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I Am Because You Are August 22, 2025 Devotional

by David Joynt on August 22, 2025


PSALM 42:1-2 | 1As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?

PSALM 34:8 | 8O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

Our deepest longings are a clue to our need for God. Our desire for love can only be satisfied by a love deeper, fuller, richer, and stronger than our ordinary human affections. It can only be met by an experience of His love. Our longing for a place within the social world can’t be fulfilled by our flawed communities that are constantly marred by competition, selfishness, and misunderstanding. Only the kingdom community, permanently populated by the redeemed and restored, can meet our true longing, free as it will be of fears and follies. Our desire for healing and forgiveness finds its ultimate end only in the presence of the one who has borne our sorrows and can make us new creatures. Our spiritual thirsts are only met and exceeded in Him.

 

Are your longings a clue to your destiny?

 

 

Gracious God,

Remind me that I am an alien and a stranger, not yet home. May my longings encourage my faith and deepen my vision and appetite for the life to come.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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