Gift of God

Life is a blur. It's been a year and a quarter since my eyes were last opened to seeing clearly in a way that inspired me to change, and now I feel I've digressed so much that there will be no way to return to that way of thinking. My mind is like mush. I've chosen to forget, to silence my heart. I'm through taking risks and trying hard. I want to be done. But at the same time, I don't. This life is so unsatisfying. I feel I've heard every argument, read every book, turned every page, but I haven't.  I'm so young and so full of potential, but my potential decreases each day that I stay stagnant. And I am staying stagnant. I don't know a way around that. I don't know how to get past it. I need help, but I don't know where to go. I am so lazy. I'm not even tempted. Instead I torment myself. There's no need to succeed because I've already failed. Everything I've done, I've done to make my life easier and more enjoyable. But I've lost my concept and perception of reality. I am far from happy. I am far from joyful. I have forgotten my God. Forgotten love. I know what is right, yet I run from it. The more I know, the more I desire, and the more I see truth, the more I want to run away from recognizing it in my own life. But the bars are starting to close in on me. The ball and chain weigh heavier than ever. The cage walls are pressing in all around so much so that if something doesn't change I will go mad. It steals my breath to think of staying here. Stuck. I feel there needs to be change. Earth-shattering change. I wrote the following a while back:

"Was it not only the blood of the martyrs that seals this truth? But much more: the blood of Christ. For we are aliens in this land, though our hearts have been worn thin by our selfishness. We have forgotten the blood of the cross. We have forgotten the inheritance that we are granted by Christ's awesome work. We are foreigners, yet we publish the reason unto death by coexistence and niceties that use so called wisdom to make it easier to be a Christian while living here. But we have not been called to be pacifists, rather our calling is violent for the sake of knowing Christ. Therefore we will in fact cut off those things which enable us to death. We set aside the world and put on the armor of God, with which we do war for the proclamation of the gospel. And it is an offensive thing that we do. For our souls are caught in defense, not of our well being, but of the gospel, where our savior was killed for our sakes. It is too often that we will pander to a belief that we can enjoy this world while also enjoying Christ. But do we not see that a luxury without cost does not bring joy, and it's ramifications do not bring peace? Rather we live unsettled with the presence of wonderful things because deep down we know the faith that dwells in us to prosper the gospel will only take joy in the Lord! And so for this we must become violent, not as murderers, but as souls striving to take our place among the annals of saints who have come before us. Through fire and trials they have marched to the flames and to torture singing hymns and lauding praise to God most high! For though I die, though I am reviled, though I am indeed hated by this world, I am redeemed in the next. So remember when tempted by the tortuous ways of this sinful world to hold onto those things that tie you to this mortal plane, that no matter what you do,  Christ is Lord and He bids thee come and die."

I read this and realize that I haven't wanted to own up to having written this. I have been so stuck that even these words did not convince me to change. Yet here in my brokenness I see that all I have done is forced myself to run from something that I will have to address sooner or later. And addressing it will be painful. I love the pleasures of this life. It's true, I do. But they do much less than satisfy. They may keep me from hunger or thirst for a time, but at the end of the day I am still an empty vessel that needs to be filled. And I think that such pleasures are the only things in life that can fill me. But alas, they cannot. So the question is: how am I filled? What do I do?

There is a story in scripture of one who is thirsty, a woman who comes to draw water from a well. The imagery in John 4:7-15 is almost perfectly analogous to this predicament of mine. Here a woman who is an adulteress who has had 5 husbands and is currently seeing a man who she is not married to comes to draw water from a well. Jesus asks her for a glass of her water and she finds it odd that a Jew would ask a Samaritan for water. If we understand their culture at all, the Jews considered themselves to be of a higher class than the Samaritans, so she is right in her concern. But Jesus turns this question on her and makes her think, saying that she should be the one asking Him for water. And here's where the analogy works: Jesus is challenging the woman to draw water for him that will quench His thirst, but water from a pagan culture cannot quench thirst. This water becomes an analogy for sin, while His water becomes an analogy for faith.

Now she is stubborn to accept this at first because He is a Jew and there is an issue of where is the best place to worship. But Jesus, being more concerned with her soul tells her how there is a time coming and is already here where the true worshipers will worship in Spirit and in truth (cv. 23). But I don't want this issue of where it is right to worship to distract from my point. Its purpose in Scripture is so that we will understand true worship. But it is also here to show us that the faith that leads to true worship only comes from one source: namely Jesus.

And in looking more closely at Jesus' question back in verse ten, it is a conditional question! He doesn't say simply: Ask me and I will give you living water. But He says "If, you knew the gift of God, and who it is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." This means that before you can even ask for water, you have to first know the "gift of God." What is this "gift of God" and why is it so important to know it before being able to ask for living water?

Well the first verse that comes to mind is Ephesians 2:8 where the apostle Paul writes: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God." Certainly there are many gifts that God gives to His chosen people but there is one that stand out above all of them. It is identified here with the determinate article "the" making the implication that of this magnitude of gifts of God, there is but one. Let me say this a different way. There is a gift of God that stands above all the rest, it is the gift of salvation (or grace through faith). It is, by far, the greatest gift ever given to God's elect, and it is not something we can take, rather it is a gift.

What Jesus is saying is simple: if you know what the gift of God is, you will not hesitate to ask for it. Have you ever spoiled a gift for someone? What happens when they find out what it is? They want their gift don't they? Especially if it is a great gift, then they want it all the more. When we sneak a peek in the bag or look under the wrapping just enough to know what our gift is, all our anticipations melt away and we are left with nothing less than a desire for that which we know we will ultimately receive. But if, when we sneak a peak, we see the greatest gift that we have ever beheld. Our joy becomes too much and we have to run to the gift giver and ask for it immediately.

And this is the greatness of the gift that Jesus is talking about. This "living water" once drunk, quenches thirst so well that you need never drink it again. In fact He says: "The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (cv. 14). In hearing this statement the woman is amazed, intrigued and astounded. And to be honest you would be too.

See the analogy of Jesus' water is faith, but the analogy of the water of the well is sin. Sin will always leave you thirsty again. And this woman starts having a crisis of faith because she's starting to realize during this conversation that she's been trying to fill her thirst of life in everything that she does. Her entire life has been one of searching for some type of fulfillment and purpose, but all she has found is that the more you strive for the waters of sin, the more they taste like death. So when she is told that this man will offer her spiritual water that is so satisfying that she will never have to search in vain again for it. She has a small moment of faith. She humbles herself, knowing now the gift of God and asks "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water" (cv. 15).

In a sense she is being naive still thinking that it might be physical water that Jesus is talking about. But even in her naivety the words are profound and the writer, John, knows it. See this is now for us to know and to ask. This is something we all go through as we become Christians. The gift of God has been made known so that we who ask may receive it. Why? So that we don't have to go out and draw the water of death any longer. Now we may try, and certainly, that's where I've been for some time now. But I am a saint of God and deep down I know the difference. And while I have certainly tried to go back to my old ways to be filled, God has always been by my side with a glass of living water urging me to drink.

I do not understand the full permissive will of God, and I doubt this life will ever reveal it to me. But I know that it is worth becoming violent in my heart to turn my back from constantly drawing water that leads to death, and drink instead, the satisfying water that wells up into a spring of eternal life. I know that I will often fail, but it is when I am at my weakest that I know I'll see God for His strongest.