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 WHAT ARE YOU DRINKING?

John 4:13-14, 23-24

13 Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again.  14But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” 23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way.  24For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

I was reading a devotional this morning and the author made the point that water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen, two tasteless and invisible gases. It is when they are combined in a specific was that they make water, a substance the human body cannot live without. Science tells us we are about 60% water. You cannot live very long without drinking water, in fact, you can only last a few days. It is essential to human life.

Jesus Christ made it patently clear that there is more to being fully human than just the physical reality of being a human being. There is a thirst in the heart of everyone who has ever drawn breath that cannot be satisfied by anything this world provides. Being fully human is the singular result of being restored to God through the life, sacrificial and substitutionary death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. We receive it by believing God and being united to Him by the Holy Spirit in a miraculous new beginning, a new birth, that can only be brought about by God, Himself.

That Living Water Jesus referred to is the Holy Spirit living out within a person the resurrection Life of Jesus, eternal life. It is an everlasting life-giving artesian spring whose source is God, Himself. That everlasting water is made up of two eternal things: Spirit and Truth. Both of those things belong to God alone. Spirit and Truth come from God as His gifts of grace and enable us to receive from God the very things that will make for life…becoming fully human. The Holy Spirit unites us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ where we receive and experience the forgiveness of our sin and experience and receive the Resurrection Life of Jesus Christ, replacing our death with Eternal life and union with God.

By the Holy Spirit, God reveals the truth of our desperation spiritual condition to draw us up short that we might receive from Him that gift of repentance, turning from sin and death and turning to God for forgiveness and Life eternal. The Holy Spirit reveals the Truth of God’s mercy and grace so that life is never the same; its foundations are radically altered and living begins to be transformed by that Living Water springing up to eternal life.

Worship becomes the celebration of the rule of God in every aspect of life, all of it! He alone is worthy of obedience and faith for only in Him will true life be known, true healing received, true reconciliation experienced. To worship the Lord God in spirit and in truth is freedom, honesty, humility, surrender, hope, meaning, purpose, and wholeness of life. Only He can satisfy the true thirst of the human heart. You cannot be truly alive, fully human without His Life being lived in you, bubbling up and overflowing. What are you drinking?

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