“Continue on this Road Until Further Instruction”

“continue on this road until further instruction”

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This is what God is saying to me right now.

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But…

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I want to be directed

I’m not happy to follow blindly.

But it’s about following Him even though I’m not quite sure where He’s taking me or how I’m getting there.

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I want the map.

I want the directions.

I want to see pictures of the destination.

I want the date and time of arrival.

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I want to know.

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But following Him is not about knowing

Following Him is all about being known.

Allowing myself to be known by Him as we walk the road together.

The conversations that take place as we meander through hills and valleys

And before we know it

We’ve arrived.

Walking on a Stormy Sea

I have a picture in my head of Peter when he was walking on the water and it is that of a tranquil, glittering sea sparkling in the moonlight and Peter is somehow gliding over the ocean.

But it wasn’t like that.

When Jesus called Peter to walk on the water, he didn’t calm the water first.

He made Peter step out of the boat at the most inconvenient, dangerous, scariest time. He did not make the environment conducive to what Peter had to do.

And he does the same thing with us.

Often God will call us out to do something amazing for him at the most unsuitable time in our lives.

We want the sea to be calm around us – then we think we might have half a chance of doing what he wants. But not God. He will call us when the wind is at its height and the water is very wet all around us.

God doesn’t need your life to be perfect in order for you to do something amazing for him, he just needs you to trust him, and the cold, hard truth is we trust him the most when our lives are at their most chaotic. In fact the more chaotic your life is the more likely he is to say, ‘come.’

We say, “If only

• I was younger
• I was older
• I was married
• I was single
• I had a job
• I hadn’t a job
• I lived elsewhere
• I lived at home
• I had more responsibility
• I had less responsibility
• I had children
• I hadn’t children”

The list goes on and on. we want the sea of our lives to calm before we step out.

We say, ‘if only,’ Jesus says, ‘come.’ Thats it. Just come.

Despite what you want to change. Come anyway.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to walk on water.

Sure, you’ll be terrified. you’ll get soaked and you’ll fall. But don’t miss out on this.

Don’t be someone who, years from now, is sitting looking out to sea and regretfully says,

‘Man, I could have walked on that.’

Well Well Well – Putting the Pieces Together

 

At the beginning of the year God gave me a piece of a jigsaw picture. As I read and prayed and went about my ordinary life, other pieces started falling onto my lap and I’ve been writing about these pieces on my blog since the beginning of the year.

 

One piece here, one piece there.

 

As I picked more pieces, a picture started to form. What is that picture? It is a well.

 

Why is it a well? I really have no definitive answer. I don’t believe it is any one thing but here are a few ideas:

• The well is God - the Well that never runs dry.  The source for all that I do.
• The well is me – I must always be full as people and life draws from me.
• The well is people around me - dry empty wells but God want to use me to prime these wells to get the water flowing again.
• The well is creativity – the more the creative well is used the more it refreshes itself. If it is not drawn from it goes stagnant.

 

I don’t even think that this whole process is about getting all these questions completely resolved so that I can say exactly what the well represents. I believe the bigger lesson here is about picking up the pieces, one at a time and seeing the beauty of each piece for what it is. Appreciating each nugget of truth. But also seeing each piece as part of one big picture.

 

I love how God trusted me enough to show me piece by piece something so beautiful. I’m also enjoying not totally understanding what it all means.

 

Since when did we feel entitled to understand everything God told us?

 

When God needs me to know, I’ll know – until then I’m going to enjoy putting the pieces together.

 

 

Empty Vessels

As I have been looking at different wells this year I keep coming back to the most famous story of a well in the bible. Well, not so much a story of the actual well but more rather the woman at the well. For that is the only way we can identify her – we do not know her name. We know so much about her promiscuous past but we do not even know something as simple as her name.

I just want to draw your attention to one sentence at the end of the story. It says that she “left her waterpot and went into the city.” She had an encounter with her Messiah – the living water and immediately she left down her waterpot – that very thing that symbolised her emptiness, the very thing that kept her coming to a well that could never satisfy her. She left it down. She was free. She didn’t need to carry it anymore. She realised she, herself, was no longer an empty waterpot. She left down her old identity. She took up a new identity. Because she drank from the well that never runs dry – she then became a well. And what do wells do? They fill empty vessels. She poured out from the well deep within her and she went into the city and faced her enemies, except that this time she didn’t see them as critics she saw them as empty vessels just as she had been.

