Ted and Betty McJunkin share the messages delivered at the Falls Creek Fellowship Meeting of June 4-6, 2010 in Raymond, Washington. Their labor of love in preparing this is impressive! Read, and allow the Spirit of God to bless you.
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Conference theme is Psalm 63:1. "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you...in a dry and weary land where there is no water."
Following are the messages in the order in which they were given.
DON JACOBS
Our 60th wedding anniversary was on Christmas Eve. In March of this year we were in Belize for a holiday with a pastor and his wife. They were married for 40 years – between us we had 100 years of marriage! The Lord has given Anna Ruth and me a marvelous relationship. Sometimes I wonder, “Lord, you knew exactly what to do to give me this woman.” We have had our ups and downs, but we can go six days together in a car, making decisions as to where shall we stop, what do you want to do? In the Lord it is wonderful. How did this happen? We love one another and we’re friends! Jesus has done a deep work in our lives.
This is a little vacation that we have thought about for twenty years and then we will spend a couple of weeks in the Canadian Rockies. We have no time table. The ultimate goal is to get home. We are both home lovers so I can imagine as soon as we do Yellowstone, we will head home because we love our home so much. It is so good to be here. Two years ago we were here.
We are all familiar basically as to what happens when we get together at these revival fellowship retreats. Our desire is to see Jesus from a little different point of view. Catching new glimpses of Jesus is what it’s all about. We aren’t here to flout our spirituality, or make a point like “here’s how you do it” – or “I’ve been at this longer than you…” None of that. We are together, all learners and all looking at Jesus. We see Jesus through our need. My needs keep changing and that is what fellowship is – sharing what you are seeing now about our wonderful Lord. It is a little clearer now than it was before or you hadn’t even seen that before. It is in fellowship that we share with one another. That is the way we learn. We gather around Jesus like the children gather around grandfather. Jesus is glad to be here with us and we are glad to be with him. That is what the fellowship is all about. There are no formulas, no listed “how to’s” – it is all testimonies. This walk with Jesus is so ad hoc. You can’t make a formula out of it. “Hey, yesterday, Jesus really put his finger on something!” That is what he does.
The theme for the weekend is Jesus the Living Water. Tonight I want to open a scripture we are well acquainted with, but as you get an idea that comes into your mind or if you have a question, after my little thing, maybe we can talk about that. Be free to fellowship around this. While I am sharing these golden words of wisdom, keep that in mind. The Lord gave me this yesterday as we were traveling.
Isaiah 55:1, “Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters and you who have no money, come, buy and eat.” King James Version says, “Ho” instead of come. I like that. It is a simple verse and let’s pray that our holy imagination will help us see Jesus in this. This is written by Isaiah and to people who were in very dry times – exile, all the promises they had about living in the land are gone. The temple is no longer operative. They are living in a strange land. The Word of God came through Isaiah to dry people. What dryness did they experience – the dryness that comes from a broken dream? Did the dryness come from the fact that they were not able to really please God as they should have? The prophets were very hard on the people – “You have done wrong…” Or was it dryness for not meeting the mark? I don’t know what the dryness was but there was dryness. This is spiritual dryness we are talking about.
It is set in the context of a home or a household that has run out of water. That would be strange here for us but that was not strange in Africa. There was no water! Evidently these people had water before. They would have captured it the best they could. In a household that is what they would do. You would capture the rain water and it was very precious, but if it didn’t rain for awhile, it became dry. This household had used up all its water and now they are desperate. Maybe the house was perfectly furnished and looked like a normal house, but it couldn’t maintain life because it had no water. This shows the absolute essential nature of water. You have to have it. Everything else can be fine, but if you don’t have water, you can’t sustain life.
This is the desperate situation. They didn’t know about the neighbors, they had their own problems. MY HOUSE IS DRY. That is the beginning of revival. I AM DRY! I often have to come to the Lord and say, “Lord, I am just a piece of toast this morning. I am just so dry!” That is honest.
Here comes this voice down the street – the water seller. Here is somebody that can make my life possible. He starts out with a cry of a water vendor – “Ho” I am here! The water vendor is right in front of this house with this news – “Are you thirsty? Has your water run out? Is your water finished? The news I have is only for people whose water is finished! I don’t have good news for people who are living on the dregs of what they have. I am interested in people who are dry. The means are exhausting – all they have are empty jugs and that is it! The dry ones are the ones to be blessed. They are candidates for the grace of God. You have to be dry. The blessing comes in weakness, in dryness.
