Ps 119:131 – I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for Your commandments.
This verse caused me to stop and write a few notes last Sunday in Sunday school.
It’s the word “panted” that caught my attention.
The word for pant is sha’aph, which means to “inhale eagerly”.
When does a person pant the most? When they do some type of exercise like running.
Perhaps this is why it is written let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Heb 12:1
The more we run, the more we pant.
When you run, you pant because your body needs air and lots of it to replenish the amount that you have expended.
Air is necessary to sustain life.
The word for air is pneuma.
The word for spirit is also pneuma.
Which is which is determined by the context of the words that surround it in a sentence.
I hope the analogy is clear; we need for our spirit to pant after the Holy Spirit. We need to “inhale eagerly” all that God has for us.