Becoming drenched in the spirit

This is one of my absolute favorite times of the year. You see so much beauty on display ? pear trees blooming, cherry blossoms bursting out of hiding, tulips opening up ? each plant and tree just seems to come alive almost overnight. As I was taking in all the flora and fauna, I heard a farm report on the radio. He began to talk about drought and lack of rainfall. He talked about diminished yields and shortfalls in certain contracts. Those reports sparked a very interesting question. How can we have a drought when the plants seem so alive. Then, I remembered my eighth-grade science teacher, Mr. Hazelwood, talking about carryover moisture and how the real measure of moisture is done deeper than the surface. Isn?t it interesting that we as human beings are the exact same way when it comes to our spiritual lives?

Jesus Christ is called living water. When we accept Christ as our savior, we acknowledge that he is the source we should be drawing from. His water nourishes our dry and broken lives. If we stop drawing from the well, we find ourselves looking to other things to nourish us. We eventually begin to dehydrate. Our spiritual lives begin to crack and our lives no longer bear fruit. We must allow our lives to be saturated by Jesus Christ. It is easy to just go and get a splash of spiritual water at a church service, but are you truly saturated? We can even get a splash of water every now and then from praying or reading the Word of God, but splashes don?t penetrate they are isolated to the surface to wash away the initial dirt of life. That is the reason we see all of the beautiful blooms currently on the streets of our town and across the rolling hills of the country. They have a great surface reserve of water but once you dig a little deeper you find dry parched soil that needs moisture to produce.

My grandmother was an amazing rose gardener. Her running rose bushes were tops in our county. She was asked once by a reporter for a local gardening magazine, how she was so successful with her roses. Her reply was one word ? consistency. If we truly want to become saturated by Jesus Christ we must be consistent. How many times do we place spiritual things as secondary in our lives? We know they should be first, but life makes a demand that we feel we cannot ignore or presents us with something that we view as far more fun or beneficial. In the account of the Last Supper, Jesus tells his disciples one of them will betray them. It leads to an emotional response of ?It isn?t I, Lord? from all but one. Judas? answer was different as he dipped his bread into the cup he said, ?It isn?t I is it, teacher? or ?rabbi? This was a sign of what was under the surface of Judas. He had been with Jesus but Jesus was just his teacher and not his Lord.

If we want to be truly saturated, we must allow Christ to be LORD. He must have priority in our life. We must make a pattern of consistency as we walk out our faith. We cannot just simply stop and take a drink when we want to. While we may feel fine or even better when we do, we still are becoming more and more spiritually dehydrated. God wants us to be full of him in our actions and our words.

Thank you again

Pastor Dave Watson

Washington First Assembly of God.