Rivers of Living Water

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"
—John 7:38 ESV

It's funny how synchronicity strikes at the most opportune times. I'd planned on writing about rivers of living water today, but never had any indication I'd experience it so personally.

During my hiatus, I lined up about a half dozen good topics to discuss when I got back to blogging. The first was the post on labels, the second being about John 7:38.

My son and I read that passage together during our mutual quiet time. We've set apart a few minutes in the morning to read the Bible together and pray for the day. No one sweats great drops of blood or tears down demonic strongholds; it's just a dad and son spending time before God.

While reading through Chapter 7 of John, I read v38 to my son and God hit me between the eyes. I stopped at the end of the verse and let it sink in. I've heard the passage hundred of times in my life, but on reading it this time I started thinking. And I've not stopped.

Last night, my wife and I attended my 25th high school reunion. I'd originally not planned to go. My 10th had been a blast, I was out of town for the 15th, and was sick as a dog for my 20th (one I was dying to attend.) But for some reason I'd gotten in my head that the 20th had been a huge one and the 25th promised to be lightly attended. I'd not heard from any of the group I'd hung with concerning the reunion, so that only reinforced my assumption.

I'm one of those people who looks back on high school fondly. Though I was by no means a jock, I was popular, with high school being a sort of "glory days" time for me. My drumming opened up doors into sub-groups within the school, and I was fortunate in that I crossed into groups that ordinarily didn't converge. The jocks, band geeks, honor society, and stoner groups knew me and I knew them.

Some personal confession now: I've been down in recent months. A lot of dreams have died in the last year or so and uncertainty is our daily bread. Financial insecurity lurks in every electrical, water, and mortgage bill. (Just paying for the reunion and a babysitter gave me pause, one of the reasons I'd elected not to go to the reunion.) The sheer speed of life has left me drained, longing for some simpler time when I didn't stand in the middle of a room, thoughts surging, unable to figure out what I'm supposed to do next. The idea of attending my reunion discouraged me more.

At night, when the house is quiet and shadows fill the crevices of my office, I wonder how I got off track. That whip-smart young man of 1981 witnessed a lot of promise go out the window for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. I'd sucked from the stream all through high school, but now those waters appeared dried up and so very long ago.

No one wants to be the "What ever happened to…" person people talk about at reunions. I didn't want to think that people would join me in wondering how I'd missed the obvious glory road ahead of me.

But the Best Man from our wedding colluded with the girl I'd dated my senior year, and together they got me to change my mind, so my wife and I went. The evening was great fun. I connected with a lot of old friends. Finding out that people were doing well raised my spirits.

Toward the end of the evening, a classmate who'd grown up in my subdivision walked over. I'd been having trouble recognizing a few people all evening, and I didn't immediately put her face with a name. A stream in the desert The second I saw her name tag, I did a mental brain slap (Duh! How did I not know right away?) and we started talking.

Donna told me right then that she'd been reading my bio in the reunion update. Her comment: "How wonderful your life has turned out for you, Dan. We always knew you would be someone important, a doctor, or someone who helps others. I'm so happy for you." Donna then pulled over another classmate, who agreed with what Donna had said.

I thought about my bio and wondered what Donna had read that I'd missed. I'd written the bio and it sure didn't sound as wonderful to me as it did Donna. But when she told me that she'd become a Christian since leaving high school and was now teaching Sunday School, it all made sense.

You see, out of Donna came rivers of living water. God put Donna there with a healing word at a healing time. She spoke into the desert, and from that stream came life.

There was nothing fake about what Donna shared. She spoke with the love of Christ and meant what she said. She can't possibly know what a blessing her words were. They may not sound like anything extraordinary, but I needed to hear them. Later that night, driving the babysitter to her place, I spent the return trip home in tears, thanking God for all He's given me.

Are we speaking words of blessing into other people's lives? Are rivers of living water perpetually flowing out from us into the lives of people who are thirsty?

How easy it should be for us to dispense grace! Yet for some of us, judgment and correctness fall off our lips faster than the Holy Spirit's life. How sad that we live in a culture longing for a drink of the Eternal, yet we turn on each other so quickly and without care for the death we inflict with our words and attitudes.

What does it mean for us who have the Wellspring of Life, the Zoe life of Jesus, living in us? How are our days different because we can offer drink to the thirsty that never fails to refresh?

Right now, people around us are dying for a drink of what we have welling up inside. In what ways would their lives be different if we broke down our internal dam that held back Living Water? What words of life can we speak into the dry desert that is a hurting person's daily existence? How can we be known as an oasis for the parched, whether they be lost or found?

I've met a few people in my life—only a few—who live each day as oases. That's the kind of person I long to be. Maybe if we did a better job allowing more of Christ's living water to stream out of us, we'd mutually help each other to become the oases that Christ longs for us to be.

Be blessed. And be a blessing to others.