Now what are we going to do? We hear the vendor outside. You would think that we would run out and say, “Yes, I want some water!” Why are we so hesitant I wonder? What will my neighbors think? They will see that I didn’t take care of the water I had. What about my pride? I should have made sure I had water! I can hardly admit that I didn’t make it reach. You are almost embarrassed to go out in the street because as soon as you get out in the street, you declare, “I AM DRY.” I don’t want to appear dry among people who seem to be drinking or at least they look that way. I think I am just going to die in my dryness rather than humble myself to rush out there and say, “I AM DRY!” But it is only those who rush out and say “I am needy” who get the water, otherwise, it is gone.
Jesus comes to your door. The vendor is right at the door. He comes near, but he is not coming in to fill your jugs – you have to go out into the street where the other thirsty, dry people are. Jesus is the water. Water is never separated from Jesus. He comes and we have to somehow declare our dryness, declare our bankruptcy, and declare our feeble estate and say, “Lord, I am sorry but I am out of water! I need You desperately. Lord, if you don’t take me through this thing, I am frightened, I can’t do it. Lord, I have this situation I have to deal with – without You, I can’t do it.” It is that kind of desperation that causes us to come out and say, “Jesus I really need You.”
It could be that other people are in their houses and they’re satisfied. Before the drought maybe they bought a bunch of Ginger Ale or Coke. Maybe they have a lot and they’re doing well. There is that temptation to compare, but I can’t compare myself to anybody. When I start that, it never does any good. It is only the Vendor and me – Are you thirsty? It is between Jesus and me. When I say, “Yes, I am thirsty”, then the transaction happens. Then the good thing occurs.
When you are dry, what happens? When I am dry, I often go to a book. I have all of the Wesley’s hymns in one book – a big thick book. Sometimes it helps, let’s face it. Sometimes I start my devotional time and I am a little on the dry side, so I open with a Wesley hymn. Wow! It is good, but what I really need to start with is how is my relationship with Jesus? Are we together? Am I carrying an attitude which is really not helpful? This walk with Jesus is the one that is extremely important. It is of no use to run to the neighbors or run to the priest or run anywhere else. There is only one source of this water. I love Wesley hymns and I love Anabaptist theology. I love history. I can get refreshed in a hundred different directions. When I am feeling kind of dull, I make something. I like to make stuff out of wood. I will make a toy and it is something to do – there, it is done! It is a refreshment – a little sip of water. What is better than going out in the evening and looking at the unobstructed view of lovely sunsets at our home? It really does refresh our spirits. There are many things that do refresh our spirits. Jesus is not denying us any of that, but those are sips. If we really want to get on with Jesus, we come to Him. He says, “Come to ME and I have the waters.” We are human and we enjoy seeing new sights and that sort of thing. Anytime we have fellowship like this, we back up a bit and ask, “What makes me live?” It is Jesus. If we have Jesus, then we can enjoy the sunsets, we can enjoy husband and wife relationships – when Jesus is in the middle, then the waters flow. It is not bad to enjoy stuff – but we are to enjoy it in Jesus – that is the secret.
Jesus does not give water – Jesus IS water. 1 Corinthians 10:4, Paul says, “They all drank of the same spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual rock.” Paul uses the physical rock in a spiritual sense. He says, “We all drink of the same spiritual rock…” You drink of that rock, I drink of that rock. There is only one rock. Our nephew works at a 7-11 and says that they have 67 different kinds of soft drinks that they sell. We don’t have 67 different kinds of Jesuses – there is only one Jesus. That is called fellowship. We all drink the same drink – the blood of Christ – it is Jesus. Paul said, “That Rock out of which the water came – that Rock is Christ.” Just imagine two million people going through the desert, wondering where they would get water. The Rock followed them. They didn’t take the rock with them. They couldn’t. One thing that they couldn’t take with them was water. How could they have carried enough water for that large group of people? God had it organized that when they camped, as far as what we read, there was the rock - the rock followed them. Whether Paul is using holy imagination here or if it was an actual rock that was there, we do know that Moses got water from the rock. This idea of the rock following – it didn’t go ahead of them. The rock waited until they were dry. I would rather have the rock ahead. “Oh, there is water there!” No, we are in the dry place and there we find the rock caught up with us. It is the same picture over and over again - water and dryness, water and dryness.
