Waiting On The Living Water

by Gayle Thornberry

As I was reflecting on Jeremiah 2:13, I began thinking about fountains and cisterns.

"For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold not water."

Fountains have a constant flow of fresh water, heaving upward toward heaven. Cisterns are filled with stored up run-off of old, often stagnant water, from past rain falls. With that in mind, I began to understand what God might have been saying about His people and the evil that they had committed.

There have been times in my life when I've had plenty of self-dug satisfactions that have done nothing more than leave me empty and dry . . . often even in the name of "doing God's good work." There have been times when I have not been patient enough to wait on the work of God. Times when I've prayed and God didn't speak soon enough to suit me. Or times when the enemy just flat-out lied to me and made me think I wasn't worthy of God's love, and so, with shovel in hand . . . I've dug cisterns to collect whatever I could to satisfy self. Those cisterns have looked like a lot of different things throughout my life, but never fountains of living water!

Looking back now, I can tell the difference between the times when I've been drinking living water, and when I've been drinking from my own self dug cisterns. Living water refreshes, while water from the cistern have left me weary and dry. Self-accomplishments will always do that, they just don't sustain long.

But, the greatest caution for me in this passage, is that God calls our self-dug cisterns "evil."  Scripture is filled with warnings about such events. For instance, when God’s children began building a tower to heaven, in order to make a name for themselves; or when God's people fashioned for themselves a golden calf in their impatience. Those are just two of the many, many examples.

It's only when I wait on God, when I depend on God, when I count on God, when I cast my cares upon God, when I trust God, when my all-in-all is God, that I am truly refreshed,  with a sustaining kind of refreshment. Because only when we drink of the water that God gives shall we never thirst again! (John 4:14)