Becoming Ecclesiastical

I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
—Ecclesiastes 1:14-18 ESV

Wisdom in old age Back in the summer of 1988, at the young age of twenty-five, I was working at a Christian camp in Wisconsin. While walking back to my residence, one of the young women on summer staff noticed me singing a hymn to myself, walked up to me and said, “What makes you so happy? You’re the happiest person I know.”

Yesterday, I was sitting down with my young son reading some passages out of an old Good News Bible—the one with the stylized line drawings in it. After we were done, I was flipping through and found a passage out of Ecclesiastes that made me laugh, especially since I have blogged here many times about the Church and work issues:

Only someone too stupid to find his way home would wear himself out with work.
—Ecclesiastes 10:15 GNB

That got me thinking about the rest of Ecclesiastes. At the time of my being told I was the happiest person that young woman knew, Ecclesiastes was my favorite book in the Old Testament. Considering the somber and almost regretful tone of the book, it doesn’t quite seem to work with my state of mind at the that time. Truthfully, I’m not sure the whole of the book rang true for me. Sure, I loved passages like

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
(Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 ESV)

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
—Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ESV

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
—Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV

but I never truly pondered the rest of Ecclesiastes because, frankly, I was too young to see.

Now I am forty-two, a husband, and a father. On reading through Ecclesiastes again in the Good News I was struck by how the rest of the book now spoke to me in a way that it didn’t seventeen years ago. There’s a bittersweet longing for youth, yet with the understanding that to be youthful is to be largely ignorant of the world, much like I was at twenty-five.

If I ran into that same young woman who pronounced me to be the happiest person she knew, I don’t believe that she would say the same thing of me today. However, I don’t consider this a step backward in my faith. Instead, I acknowledge it’s a part of “becoming Ecclesiastical,” seeing life with older eyes and noticing now the vanities you never considered before. To be twenty-five is to be invulnerable, but to be older means you’ll sooner than you imagine be attending funerals for friends you once thought would always be there. It is to know that the world we leave our children will not be as idyllic as the world we inherited. It is to see how striving after riches and glory is nothing more than wind. It is to understand that perhaps a nice meal with people you love is more important than power and fame.

There is a sadness in becoming Ecclesiastical. It is the sadness of accumulated wisdom, a wisdom despised by the young who must painfully learn the lessons of Ecclesiastes only through their own aging. The world says otherwise, but those who become Ecclesiastical understand that

… under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11 ESV

It’s the wisdom of God that He’s made us to learn hard truths in time. There’s no shame in acknowledging that life is difficult and eventually leads to the grave. Yet too often we praise the fools who pretend that this simply isn’t the case.

The tough wisdom of Ecclesiastes shouldn’t be written off by those who always want to think happy thoughts. This book exists in the Bible for a reason. Life isn’t always happy and there would be no rejoicing if sorrow didn’t exist. To the older and wiser, becoming Ecclesiastical renders both the sorrow and the joy our friends, even if the rest of the world around us cannot understand.

The Spiritual Malaise of the 21st Century American Christian

Something is wrong with American Christianity.

I hear it in the voices of new converts who spout more Maslow and Jung than quote Paul or Moses. I see it in the posture of those who have been with Christ a long time, but have grown weary and are dying for a fresh wind of the Spirit.

On Sundays, I hear it in the message (don’t call it a “sermon”!) as the pastor preaches about how God can make your every dream come true. I read it in the Bible study materials that make it plain that Jesus just wants to be our buddy. I partake of it in the worship in which we sing songs so vague they fall into the “God is my boyfriend” trap. And the worship band that a couple years ago sounded like The Lettermen sounds more like Led Zeppelin as they noodle incessantly with arrangements.

I see it in the rush to technique, Total Quality Management, demographic studies, felt needs analysis, doing but not being, and one throwaway Christian book after another supposedly written by a name pastor (but actually ghostwritten) who is helming the hottest church out there (today. Tomorrow it will be someone else.)

Conformity reigns. Any five churches are strangely similar to each other in all aspects of church life. We are all “seeker sensitive,” “purpose-driven,” “wild at heart,” and “culturally relevant.”

And we are deader than dead spiritually.

Ask any Christian you find today if they know Christ. Then ask them to define what “know” means and how that plays out in their lives.Then ask them to explain the plan of salvation and give a half dozen verses that can illustrate that plan. The response will surprise anyone who grew up in the faith pre-1990’s.

It’s frightening and should anger thinking Christians. We have settled for a form of godliness that ultimately does not know God at all.

Cerulean Sanctum is here to be an oasis for those who are reeling from the abandonment of traditional Christian practice and faith to the bankrupt versions we have so quickly rushed to adopt. It is a problem that afflicts every denomination, every theology, and most everyone sitting in the pews. But all is not lost. We hope to find answers and grow deeper in true discipleship under the tutelage of the Spirit of Christ, going back to what is true and lasting, while exposing the spiritual decay that is so prevalent today.

All are welcome. Come and join us!