Broken Cistern

Living Water Finding the Source

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Broken Cisterns or Living Water

Water is essential to life. Living water from Jesus is essential to nourish our spirituaI life. I don’t feel well unless I drink a half gallon of water over the course of a day. Water is a source of life in the plant and animal kingdoms, carrying nutrients needed by cells to sustain life. Outside of drinking water, people also bathe themselves and wash things in soap and water.

Sources of living water.God gave one of His spokesmen, the prophet Jeremiah, a message the people he spoke to could understand from everyday life. “For My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Just as God provides for our need of physical water, so He also yearns to be our source for sustaining and nourishing our spiritual life.

Gaining spiritual nourishment from Living Water. As an illustration, my mother is an example of God nourishing someone spiritually. Her favorite Bible verse in her older years was Isaiah 58:11, “And the LORD shall guide thee continually and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” She had written this verse on a piece of paper, which she pulled out every night. She went to sleep meditating on it.

Always striving to nourish her soul, in her 90s she memorized Psalm 1. True, she asked me to help her, but she took the initiative to work on this project and she was successful. Out of her flowed the source, the fountain of living waters.

PROBLEM SOLVING Drink from “the” spring of living water

Too often instead of turning to God for help, we come up with our own solutions to problems. Secondly, we turn to other people for help. Just like the Israelites, both solutions leave God out of the equation. When we forget to ask God for help it is like settling for collected rainwater when we could be drinking from a spring of fresh water.

RAINWATER To Live

Where water is plentiful it is casually discarded. Where it is scarce it is collected. At the time Jeremiah lived (620 B.C.), they collected rainwater in underground tanks called cisterns. Therefore, they could have water when it was not plentiful. Cisterns chiseled out of the rock and improperly sealed became porous and leaked.

WATER FILTERS

Recently, something happened at our house. It rained for two weeks. I developed mouth sores. We tested the water and discovered it was unfit to drink. After we changed the water filters and retested the water, we had clean water again. Consequently, my mouth sores went away.

LIVING WATER

God through Jeremiah told His people, “For My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water”. Most importantly, we see God’s passion for being the source of living water for His people. As a result,we become toxic when we don’t feed on His Word. When we meditate on His Word, the indwelling Holy Spirit activates the Word and makes it living water for our soul. By this He helps us get rid of the impurities of sin we may be hoarding to our hurt.

Have you drunk some of that Living Water today?

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Shirley Logsdon

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About Shirley Logsdon

I am the only child of Christian parents who wanted me to know God personally as they did. One night during church we watched a movie depicting a family in their home accepting Jesus as their personal Savior. I was nine and realized then my desire to make Jesus my personal Savior. With the full support of my parents, I met with the pastor and prayed to receive Christ. A few years later, several of us around the same age began classes for our confirmation to become church members. The privilege of taking communion was a special time for me. . During my teenage years I was outwardly complacent, but was inwardly rebellious. I developed the nasty habit of disrupting harmony in the household by nitpicking at anything and everything. A preacher came to hold revival services at my dad’s church and nailed me silently with looks. This helped me tremendously. I turned a corner and began to respect and obey my parents in attitude and actions. I survived these years through prayer (mine, my parents and friends). The love and tenacity of my parents and God’s grace got me through these years of upheaval. I readily identify with David the Psalmist when he said in Psalm 25:7, “Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to Thy mercy remember Thou me for Thy goodness’ sake, O LORD.” Because my parents provided a stable home life for me, when I went to college my Christian values remained intact. After completing my education in 1979, I started working. For a while, I worked at temp agencies, then I did odd jobs. I settled down in a secretarial position in 1986 working for a firm specializing in retirement plan administration. In 2007, I started working for a law firm, eventually becoming a knowledge management assistant in their law library, helping to alert attorneys to new business opportunities. I am a productive citizen of my country in large part because my parents prayed for me and made clear by word and example what they expected of me. I am extremely grateful to God for them. John 15:5 is my life verse: “I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing.” I am confronted with this realization every day I live, and it helps keep me on the straight and narrow path. I met my future husband at church. After a few years of our two families getting acquainted, he and I started courting. We married at the church where we met, in the presence of many relatives and friends. We have been married for 29 years. My hobbies are reading, cooking, and canning or freezing what my beloved husband grows in the garden. Also, I thoroughly enjoy writing. While my writing has included poems, most of my writing has been letters to family and friends. I like to share my faith when I write and am fond of adding a Bible verse or two to help focus on the source of our life. Since I am now retired after working 38 years, I can concentrate on keeping up with birthdays. Something else I enjoy is studying the Bible, often with others. Blogging is a new form of writing for me. I am getting my feet wet and I’m beginning to enjoy the experience.

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