Empty vessels are all around us. We all begin as empty vessels longing for satisfaction. But as we drink from the Well we are then commissioned to be a well to those empty vessels around us.

Jesus ended up staying two days in Samaria – it looks like this woman wasn’t the only empty vessel in that city.

The Caller’s Spring

Judges 15:18-19

Then he became very thirsty; so he cried out to the Lord and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” 19 So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out, and he drank; and his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore he called its name En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.

 

 

Samson was tired and weary. It had been a long battle and he had the victory but it seemed that he didn’t have the energy to enjoy it. Have you ever felt like that? Victorious yet exhausted. You should be jumping for joy but all you want to do is sleep.

 

 

Samson found himself in Lehi – a hollow place. A place of insignificance. Does that sound familiar? That whisper in your ear that says, “it doesn’t matter. Your job doesn’t matter. Your marriage doesn’t matter. Your friendship doesn’t matter. Your church doesn’t matter. You don’t matter.” Don’t believe that lie.

 

 

Samson may have felt the hollowness of that moment – the insignificance of the time and place he was in yet he did not allow that feeling to silence him, He called out. He refused to settle for insignificance. He believed that there could me more – even in the hollow place. And as he called, he was satisfied. “So God split the hollow place…and water came out, and he drank; and his spirit returned, and he revived” (v19).

 

 

He named that place, ‘The Caller’s Spring.’ Even the hollow place – the place of insignificance – can burst forth with life. No place is ever wasted when we cry out to God. He provides a spring for every caller.

Two Women. Two Wells. One God.

Hagar and the Samaritan woman. Two women who both encountered God by a well and were never the same again.

 

 

These two women are separated by centuries yet their stories are strangely similar. They are both on the run. Hagar is running from the abuse and misuse she is receiving from her mistress, Sarah.

 

 

The Samaritan woman doesn’t think she’s on the run – but she is. She’s made her way through five husbands and is now shacking up with Mr Number 6. You wanna tell me she’s not running from something? Shame. Pain. Disappointment. These are just a few of the demons chasing her. Not to mention the continual dissatisfaction that continues to drive her into the empty arms of these men. Empty wells – that’s really what these men are.  Can’t you hear her desperation as she says, “Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst nor come here to draw?” This is one thirsty woman. Every time she lowers the bucket of her heart into these men it sadly comes up carrying nothing but emptiness.

 

 

And emptiness is a heavy burden to carry.

 

 

Hagar had a revelation of God at her well. She realised that despite the fact she was running away He still took the time and was interested in her story. The spring in the middle of her desert was enough to satisfy her soul. She named God, ‘You are the God Who Sees.’ She said of her encounter, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?”  How amazing and comforting is that? That we get to see the One Who sees us.  He sees us in all our sin yet He allows us to see Him in all His grace.

 

 

Jesus saw straight into the life of the Samaritan woman. He saw her emptiness and gave her fulness. How do we know? It says she left her waterpot and went into the village and proclaimed, “Come see a man…”   And the neighbours must have thought at first, ‘Oh no. Here we go again. Another man on the scene.’ But she finished her sentence by saying, “…who told me all I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” This shocked them because everyone knew everything she ever did! Her life was no secret. Yet this man at the well saw it all and still loved and accepted her. This woman had an encounter with the God of Hagar – The God Who Sees. The God Who saw her yet still loved her. The God Who saw her yet still had purpose for her life.

The Valley of Weeping

No matter how deep the valley there can be a well. 

Just as it says in Psalm 84:6: “Passing through the valley of Weeping they make it a place of springs.” Another word for a spring is a well. Your tears of pain can, in  time, become a well of refreshing. How? I don’t know because when you’re crying them you don’t see any sense to those tears – all you feel is the pain.

When I went on this journey of discovering wells at the beginning of this year I didn’t realise I would be drawing from wells filled with my own tears.  But I’ve cried enough tears in my life to ask you to trust me that God does turn them into a well. What was once a place of pain, strife and contention can become a place God prepares for for you to grow and prosper.

We need to look for the well in all of our valleys because they’re there waiting for us to drink from them. When we are in the valley we need to realise that we are not just trying to get through the day – we are digging wells. Wells that will refresh not only us but dry and thirsty people all around us.

