ARE YOU TIRED OF THE STRUGGLE? COME TO JESUS FOR LIVING WATER…
Are you tormented by the hold alcohol and drugs have over you? Are you weary of the confusion you feel about embracing your homosexual lifestyle? Are you burdened with the shame you continue to experience over the pornography you partake of time and time again, even though you promise yourself you will stop, but you just can’t do it? When you were young did you ever think the words ‘alcoholic,’ ‘drug addict,’ ‘gay,’ or ‘pedophile’ would be used to describe you? Are you worn out from trying to be the master of your own life? Have you made of mess of your life, and the lives of those around you?
To a woman who had had five husbands, and was living with one she was not married to Jesus spoke these words “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4: 13-14).
The kind of water that Jesus can give to you is like nothing else on this earth. It is not something you can go to the store and buy. It is not something a doctor can prescribe for you. It is living water.
Some of the 5,000 people who Jesus miraculously fed said to Him the following day – “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus replied to them: “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They then responded to Him: “‘Lord, give us this bread always.’” Jesus then told them: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
Have you partaken of this bread of life? Do you know how a relationship with Jesus Christ can sustain you and feed you everyday of your life? If you long ago placed your faith in Him as your Savior, are you now strengthened by the living water and living bread found alone in Him? Do you know Him, like you know your best friend? Have you allowed Him to become your best friend? If not, why not?
Speaking of the coming Holy Spirit after His resurrection and His glorification, Jesus stood up at the Feast of Tabernacles and cried out – “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.”
Do rivers of living water flow from your heart, or do bitter, vile, angry words flow from you? Have you ever opened up your heart to the One Who can give you living water? Has He become the most important resource of your life, or is He just a name written on a page in a book you are not interested in reading?
After the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who they caught in the act of adultery, asking Him whether they should stone her and kill her, Jesus responded with a “qualifying” statement – “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” One by one, beginning with the oldest to the youngest looked within themselves for purity, and did not find it so they walked away. Jesus then told her “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” Jesus then said to the Pharisees, those who were so lost in their self-righteousness, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
Do you walk in darkness? Are you satisfied with the lies you may believe about yourself and your life? Are you satisfied with believing you are a good person, and you don’t need a relationship with God? Are you okay with the thought that ‘I am just this way, I cannot help it…’ ‘God just made me this way, and this is the way I will always be.’ ‘I have to have that drink; I can’t get by without it.’ ‘What will it hurt if I continue to lie to my husband and wife about what I am really doing?’ ‘How is what I am doing really hurting anyone else?’
Have you tried different religions? Have you searched the internet or bookstores for any new beliefs that you might embrace? Or any new teacher or guru you might follow? Have you read writings of different philosophers or watched Oprah to find some kind of truth you can claim as your own? Are you grounded in the New Age ideas becoming so popular today? Have you found some new identity as a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or an Atheist? Does it appear to you that followers of these religions have a “workable” formula they follow that seems to work for them? Have you considered following Tom Cruise into Scientology? Or Madonna into Kabbalah worship? Or is Wiccan earth worship something that seems intriguing? Do you like the Jesus Obama believes in, the Jesus that embraces all religions as being ways to God? Are you considering Mormonism, and its strict laws and rituals as a way to lead you to become your own god?
But Jesus said Himself to the Pharisees who loved their laws, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10: 9-10)
What do you really love? Who do you really love? What in your life is most valuable, and why?
Jesus’ friend Martha, said to Jesus “‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died’” after Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. Jesus said to her – “Your brother will rise again.” Martha then said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus then responded “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he die, he shall live.”
Do you ever feel like you are living and breathing, but inside you are dead? Do you ever feel like you are not really living? Not really living a life worth living? Do you continually experience despair that you cannot seem to escape from?
Shortly before Jesus died he comforted His disciples with these words: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Then Thomas said to Him: “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus then said to Him, and to all of us: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Jesus did not say, as did Mohammed, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, Ellen G. White, Lao Tzu, L. Ron Hubbard, or Sun Myung Moon that “this is the way,” He said “I am the way.”
Jesus went on to say to His disciples “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”
The God of the New Testament is One Who Himself is living water, the true bread of life, the light of the world, the one door to eternal life, and the true vine. He alone has been seen alive by many people after He died. This cannot be said of any of the leaders of various faiths in our world today.
If you have put your faith and trust in the God of the New Testament, Jesus Christ, what place have you given Him in your life? How important is He to you? How much time do you spend with Him? How are you coming to know and understand Him better? Does His word have a special priority in your heart and mind, or do you avoid His word because it cuts you and you don’t like how it makes you feel? What is keeping you from Him?
Why don’t you come to Him today, and surrender to Him. Submit control over your life to Him. Allow Him to be in the driver’s seat of your life. Let Him show you how His words are true. Find out how He can and will be all He claims to be, when you truly believe Him.
