Thirsty? Come!

Most of us can relate to the feelings of thirst.  Of course the solution to thirst is to take in generous amounts of water--pure water.

Sometime ago as I watched a television piece on “mud” Marines in a war zone.  It was a very warm, if not hot place.  Their Gunny in no uncertain terms told his Marines to “hydrate!”  If he understood one thing it was that to get the most out of his Marines they had to have plenty of water on board. 

Then there was the story that took place in the days of sail--that time when "Iron men sailed wooden ships."  Such ship was in straitened circumstances in the doldrums near the Equator.  She had no wind in her sails and soon she had no water in her stores.  This went on for a time until the winds returned and she was able to get underway.  The sailors were struggling with thirst.  As they sailed another ship happened by and using semaphore the message went across between the ships, “We need water, can you assist?”

In the same manner the answer came back, “Let down your buckets you are surrounded by fresh water.”  What the ship's captain did not know was that just out of sight over the horizon there was a river that poured so many millions of gallons of fresh water into the ocean they were surrounded by it.  Now to be sure I do not know how true the story was or is but there is a principle present in both of these stories.

When we are thirsty—spiritually thirsty and we realize that we are so, what we may not realize is that we are surrounded by that which satisfies the thirst.  Jesus Christ said, "Let him who thirsty come to Me and drink."  So we know that there is a standing invitation to "Come" and to "Drink."  Although sometimes we tend to place a divide between genuine faith and technology, now like never before this is available to us sources of spiritual fresh water.

However, man being man there are choices to make.  First, we need to decide whether we are going to ignore and even avoid the feelings by getting involved in avoidance behaviors such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, promiscuity, or even noble endeavors and thus seek to obviate the feelings.  However, understand that those feelings are the call of God and such activities will never satisfy the feelings involved.  The other things to know is that although God's call does not change, with a continued refusal to hear, eventually one loses the capacity to hear God's call.

The second option is to acknowledge the feelings--that call to "Come" and to "Drink" and respond to them.  Here again we have a choice to make.  Are we going to respond in our way or God’s way?  If we respond in our own way it will be much like the previous point.  Such a response tends to mold God into our image of what He should be rather than molder our view into His image of who is this God.  Thus, much busyness and activity but little fulfillment and sense of connection with God.

Then there is the third way of response.  It is the way of humility which allows one to hydrate in prayer, the Word of the Lord, and genuine Christian teaching.  We are blessed with much opportunity for same in that we are surrounded by Christian radio, Christian television, and the Internet.  All one has tot do is to let down one's bucket as we are surrounded by those who rightly divide and then teach the Word of the Lord.  Historically the Church has called these and other things such as fasting, spiritual retreats, pondering the Word of God and other things, Spiritual Disciplines. 

For those who have a deeper yet thirst for the things of God, there are many Bible training courses available on the internet.  Some are from major “right on target” Christian ministries who provide such as a free service.  Then too, there are small group Bible studies, Church Sunday Schools classes, and much, much more.

So I say, “Let down your bucket, you are surrounded by those things that can deeply satisfy your spiritual thirst.”  Such activity will then lead to a life of fulfilled service.

"The Truth That Leads To Contrition"

There is a truth that leads to contrition.  There also is a truth that does not.

Imagine that a person is driving and without paying attention drives over the speed limit.  Maybe this has happened to you.  Then it happens, a quick look in the rear view mirror reveals that a police officer is following and he initiates a traffic stop.   He approaches your window and says something like the speed limit is 35 miles per hour and you were observed going 45 miles per hour.

When he tells you that you were breaking the law by speeding you have a choice to make.  The choice is in how you react.  Generally and with most people such an experience will bring forth a sense of contrition.  Another way to put it is that such an experience softens the heart.

The other choice is to respond with a hard heart.  The first kind of reaction is that of receiving the words of the officer.  The second is to reject the words of the officer,  put forth some kind of an excuse, or even argument with the police officer.

Now change the story to the person who while reading the Scriptures, listening to a sermon or a sermon in song, or simply pondering the things of God comes face to face with his failure to live by God's standards--God's truth.

Faced with genuine truth will either bring about conviction which then results in a broken and contrite heart or a heart that hardens against the truth.  The humble and contrite heart receives God's truth and remains soft before it.  On the other hand the hard hearted--the stony hearted person will on some level reject it.

Rejection takes several forms to include seeking to not be responsible with an excuse or two, seeking to rationalize one's way out of responsibility, shifting blame, denying the truth, and so on.  It does nothing more than deceive the hard hearted and such deception further hardens the heart.  There comes a point when the heart becomes so hardened that it neither hears, is convicted, nor cares that it does not conform to genuine truth.