We all want people to be refreshed from the wells of our lives but are we willing for some of that water to consist of our own weeping?

God Has Made Room

Gen 26:18-22. And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them. Also Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found a well of running water there But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek,because they quarreled with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also. So he called its name Sitnah. And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, because he said, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”

Strife. Contention. Enmity. When you’re digging wells for God that’s all that seems to come up. But God has promised you a Reheboth. He has promised room for you in the land where you will be fruitful. He has promised room for you to grow and be who he created you to be without any friction or restriction. He wants you to spread out and not hold back. Sometimes the hardest part for us is realising that the season is changing for us.  We can be so used with strife that we find it hard to expect anything else. But we must not settle for Sitnah of Esek. God has more for us. He has Reheboth.

Notice that He makes room for us. There are seasons in our lives when no matter how hard we try we will never get where we need to go. It will only take the goodness and mercy of God to get us into that place, and no amount of sweet-talking and effort on our part can compensate for His divine favour in those situations. That’s when we know we can do nothing without Him. This takes the pressure off us and allows us to rest knowing that He has everything under control.

But before we can live in our Reheboth we must deal with the wells of our past.  Deal with the strife. Don’t leave it blocked. Otherwise the water will never flow to the place He has prepared for you. Strife blocks the flow of purpose in your life and you must clear the channels. Strife with other. Strife with God. Strife with yourself.

There is always a battle over the wells in our lives but we need to keep digging. sooner or later the battles will cease and we will live in Reheboth – our very own space, right where we belong

Going to the Well

 

She lifts the bucket

Of clear spring water

From the deep brown well

Before she rests it

On the flat stone outside

The well has refilled,

Gurgling up from the

Bowels of the earth,

Refreshed by use

Like her own pool

Of creativity.

 

Alice Taylor

The Weary Artisan

I found this short story in a book I read over Christmas. It was just at the time God was beginning to speak to me about wells. I nearly fell of my chair when I began to read it – it was so appropriate for where I was at right then, and still am.

 

The Weary Artisan

 

A weary artisan has been wandering in the desert of creativity for days. Her heart is dry and her lungs are lined with sand.  She desperately needs to discover some notion of some idea that is, in some way, creative.  Her village elders are counting on her to create – to bring their ideas into an existence that stirs, inspires and communicates.

In the distance, she sees the beautiful image of a well.  She drags her sand-caked feet toward the image, and reads the hand-carved sign on an old piece of wood, propped up against the well.

The sign reads, ‘creativity.’

She places her wind-brned hands against the circular cobblestone wall that surrounds the seemingly bottomless hole in the ground.

She cusps her hands, leans down, and she fills her palms with…

Nothing.

The air from the empty well whisks upward, through her hands, through her hair and into the sky.

The Well of Creativity is empty.

She’s desperate, so she continues her journey.  She discovers four then five more wells.  All have a sign near them that promise ‘creativity.’

And all are empty.

After severe disappointment and extreme thirst, there appears to be one well in the distance,.  Any hope for finding the Creative Idea has been reduced to ashes, and she questions whether or not to even approach this well. her heart is weary, her lips are dry, and hr village needs her to return with that sacred gift. And soon. 

She moves toward the well, and sees a wooden sign, propped up against the stones. But the sign says something different at this well. Rather than, ‘Creativity’, this sign says…

‘The Living God.’

She leans into the well, barely.  She cups her palms together, reaches down and is immediately flooded with the cool waters of a Creative Idea. She’s finally discovered what she’s been searching for all along. And now her fruitless searching has borne sweet fruit.

A Creative Concept that will benefit the entire village. 

She arrives back in that village, and her elder question her about the creative idea she’s returned with.  Her explanation is simple.

She respectfully speaks: “I found the Well of Creativity to be empty – time and time again.  While there were many seeking to drink for it there was nothing there. It may have been a mirage.”

But she continues…

“When after many days, however, I discovered the Well of the Living God, I was supplied with the Creative Idea I was searching for, and  that our village needed.

Two of the village Elders simply stared, but one smiled.

He had been on the same journey years before.  

 

The book where I found this is called “Pursuing Christ, Creating Art” by Gary A Molander. I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I’ve almost finished reading it a second time and I am going to read it a third time, there is just so much truth in it if you are in any way involved with creativity or the church or both.