How to Study for Doctrine Formation + “Living Water”
Living Water.
“Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knew the gift of God, and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.” John 4:10
“Living”: Greek = zao, #2198 Thayers: “living water, i.e. bubbling up, gushing forth, flowing, with the suggested idea of refreshment and salubrity (lol), (as opposed to the water of cisterns and pools…), is figuratively used of the spirit and truth of God as satisfying the needs and desires of the soul.” [97]
“Water”: (in John 4:14) Greek = hydor, #5204 Thayers: “Allegorically, that which refreshes and keeps alive the soul is likened to water, viz. the Spirit and truth of God.” [98]
Last night, as I crawled into bed, I began to think about the vain, hollow, shallow, existence most people experience on the journey of life. I see it. I notice it when I go to the mall or the airport. Most people are moving from place to place. Job to job. TV show to TV show. Store to store. Chore to chore. They are alive on the surface and dead inside. I see hollowness behind their eyes. No animation from inside. I thought of how so few people ever go below the surface of their life and open up the doors of their soul.
Suddenly, the thought popped into my head of a clock à Big Ben in particular. So many people deal only with the exterior—the “hands” of the clock—but never go “behind the scenes” and get to know the “clockworks.” When something goes wrong with the hands, something has gone wrong with the inner mechanisms of the clock. You can’t fix the hands—the visible timekeeping pieces—by addressing the hands. You have to get to the heart of what drives those hands. You cannot address exterior “brokenness” by exterior means.
If Big Ben stopped working, repairmen could get cranes and lifts and address the hands and dials for days and never restore it to working condition. It is the interior function that determines the exterior function. How few of us “get” that? We address exterior dysfunction with exterior means…always reaching for something that will address the issue and help us live something more than hollow.
This is the situation that the woman, classically known as “the woman at the well,” finds herself in. (John 4:5-42) As Jesus strikes up a conversation with her, we find that she is the poster child for exterior dysfunction. Jesus tells her to “go call her husband,” to which she responds: “I have no husband.” Jesus looks past her ability to couch her current status in half-truths and sees straight into the broken inner-workings of her life. “You’re right! You don’t have a husband – for you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now. You certainly spoke the truth!” (John 4:17-18 in NLT)
Jesus sliced right through the manifest brokenness of her life and looked into the cracks of her soul. Inner brokenness had to be addressed before outward brokenness could be remedied. Inner “deadness” had to be dealt with before outer life could spring forth.
Earlier in His conversation with her, Jesus had told her about living water: “…those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life…” (John 4:14)
(Oh I am getting sleepy, but so want to convey these thoughts as they’re scrolling through my head. ZZzzz.)
Backing up…to Big Ben: it is the interior function that drives exterior function. (And you really should study the Big Ben clockworks—it’s fascinating!!!) Backing up, again…so many people living hollow, shallow, dead-end, dysfunctional lives. Backing up even further: they can’t help it. They are part of the Adamic race—tainted by the fall in the Garden of Eden. The unfortunate reality is that sin was ushered in, and with it a whole host of curses and plights. The worst of it? Our souls were created for perfect, unhindered communion with God, but in the Fall, the receptors that were innate in our being to connect directly with deity were crushed. Dead. Romans 5:12 says: “Wherefore, as by one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned.” Dead. Dead. Dead. The clockworks have stopped working. You see, it is possible to be physically alive while spiritually dead. And remember, your “dead,” your dysfunction, doesn’t have to take the form of “five husbands.” Oh, the many ways our broken hearts and dead spirits manifest! Our world is littered by those whose lives are devastated by spiritual death.
But…there is living water.
A few chapters later, Jesus expounds on it: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believes on me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” NLT says: “Rivers of living water will flow from his heart!” The next verse, John 7:39, goes on to explain: “But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.” The Holy Ghost—poured out in the Book of Acts (chapter 2 initially) —was the solution for a dead soul; for broken clockworks. The Living Water He’d told the woman at the well of is the only thing that can go past our exterior dysfunction and awaken the dead places of our hearts. After the Holy Ghost was poured out in Acts 2, the Apostle Peter preaches, and the crowd is convicted. They ask what to do. Peter replies, “Repent,” (turn from your sin à an act of, not only sorrow, but the changing of your heart, mind, and direction), “be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission (washing away) of your sins and you shall (will!!) receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and your children and to ALL that are afar off.” That’s us!! Living water and spiritually awake are still available! (Read Acts 1, 2, or the WHOLE BOOK !) We don’t have to live dull, listless, unsatisfying lives! Life more abundantly is available!
Living water is still being poured out. The gift of the Holy Ghost is, as Peter stated, a promise for all. In Acts chapter 2, it says, “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” Every time they “received the Holy Ghost” in Acts, God “switched over their language” —they spoke in tongues—a language they did not know. In Acts 2, people from all over who spoke many different languages were present in Jerusalem and observed the experience. Acts 2:6-11 (in NLT) says, “When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers. They were completely amazed. ‘How can this be?’ they exclaimed. ‘These people are all from Galilee and yet we hear them speak in our own native languages!...(the text goes on to list 17 countries and provinces) …and we hear all these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!’”
As John 7:38 says: “Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.” When God awakens the broken, dead core of your soul, it is with and by His Spirit. As it comes alive, He fills you to overflowing, and the initial sign of that experience is the “bubbling up” of living water, joy unspeakable, evidenced with worship in tongues—a language you’ve never known before.
It is not a spooky experience!! Yes, it is supernatural, but it is beautiful! I have seen it many times and it is always accompanied by great joy! It is the “being born of the Spirit” that Jesus had told Niccodemus about in John 3:5, and it is amazing!! Jesus told him: “I tell you a solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Not only is the Spirit a promise, it is a requirement for entrance into God’s kingdom.” It’s for you! It is your pass from death to life. Living water!
Now…that was super long, and I haven’t conveyed everything I’d like to, but there is part 2 to all of this: dead lives, broken clockworks, etc.
Part 2. The experience just described is only the beginning. It is like a birth. But a baby cannot simply be born. It must initially be cared for and then learn to care for and feed itself. Too often, it seems people stop at the initial taste of living water. In that moment, the “inner mechanisms” of their life begin to work again. Gears, pulleys, drives, and pendulums begin to keep time and work in synchrony and harmony as they experience a joy and peace they have never known before. But, once things are “up and running,” maintenance will be required.
With Big Ben, workers are required to climb the clock tower at least 3 times a week to wind the clock, oil many places on the 5-ton clockworks, or even add or remove a penny to the pendulum to slow it’s swing in the most minute measure. A one-time experience of “getting things running properly” would never be a long-term solution. There must be daily maintenance and daily replenishment for living water to continuously flow. For us to live lives noticeably marked by joy and healing, we must make sure nothing is allowed in our hearts to stop the flow of the Spirit, and we must daily “recharge” our souls in the presence of the One who is the Author, Source, and Giver of life and living water!
Don’t settle for “dead” evidenced by exterior brokenness. And don’t just settle for a one-time sip of life. Insist on living water daily. Insist on daily returning to the Source of “life more abundantly.” Insist on interior function. He wants to see you awake to all the beauty He has planned for you.
Go ahead and live! “…yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead.” (Romans 6:13)
And to borrow a line from the Apostle Paul: “…see how large a letter I have written you with my own hand.”