Does It Hold Water?

I listened to a podcast the other day entitled, ‘Does it
hold water?’  In this sermon, Mike
Patz, pastor of First Assembly of God in Gainesville, Florida was asking us to
examine ourselves to see if our lives would, in fact, “hold waterâ€�.  This question came from the passage in
Jeremiah 2:13 that says, “ For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the
fountain of living waters, and fashioned
them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.â€� 

 

He
gave an example of an old pair of corduroy pants that he had owned for a long
time.  After years of wear and tear,
those pants had holes in the front two pockets.  Anything that he put into those front pockets would fall
right to his shoes! As a result, all of the things that he needed to carry with
him now had to fit into his two back pockets!  One night he went on a date with his wife.  He had several things he needed to take
such as his cell phone, wallet, keys, etc. His cell phone and keys ended up in
the same back pocket.  Later on in
the evening, he went to take his phone out and found that he had crushed the
phone into his keys.  Now, the
glass from the screen of his cell phone was crushed into pieces in his pocket.  He said that he was “foolishâ€� to have
worn those pants because they could not hold the things that they needed to
hold. 

 

Just
like those pants, many times our lives don’t hold the things that they need to
hold.  In the above scripture in
Jeremiah, we try to fashion our lives after these “broken cisternsâ€�.  We don’t think that we want what God
can provide for us…this “living waterâ€�. 
It pleases us much more to try and do things on our own…but in reality
we end up collecting a lot of things in our “cisternsâ€� that are foolish.  These cisterns that they speak of in
this passage were put into the rocks and collected the rainwater, but they also
collected the dirt from the rocks, bugs, spiders, silt, etc. This was not the
most efficient way of collecting water.

 

Like
the dirt and bugs into the cisterns, it seems to us that the junk that we
collect in our lives is somehow better than what God could provide.  We take for granted this “gospel,â€� this
“living waterâ€� that can make us never spiritually thirst again.  Maybe we think we don’t deserve
it.  Maybe we think it’s too good
to be true.  However, in reality,
it’s all that we really need. 

 

In 1
Peter 1:10-12 it says this, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that
was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, ¹¹trying
to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in
them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the
glories that would follow. ¹²It
was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you,
when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who
have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.
Even angels long to look into these thingsâ€�. 

 

I
don’t really know who reads my blog. 
I do know, however, that there are people who read it and I do not know
where you stand with God, salvation, etc. This year, on The World Race, I’ve
learned a lot about God meeting us where we are in life.  If you’ve collected all that junk in
your “cistern�…he’ll meet you there and begin to clean it out, if you want
that.  If you don’t even know that
God is really there, that he truly loves you, or that He can really change your
life for the better…give Him a little credit.  Ask Him to show you these things, to show you who He
is.  It probably won’t happen
overnight, and your life will not be “perfectâ€�.  However, God can provide peace better than any yoga session,
more security than the best of jobs, and more hope than the best motivational
speaker! 

(P.S. YES, I bungee jumped into the NILE! It was awesome and a little bit terrifying.)