It's a new day, a new year, and what is more refreshing than a fresh start? I love new beginnings, and I am excited about this new year with fresh vision, motivation, and expectation for all that the Lord has in store for this year. I sense much peace and rest deep in my heart concerning this year - like everything has its place and I can therefore relax and just trust in the One steering this ship!
I also feel the subtle but steady invitation from the Lord for my heart at this time - deeper into the place of abiding, leaning. John 15 has my name on it! It's everywhere I turn right now, which excited me because that is a mark of the Lord's leadership in my life. He is not divided. He speaks singularly and very simply to my soul. Thank You, Lord, for that!
Two other veins that I desire to continue and go deeper in this year are adoration and thanksgiving. I want a heart of gratitude that loves God well for who He is and all He's done! So it is my aim to continue posting regular "Adoration" posts - linking up with a friend's site on Mondays. I am more than pleased to have you join in with me and let the chorus of praise ascend heavenward, but I feel that these postings are mostly a way of having accountability for my own heart! If I come to the start of another week with nothing to post by way of adoration, then that means that I have been too busy. I have lost my way and been caught up in the "tyranny of the urgent"when only "one thing is needed" (Lk. 10:42). My desire is not to neglect this one necessary thing - to sit at His feet, hear His words at the heart level, and do what I can - pour out costly fragrance upon Him from a lovesick heart (Mk. 14:8).
So without further adieu, feast your eyes upon the Living God, the fountain of all life, and let Him quench your soul's deepest thirst.
“LORD, you are the hope of Israel; all who forsake you will be put to shame. Those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the LORD, the spring of living water" (Jeremiah 17:13 TNIV).
O Lord, You are the spring of living water! Even from Eden came living waters that watered the Garden that You placed there. Throughout the Biblical narrative, rivers and waters played a key role, and understandably seeing that water is a very necessity for life! Water represents a quenching of thirst, the satisfying of one of man's innate needs.
And You, Lord, You alone sustain life itself. You hold creation together by the word of Your power, and then You sustain it with life-giving waters. From You alone come living waters. In every season I feel the tug on my soul, the longing for more, the desire for something that truly, deeply, and totally satisfies. Imitations have their heyday, but they wane, leaving a distasteful residue on my soul along with a deeper ache for that which is authentic.
I remember the fall of 2001 well. I had returned from a semester studying in the very religious but spiritually dark nation of Spain. I was tired and weary of the Christian life. The ache in my soul was that "there must be more," but the only "refreshment" others around me could offer was to simply, "be" a better person, which was the very reason I was so battle-worn. I had been doing "the Christian life" on my own, in my own strength.
And I remember the day - a week before the historic and horrific September 11th day - that my faithful roomie and friend shared with me about the infilling of the Holy Spirit! Her words were altogether foreign to my ears. It was like a whole new world had been stretched out before me. Life was in view! And those early days, oh, those early days of reading my Bible anew! It was as if You snuck into my room at night when I was sleeping and wrote things in my Bible - things I had never seen before but seemed to be in 3D or technicolor before my enlightened eyes, "Greater things than these you will do," and "the water that I shall give [you] will become in [you] a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life" (Jn. 4:14). What? Where had these verses been my entire Christian life?
I remember those early tastes of Your living water! Yes, I tasted and testified that You are good! You are the fountain, the river of living water that flows from the highest of heights and reaches to the deepest of depths of me - the garden of my heart, the locked garden that is Yours alone. You quench my thirst and then cause it to intensify, strengthening and intensifying my dependency upon You.
Your waters, though, many have forsaken. Many along the way have gone their own way to the land of their own choosing - places to which Your living waters do not flow. "Why," cries my soul, "would anyone forsake such a One who satisfies so well?" But in my heart of hearts, I know the answer. I have lived the answer too many times over.
It takes humility to drink from Your waters. It takes asking and waiting and relying upon the Unseen.
Through all of the difficulty, though, of getting such a drink, my heart says, "Your face I will seek! From Your river alone will I drink - no other source can satisfy!"
You do satisfy the thirsty soul. You help the needy ones not allowing them to stumble from weariness. You take the little they have and make it enough, more than enough. You multiply bread in the wilderness and cause water to flow from a rock! You turn desert places, wastelands, into fruitful valleys with life-giving streams.
On You I wait! I don't turn away from You trying to satiate this thirst some other way. I turn to You. I don't forsake You. I wait upon You, and You are worth waiting for. Only You sustain. Your waters give life when all other streams have wasted away.
I know that if I ask You, You will give me living water that will become in me a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life, so I ask of You, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst!"
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