Stepping Stones: Diagnosis: Dehydration, Cure: Living Water

Transformational Thought

When I was a kid, people weren’t obsessed about health. Fitness clubs didn’t exist, nobody ran unless they had to, grease or butter was an actual food group, fast food was the new Utopia, and cigarettes were just a smelly habit. Now my wife says my Fruit Loops aren’t healthy and keeps putting vegetables on my plate.

Everywhere I go nowadays, I see water bottles. I still have a hard time paying for water, but we have water bottles all over the house. Martine and my girls tell me water is healthy for me and that I don’t drink enough. The experts say that if you become thirsty, you are most likely already dehydrated. A recent report title said it all; “You are not sick…you are just thirsty.” All the medical experts agree on this one; we need to continually drink water throughout our day. Seems like we are all dehydrated.

Not only are we physically thirsty, we are born spiritually thirsty as well…empty…dry. All of our “sickness” is actually due to our spiritual dehydration. You see, we constantly thirst for God…His love, acceptance, and security. Only He can fill our needs…our neediness for everything. Only through Him do we find purpose, fulfillment, contentment, connection, engagement, passion, competence, peace, joy…and especially, pure and true love.

But we are constantly using “spoiled,” even poisoned, water to substitute for the true living water that only God, through Jesus, is. This leads to depression, anxiety, addictions, hopelessness, anger, brokenness, stress, agitation, loneliness, and frustration.

Today, commit to taking sips…short prayers. Confessing a sin immediately, stopping to thank Him for a blessing you take for granted, asking His advice on an issue, telling someone why God makes a difference in your life. Take sips throughout the day from the river of living waters offered by Your Lord and God. You don’t have to be dehydrated. Your decision, choose well.

Prayer
Dear Father God, I am so thirsty, Lord, and I know this means I am spiritually dehydrated. Daily, my tank is low and I thirst for more. Please give me wisdom to avoid contaminated water. Help me, Father, to drink and eat only what is good for me so that my soul may delight itself in Your abundance. I pray in the name of the one who died so I might drink from the living waters, Jesus Christ; and all God’s children said - AMEN!

The Truth
On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
John 7:37-38

Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; and you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come; buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.
Isaiah 55:1-2

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."
John 4:10, 11,13-15