Psalm 63:1 O God, You are my God; Early
will I seek You; My soul thirsts for You; My flesh longs for You in a dry and
thirsty land where there is no water.
I had to go back to the well (so to speak) one more time, to
finish the message from our church’s Wednesday Summer Session and the video
teaching series from the Holy land with Ray Vander Laan’s That the World May
Know presentations. Vander Laan concludes this idea of “Living Water” as
refreshing our soul in the presence of the Lord in intimate communion ,with life
application by explaining that sometimes, our culture can be so attractive, so
pleasant, and so pleasurable that we fail to realize that even things that are
comfortable and enjoyable can be like a desert, if you leave God out. Because,
if God is like life-giving water, than what makes something a desert is that
there is no water. So you can take the most wonderful thing that our culture
has to offer (wealth, power, luxury, leisure, exotic vacations and all those
good kind of things, but if you leave God out, then you got a desert.
Jeremiah 17:13 Lord, you are the hope of Israel
I wonder whether we really realize just how incredibly “dry
and barren” our secular culture is today and see that they are lost in the
desert. I can come here to this “steam of living water” of the presence of the
Lord and I can drink whole buckets full of water to refresh my soul, but unless
I realize that there are people out there dying of thirst because God (Father,
Son & Holy Spirit) is not a part of their life, God is not part of their
existence, and God is not a part of their “everyday’ experience, then I’ll have
no reason to bring “the water of life” in the gospel of Jesus Christ to anyone else. We
are all tempted to visit the Oasis of God’s “Living Water”, sit in an lounge
chair and stay right there. We don’t what to go back to the desert, but it is
the Lord’s desire that when you taste the life-giving and light-giving “living water” of Christ, now
you go out and face the world that so desperately needs the water that we have
to offer. Let it flow.
John 7:37-39 On the last day, that great day of the
feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts,
let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart
will flow rivers of living water.”
It seems to me that what this “Oasis of En Gedi” says is that
“life”, in a lot of ways, is like the wilderness. We are called to be there and
we have a job to do. We have people that we have to interact with and we have a
Godless culture that we need to impact, but also recognize that it can be a dry
and tiring thing on us. I’m sure that many of you have felt the tiredness of trying
to serve the Lord, giving of yourself to God and to other people until it
hurts. And it is at times like that a place like “En Gedi” says: “You've got to
have a place like this in your life.” We all need somewhere that we can get away
from the heat of daily life in this dry and barren land; away from the
“giving”, away from the dryness of just “being emptied”, after awhile of being a parent, of being a student, of being a professional or any person of
responsibility and being able to come to the oasis of "living water". And in the
quiet … taste God.
Psalm 42:1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my
soul for You, O God.
If we are going to make a real impact on the culture and
really make a difference in our society, then we are going to have to devote ourselves to
spend some time at our personal “En Gedi” with God on a regular basis, whether
that is daily prayer, time spent alone with the Lord, or in the reading of His
Holy Word. But just that time where, in the middle of feeling dry and weary,
instead of sitting exhausted under the broom tree (like Elijah in 1 Kings
19:4-5) to come to the “living water”. And I think that without that, it would
be very difficult to go on. Added to that, it seems to me, the symbolism that I
see when I come to this place of “living water” is that I can drink and drink till
I’m full and refreshed. I lay in the cool water and I feel alive again. Then
God becomes the same within me for you, and for each of you for each other. So
I think that we need to encourage ourselves today, that the place where we are
going to get this strength is the source of the “living water”, God (Father Son
and Holy Spirit.
Isaiah 58:11 The Lord will guide you continually, and
satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; You shall be like a
watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
In Christ,
Brian
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