Being a person who
was born and lived in dry Western N.S.W. where the summers are hot, I just love
rivers and waterfalls. Rivers usually commence as small streamlets in the
mountains and become waterfalls as they go over cliffs. Then as they find their
way towards the flatter country they become real rivers. From the time water
reaches the ground as raindrops, it tends to find its way back to the ocean
from whence it came. Of course some of it is delayed because it sustains people,
animals, plants and trees, and other living things for a while. We are like
that because we came from God and are returning to God and whilst we are doing
so are expected to do good things too. Of course without water nothing can live,
for example, no matter how good the soil in the middle of the Sahara desert might
be it is useless because it has no water.
Similarly, and irrespective
of how bright we may be, we cannot
achieve anything of Eternal worth without
the “Living Water” Jesus offers us. Jesus, when talking to a Samaritan woman
who had come to draw water from Jacob’s well, told her that what she really
needed was the “living water” that He could give her and she would then never
be thirsty again as she would have living water springing up within her to Eternal
life. However she misunderstood Him, thinking He was talking about visible water
when He was actually talking about the Spirit that He could give her. You see,
this lady, like all of us, was looking for fulfilment in life. And in her case had done so by having “five husbands and she wasn’t even married to
the one she was living with” at the time that Jesus spoke to her. (This is
something our society condones to-day, but Jesus would not have approved of it).
Whether we realise it or not there is a “God shaped vacuum” within us which causes
us to yearn for the contented relationship with our Heavenly Father that we
were designed to have, and if we don’t realise that need and find that
fulfilment, we will spend our life seeking it in other things such as: wealth,
entertainment, recognition, position, immoral behaviour, drink or drugs or
whatever, none of which will give lasting satisfaction (as the Samaritan woman
would have found out).
Jesus said (when He
was about to return to Heaven) “It is
expedient for you that I go, because if I don’t go, He cannot come”. He was
speaking here of the Holy Spirit or “Comforter” that He was sending to be with
us “and in us” who would be like
“Living Water” and would help us to do God’s will so that the “Fruit of The
Spirit would flow out from us as a river of love, joy, peace, patience,
gentleness, meekness, kindness, goodness, faith and self control.
If
the “fruit of the Spirit” (depicted
here) is missing from our life, it is because the Holy Spirit has not yet come
into our life to fill that vacuum I mentioned. To rectify that we must ask God’s forgiveness for past sin and ask Him
to fill us with His Spirit.
If you are having trouble
understanding how all that works then you are not alone, but we don’t need to
understand how something works in order to use it do we? Take your computer or
iphone, for an example, with them you can instantly contact an audience of
millions of people or have access to all the books in the Public library and yet
have very little idea (if any) of how that works either. We just have to accept
many things in life without fully understanding them and the fellowship and
communion of The Holy Spirit is one of them. Best wishes, Tom.
Bible References used: John 4: 10 &14, John 7: 38, John 16:7, Acts
2: 38 & 39, Galatians 5: 22.
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