Proverbs 5 : 15-16 - Drink waters out of your own cistern, and
running waters out of your own well.
Let your fountains be dispersed abroad, [and] rivers of waters in the streets.
Jeremiah 2 : 13 - For my people have committed two evils; they
have forsaken me the fountain of living
waters, [and] hewed them out cisterns, broken
cisterns, that can hold no water.
remember reading once about a man that was
traveling through the desert and ran out of water. (We saw yesterday that water is
essential to life, and when you are going through a desert and run out of it, you don't
have much chance of surviving.) However as he pressed on he saw an object looming in the
distance. It looked like a pole jutting out of the ground, and as he approached, he
discovered that it was a water pump.
Obviously someone had dug a hole at some stage and sunk a pipe down into an underground
stream. With eager anticipation he took hold of the handle of the pump and began to move
it up and down. It just moved freely and nothing happened. No water came out of the tap.
After trying feverishly for some time he realized that the water must have run dry and
that nothing was going to come out.
But then he noticed a compartment at the bottom of the pump that seemed to have
something in it. He reached in and found with great joy a bottle of water. Lifting it out
he reached to open it and take a life-giving drink, when he noticed that it contained a
label with some words written on it. The label was a set of instructions. It instructed
the person finding the bottle to pour all of the water into an opening in the pump. This
would cause the pump to become 'primed' which would cause it to function correctly. The
person was instructed to make sure that after they had used all the water they needed,
they should refill the bottle and replace it in its storage compartment for the next
thirsty traveler to use.
Now a decision had to be made. Should he drink the water and quench his thirst, or take
a chance and pour all of it out into a pump that might not work? After an agonizing
period
of indecision he decided to trust the person that wrote the instructions on the bottle. He
poured the water into the pump and then reached out to take the handle of the pump. Sure
enough it only took a few lever actions and water started to pour out of the pump. There
was more than enough to not only quench his thirst, but also the thirst of anyone else
that might have been with him. Enough to fill up his own water bottles and enough to
refill the special bottle that was left behind for the next person in need.
We have seen in the Scriptures that Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to those that would
believe in Him. He said that this would be like rivers of living water flowing outwards
from within a person's inward parts. We considered the fact that when a person is born
again the Holy Spirit comes to live inside a person's spirit. And that which flows forth
comes from within the spirit of man, but with the Holy Spirit as its source. You see the
Bible teaches that when we are born again by the Spirit of God, we receive from God our
own underground stream. It is a powerful gushing river of living water that can pour out
with life to others.
But like all underground streams it is not visible to the naked eye and we cannot even
begin to draw from that water either for ourselves or for others, until we have sunk a
pipe down into it. Those who have their own water source on their property know what a
tremendous advantage it is to be able to draw from their own water supply. You can draw
for yourselves and your animals and anyone else that needs water, without having to rely
on a municipal or other external water source. And there is no limit to how much water you
can draw, other than what your underground stream can supply.
Solomon tells us in our first reading that we should drink water from out own cistern,
or water supply. Then he says, let this water also flow out to meet the needs of others.
He seems to be saying something similar to what Jesus said to the woman at the well. He
told her that the water he gave would meet her own needs, so that she would never thirst
again, and that it would result in water supply that could flow out in continual supply.
This means that every believer has within their own spirit, because of the presence of
God's Holy Spirit, a source that can meet not only their own needs but also the needs of
others. The problem is how do we tap that water and get it to come out?
Drink from your own cistern, says Solomon, but we always look somewhere else for God's
blessing. Yet Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:3 that God has blessed us, once for all, with
every spiritual blessing that is available in the heavenly realm, in Christ. And He has
done this by giving us the Holy Spirit, who is the source of all blessing. You have an
underground stream in you that will not only meet every need you could ever have, but also
impart to you every blessing that God is capable of giving. You have in the Holy Spirit,
everything that Heaven has to offer. In fact Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is the
down payment or first installment of our inheritance Ephesians 1:14. He is like a deposit
that has been made in the bank for you to draw on.
But sadly, most believers do not know how to tap their underground stream. They don't
know how to sign the check that will allow them to draw money from their heavenly bank
account. So they go around begging and pleading for God to bless them. They go from place
to place seeking someone that has the blessing of God flowing in their life that they can
get some of the overflow. Instead of being a water source, they are continually drinking
from the cisterns of others. They are a bit like the man in our story who if he had drank
the water instead of pouring it into the pump would have quenched his thirst for a while
but later grown thirsty again, and he would have denied others the opportunity to also
draw from the underground stream.
So how do we draw from our underground stream then? I do not have space to cover the
subject in detail here, but I will give you some of the basic principles to meditate on
and then I will explain them in more detail later. The first stage to tapping into your
underground stream is to sink a 'pipe' down into the water. If you do not have a pipe you
have no way of drawing it out. The problem with sinking a pipe into an underground stream
is that it takes hard work. You have to drill down into the ground until you hit the water
source. This might start off easy, but the actual water is usually found in the rocky
layers below the surface of the soil. That means you might have to drill through solid
rock before you hit the water.
We have been giving you hints for some time now in the Daily Word as to how you can
sink a pipe down into your underground stream. You see the pipe that carries the water is
the Word of God. The Spirit always works according to the Word, and without the Word there
can be no action from the Spirit. Think about the creation of the earth in Genesis 1. We
read that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters ready to perform the creation, but
nothing happened until God's Word went forth into the earth. With the Word came the acts
of creation. So if you want to tap the resources in your spirit that are available in the
Holy Spirit, you are going to have to start drilling down into your spirit to make place
for the Word.
It is here that so many people go wrong. God said through Jeremiah that His people were
making two mistakes. Firstly they had turned their backs on the only true source of
blessing and secondly they had turned to inferior sources. When believers fail to cause
the Word to sink down and penetrate their inward man, they make the same mistake. The Word
has to go deeper than the mind. The mind, as it links with the body, allows us only to
understand with our brains and we have to rely on the memory cells in our brain to hold
the information. We try to work things out ourselves intellectually or resort to doctrines
that seem to make s
ense to our minds. This is like drilling down only below the soft sand
of the surface of the ground. You will not hit the underground stream until the Word has
penetrated the rocky layers of your heart.
It takes a process of drilling until the inward man is pierced. We get a hint of this
from Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God [is] living, and powerful, and sharper
than any two edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of the
joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
There has to come a piercing at the point where the soul and spirit meet. This is where
the rocky surface lies. This is where you will find what the Psychologists have called the
'sub-conscious mind.' And until the Word passes beyond this point you have not created an
opening to the power that lies within.
And then when you have created a path for the water to flow
and you have inserted your
pipes, you need to have some way of pumping that water out. A well or borehole without a
water pump are of little use. We will look at this final aspect in our next study. You
will find out how to set up your water pump and how to make sure that it works
correctly. And we will bring together everything we have shared so far to explain
how you can enter into all that the Lord has for you.
