It happened every summer. Our family always had a
little camp not so far outside of Moundsville, WV. We'd usually spend every
weekend there but it wasn't always fun and games even though my grandparents
would try to make us dig a well at the beginning of each summer seem like
FUN and GAMES! So they sank most of their money and a lot of our time into
digging a well. A drought came and the well came up dry. Wells have a way of
doing that.
Now, our word for today from the Word of God
comes from John 4. A great story, one I love, and I'm going to begin reading
at verse 13. You'll recognize this as an account of Jesus' trip through
Samaria where He met a Samaritan woman who had come to draw water from the
well. She had a pretty sordid background; she'd been pretty busy with the
men in town, shall we say, and she has a reputation that goes with it.
Now Jesus says to her after offering her living
water, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again." I can almost
picture Him pointing to the well. "But whoever drinks the water I give them
will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring
of water welling up to eternal life.'"
"The woman said to Him, 'Sir, give me this water
so that I won't get thirsty and have to come here to draw water.' He told
her, 'Go call your husband and come back.' 'Well, I have no husband' she
replied. Jesus said to her, 'You're right when you say you have no husband.
The fact is you've had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your
husband.'"
This lady went to a well that day to meet her
need. She'd been doing that for a long time emotionally and spiritually as
well as physically. You see, emotionally, I think her well was men. She kept
trying to quench her incurable heart thirst with male attention. "Maybe this
relationship...maybe it will finally do it." But she always needed one more,
and the one more never did it.
Jesus proposed something better. Jesus said, "I
want to give you an internal life source that will allow you to finally
relax, and end your search, and have peace." You see we all have wells we
depend on for our emotional life. Maybe your well is people's applause, or
the approval of the opposite sex. Maybe it's another career conquest, the
acceptance of a group of friends, buying things that make you feel secure,
or maybe it's really depending on one of your children, or on position, or
power, or money.
But there's a problem with wells. First of all,
they dry up during droughts and they leave you adrift. Secondly, you always
need another shot, so you're always restless, you're never filled, driving
for more, always afraid of losing it...always restless...always thirsty
again.
The Bible uses this wonderful word to describe
the result of beginning a personal relationship with Jesus. In John 4, it
says that with Jesus you're "complete in Him." Complete. Not searching
anymore. Not always having to look for something to fill me up, make me feel
loved, make me feel important or satisfied. The reason only Jesus can do
that is, according to the Bible, we are "created by Him and for Him" but we
haven't lived for Him. We've lived pretty much for ourselves. So we're
chronically restless because there's a missing Person in our life. The
Person we were made by and made for. It wasn't His choice that we be away
from Him. But it was His choice to do whatever it took to bring us back. It
took a Cross. It took Him taking my hell for my sin so I could be with Him
for time and for eternity.
And today, He's knocking on the door of your
heart, giving you this chance to finally be complete in Him. You're parched,
no, you're flat out thirsty and when's really the last time you've been
quenched! Tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm Yours." Drink deeply. Drink up!
Jesus wants to make you secure by putting your
life source inside you. He is enough. You're meant to draw your life from
inside you, not from around you. The key to peace, the end of roller coaster
living, is to depend on the spring of water welling up inside of you. And
that's the identity Christ can give you.
So, be sure you know who you are without your
wells. They go dry and they're never enough. That's the trouble with wells.
See you in Church,
Rev. Chuck Behrens
|