Said again, facing truth will either soften our hearts or harden them.  That is the serious state in which we find many people today, they have traded away the genuine eternal truths of God for those things that are comfortable, acceptable, and temporal.  The consciousness they have of God is not a consciousness of God for it is only of a god that they have created.  Such temporal values masquerade as truth and it is with great danger that some have constructed a whole reality based upon a foundation that at best is subject to failure.

Truth, that is genuine truth can, if allowed soften the human heart.

If allowed it can call us to account, to realize our own failings and sinfulness, call us to conviction, and challenge us to a higher level of behavior that is the living out of our faith.  

If our hearts are soften, we are more likely to hear the voice of the Heavenly Father, more likely to take to heart the written Word of God, more likely to have a God consciousness, to feel the conviction of and communion with the Holy Spirit, and more likely to be in a position to have our hearts further softened, etc. 

If our hearts are soften by genuine truth, it adds a God dimension to life and such a view of life if allowed to germinate and grow, day by day and in greater measure give spiritual understandings to physical realities.  

Such an humble and contrite heart is key and essential for Christian growth.

There is much to be said for the one who seeks genuine and Godly truth in order to be brought to a place of contrition that results in a soft and humble heart.

God: “Believing is Seeing”

“Prove to me that God exists!”  The cynic calls out to the person of faith.  “Just show me, prove to me without a doubt, that God exists!”

Such is quite impossible for within the prudent there exists on some level a modicum of doubt. Those qualms, be they great or small are where two very dynamic elements have opportunity to function—active decision and vibrant faith.

The simple point is that there is ample evidence in the balance and order of God’s Creation, there is ample evidence in the miracle of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, and there is ample evidence in the heart of man to choose to believe.  However such evidence requires decision as to acceptance and yes, vibrant and living faith. 

While modern anthropology has been futile in attempting to explain away man as being little more than an animal in the evolutionary process, while modern theology is dismal in their attempts at explaining away the miracle of the transmission of Scripture, there yet remain other evidences for God’s existence—evidences that the prudently honest of thought cannot lightly dismiss!  These are evidences that the critics of God’s existence and the veracity of the Bible cannot explain!

One such evidence is found in the notion of “otherness.”  The “otherness” that counters the very survival of the a man and mankind.  When God knits one’s DNA together, He places somewhere within that genome a bent toward otherness.  For those who question this notion, please consider that “otherness” is seen in that which does or does not fulfill a man. 

The person who heroically in crisis gives his life for another might be explained away as taking an impetuous action.  But how about the one who day in and day out has a sense of service, who selflessly pours out his life for, and pours his life into another or others.  He is the one who will pass from this life with a sense of completeness, accomplishment, and fulfillment.  His only frustration at death is that he could not have done, given, or contributed more.  Even those of no faith have an inner sense of fulfillment and worth as their lives counted for something more than themselves, as they gave to others who will give to others and so on, even to the generations yet to be born. 

Consider the opposite, the person who does not spend his life in these pursuits but selfishly seeks to find fulfillment in material gain, social status, and as a possessor of greater and greater power.  These are those whose desires are all in the temporary and thus insatiable!  These are those who most often will die angry and frustrated at the unfairness of death.  Why?  Because his life is unfulfilled and consisted only of what he might selfishly keep and who or what he might control and not what he might give into the lives of others.

God?  There is in addition to that “otherness” a sense of being a part of something greater than one’s self.  It is the sense of being a part of some sort of a “god concept.”  It ranges from living for a greater than yourself ideology to being in relationship with and a part of the plans of the true and living God, Jesus Christ!

Were this not so, why would so many cultures and people have created some variant of god or of some dynamic that transcends life?  Why would there be that fatalism that touts the notion of the will of the gods?  False as they may be, they point to the fact that there is a God consciousness in the very deepest places of man and mankind.

Another evidence to be considered is found in the matter of “choice.”  Is it possible to prove without a doubt that there is God?  Of course not because to do so would remove or seriously compromise the element of making a choice to believe—it would remove the necessity of choice—of choosing to believe in God.  Or of choosing to not believe in God.  Make no mistake to apathetically not choose is still to make a choice!

Attendant to that choice is this.  To remove the choice is to remove the necessity of faith—of taking that leap of faith into the unknown, yet it is only unknown to those who make the choice to not see the many hints without and within.  Hints found in creation, in Scripture, in otherness, in the need of being involved in something greater than oneself, in the vast number of cultures with a notion of God, of paying attention to that inner sense of there being God, and so much more. 

Yet there remains one other necessity and it is found in what has been oft quotes in various forms.  It is this, “Some things have to be seen to be believed but other things need to be believed to be seen.”