Jeremiah 2:13: "For my people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns--broken cisterns that can hold no water."
Reading in Jeremiah today, the Lord revealed quite a telling truth to me about many Christians today. In the verse above, I believe we find much of what is wrong with the Christian church today. That's not to say that this post will be all church-bashing and negativity. It's just to say I believe this is a major area of concern that we should recognize.
In the above passage from the Old Testament, the Lord is identifying two major "evils" committed by His people (in this case the Israelites.)
The first is forsaking God, the "fountain of living waters" as described here. Living water is a reference that is also found in the New Testament. Water is also kinda a major player in baptism.
Staying with the baptism/water analogy before my notoriously short attention span distracts me, I'd say that many of us are essentially baptizing ourselves in soda. Not content with the purity of God's Holy waters, we are reaching for a sugary, syrupy treat and splashing about in fizz and chemicals. We're soaking ourselves in man-made unnatural sugary chemicals with all of the appeal and desire of the world and none of the purity or cleansing power of Jesus.
In essence, we're forsaking God and the holiness and devotion that He requires of us in order to become more like the world. We tell ourselves it is to reach the world but the reality is that the world is reaching us far more than we are impacting it. This is something that the writing of Francis Chan really challenges believers on. We're getting away from studying the Bible and instead embracing cutesy phrases and pop culture.
I'm not saying being trendy and cool is necessarily bad. I can't really fit into skinny jeans, but I am not a total fuddy-duddy! I am saying, however, that we need to make sure that we haven't forsaken Jesus and a daily connection to His living water Without renewing our hearts and minds in His cleansing purified water-filled fountain, we will be useless.
As a result of losing that connection and forsaking our fountain, we've allowed ourselves to become broken cisterns. Without a deep and meaningful connection with the Lord, we find ourselves hole-y instead of holy. Unable to fill in the holes with anything else, we become frantic, distracted and useless.
We need to be about fixing our cisterns. We can't do that without returning to the fountain and splashing around like the cast of Friends in the opening credits. Without Jesus, we can't get clean and we certainly can't hold anything to offer the world beyond indigestion.
May the words of Jeremiah remind us of what's really important.
Reading in Jeremiah today, the Lord revealed quite a telling truth to me about many Christians today. In the verse above, I believe we find much of what is wrong with the Christian church today. That's not to say that this post will be all church-bashing and negativity. It's just to say I believe this is a major area of concern that we should recognize.
In the above passage from the Old Testament, the Lord is identifying two major "evils" committed by His people (in this case the Israelites.)
The first is forsaking God, the "fountain of living waters" as described here. Living water is a reference that is also found in the New Testament. Water is also kinda a major player in baptism.
Staying with the baptism/water analogy before my notoriously short attention span distracts me, I'd say that many of us are essentially baptizing ourselves in soda. Not content with the purity of God's Holy waters, we are reaching for a sugary, syrupy treat and splashing about in fizz and chemicals. We're soaking ourselves in man-made unnatural sugary chemicals with all of the appeal and desire of the world and none of the purity or cleansing power of Jesus.
In essence, we're forsaking God and the holiness and devotion that He requires of us in order to become more like the world. We tell ourselves it is to reach the world but the reality is that the world is reaching us far more than we are impacting it. This is something that the writing of Francis Chan really challenges believers on. We're getting away from studying the Bible and instead embracing cutesy phrases and pop culture.
I'm not saying being trendy and cool is necessarily bad. I can't really fit into skinny jeans, but I am not a total fuddy-duddy! I am saying, however, that we need to make sure that we haven't forsaken Jesus and a daily connection to His living water Without renewing our hearts and minds in His cleansing purified water-filled fountain, we will be useless.
As a result of losing that connection and forsaking our fountain, we've allowed ourselves to become broken cisterns. Without a deep and meaningful connection with the Lord, we find ourselves hole-y instead of holy. Unable to fill in the holes with anything else, we become frantic, distracted and useless.
We need to be about fixing our cisterns. We can't do that without returning to the fountain and splashing around like the cast of Friends in the opening credits. Without Jesus, we can't get clean and we certainly can't hold anything to offer the world beyond indigestion.
May the words of Jeremiah remind us of what's really important.
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