quoting the Desert Fathers, a sentence which reveals how the ancients saw thought as emanating not from the mind, but from the heart.
The person who thirsts for God eagerly studies and meditates on the inspired word, knowing that there he is certain to find the one for whom he thirsts. Instruction makes us learned, experience makes us wise.
Bernard of Clairvaux, Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, McGinn, p 28,33
The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love; but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God.
Meister Eckhart
It is God, and he alone, who can fully satisfy the hunger and longing of our spirit which transformed by his redeeming grace is enabled to embrace him by love. He whom neither men nor angels can grasp by knowledge can be embraced by love.
The Cloud of Unknowing, Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, McGinn, p. 263
It is His will that we should know Him, and His pleasure that we should rest in Him. Nothing less will satisfy us. We shall never cease wanting and longing until we possess Him in fullness and joy.
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
God says: “I am the sovereign goodness of all things. I am what makes you love. I am what makes you long and desire. This I am-the endless fulfilling of all desires.
Julian of Norwich, Brendan Doyle, Meditations with Julian p.104
It is God’s will that we have three objects in our seeking: The first is that we seek willingly and diligently, without laziness, as much as possible through His grace, gladly and merrily without unreasonable sadness and useless sorrow. The second is we await Him steadfastly because of His love. The third is that we trust in Him mightily in fully certain faith, for it is His will that we know that He shall appear without warning and full of blessing to all His lovers.
Julian of Norwich, The Complete Julian of Norwich, Fr John-Julian, p. 101
I experience your wisdom, my God, which not only does not condemn me as a miserable sinner, but sweetly feeds me with distinct desire.
Nicolas of Cusa, Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 168
Keep this in mind, daughters: the soul that is quick to turn to speaking and conversing is slow to turn to God. For when it is turned toward God, it is then strongly and inwardly drawn toward silence and flight from all conversation. For God desires a soul to rejoice with him more than with any other person, however advanced and helpful the person may be.
St. John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross (includes The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night, The Spiritual Canticle, The Living Flame of Love, Letters, and The Minor Works) [Revised Edition]
Let us occupy ourselves entirely in knowing God. The more we know Him, the more we will desire to know Him. As love increases with knowledge, the more we know God, the more we will truly love Him. We will learn to love Him equally in times of distress or in times of great joy.
Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
Modern Writings
I am thirsty I must drink; no well or river can quench my thirst if I do not personally drink. It stands just thus, dear soul: you must accept Christ or you are lost. Be sure of this, that God himself cannot, will not, save you unless you accept Christ.
Charles Spurgeon, Sermon: Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit, Volume 26
Every man is a pilgrim on the road of life. Some are truly seeking the Absolute God! It is the eternal hunger of men for God whom they seek, whether they know it or not, as pilgrims of the Absolute.
Catherine Doherty, Poustinia, Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer, p. 23
Every human being has a longing for God. Christians go one step further—not only do we long for God but we have the treasure of his presence always with us.
Mother Theresa
Give us always this bread of heaven. Slake us always with this water that we might not thirst forever! This is the life that pours down into us from the Risen Christ, this is the breath of his Spirit, and this is the love that quickens His Mystical Body.
Thomas Merton, A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals
We are summoned not only to intimacy but to take possession of our very oneness with the Son of God in the inner life of the Trinity in the communication of the very Love of Father and Son, the Most Holy Spirit. This is what centering prayer is about.
Basil Pennington, Centered Living: The Way of Centering Prayer
I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me.
Henri Nouwen, Finding My Way Home
Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.
Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God
The Christian life is not about pleasing God the finger-shaker and judge. It is not about believing now or being good now for the sake of heaven later. It is about entering a relationship in the present that begins to change everything now. Spirituality is about this process: the opening of the heart to the God who is already here.
Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith
The task of spiritual directors is to help people find their deepest heart’s desire. What we desire enough, we are likely to get, because God plants within us what God wants to give us.
Richard Rohr, On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 178
The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer
God has awakened in my heart a longing I don’t understand, a longing for unity I don’t understand, but I’ve tasted it. The heart longs for depth, a deeper love. I am present in a presence, a presence that includes and transcends me, with a deep primitive knowing.
James Finley, Living School Faculty Call 11/20
The longings that form the visceral energy of prayer are not necessarily felt and expressed in concrete and tangible ways that are easy to recognize. Sometimes—often, in fact—the longings of prayer are diffused and muted longings that one barely feels at all.
What we notice is that we tend to be entirely too indifferent and uncommitted to the spiritual path. But in looking more closely, we can discern a sense of discontent with our apparent lack of zeal. The discontent belies a subtle desire hidden beneath the surface of an ongoing apparent lack of desire. . .
We pretend we do not care about what we, at some deep level, actually care about very much. There is, it seems, a deal that the heart makes with itself not to admit that it harbors a desire so deep it could not go on without that desire being fulfilled.
James Finley, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God, p. 26.