What does it cost me to get this water? The wonderful thing is that it is free! This water won’t cost you anything. We ask, “What kind of water is this that doesn’t cost anything?” It is absolutely free – that is the grace of God of course. Often I take three hours off of my time to take an Amish neighbor to various places because they don’t use cars. We go from place to place for three hours. They want to pay me, but I will say, “We don’t want any pay. We are neighbors.” It is almost an embarrassment when they give you money because you have just given three hours and if you were only $25 an hour, you have given them $75. Human nature says, “I would like to pay.” They don’t say it, but it is as if they are saying, “I would like to pay a little for this.” They don’t ask what it really costs. They can’t pay what it is worth. How much did this water cost heaven? This water bankrupted heaven. God sent his only begotten Son – that is how much it cost! The cost to Jesus is unfathomable and yet we want to give a little toward it. We have no idea what it really cost. All the money couldn’t have paid a mite toward the cost of that water. We get this notion that we have to earn it. If you don’t earn it, you don’t deserve it. We are raised like that. And then we get this fantastic picture of the grace of God – you won’t get it unless you receive it freely because it cost heaven everything.
Anna Ruth and I both taught school and were not financially well off. We were then appointed as missionaries to Africa. On one of the first mornings after our appointment we were standing shaking hands after church. I shook the hand of this one woman whom I knew and knew she was not wealthy and realized she had given me a $20 bill. That hurt me. You mean being a missionary meant I had to live on charity? I would much rather work hard and earn the money. It went against my nature. We were taught in my family that you had to work to get it and if you didn’t work, you didn’t get it. That is true, but it doesn’t work in spiritual matters when it comes to this water. You have to take it freely.
It could be that this was a problem for these people because they had spent everything to get the water that they did have. They may have been bankrupted or it could be that they had some money. No matter – keep the money because as soon as you try to pay for this, you have no idea what the cost is about. You look at the cross where Jesus, the Son of God, Son of Man, dies on it, the blood flowing into the ground, heaven shaking, the earth shaking – that is what it cost! Just receive, receive, receive…this water is FREE.
How do we get the water? I admit that I am desperately in need. That is a cost. It cost me to say, “I am in the wrong” or “I am dry” or “I am carrying the wrong attitude.” That is very difficult for me, but there is no obtaining the water unless I admit that I am dry. Secondly I have to believe that the Vendor is telling the truth. I have to believe that He can back up his promise with the product. John 6 puts this belief in Jesus together with the water a lot – you have to believe that he has that water. Believe Him and you believe IN him. This was one of the big problems with the children of Israel – to believe. There are a lot of questions – where is the water? He said, “Come and buy without money..” I don’t know if he had wagon with water on it. I have no idea. It would take a mighty big wagon for everyone who comes out who wants it. Or how is he going to deliver it? All at once? Will he come in and fill my jugs and when they get empty, will he fill them again? How is this going to work? All of the Christian life is that set of questions. How do we really incorporate the promises of God? We are to believe, but the one who promised is going to do it! Do you think he would promise if he couldn’t follow it up with doing it? It will cost something to believe because it is stepping outside of ourselves.
Thirdly, be ready for God’s awesome grace. No one can even begin to pay for this water. The Gospel explains this cost. It seems to me that there is no transaction. You give and you get, but here you don’t give anything because it is all debt. That doesn’t sound like good economy but we have to live with that. The cost of receiving this water is living with this ambiguity – that there is no way I can possibly pay for this, but I am getting this freely. That is something I find quite difficult.
Fourthly, we must abandon all the sources for soul satisfaction that are not this water. This is easy to do if everybody has what they have from the Vendor, but for a lot of us Jesus is just one of the sources of water. Religion is good our culture says, but there are so many fountains out there – don’t limit yourself to one fountain. But the cost of this is that I deny myself from drinking from any other source. After you begin to drink of Jesus, the other sources fade in influence. It is not that we don’t get some refreshment, but they fade in influence.
The final thought – it costs all self-reliance, all dependence on self. All striving has got to go. You get it freely, why not receive it freely and then live a life of grace even though it goes contrary to human nature and to our culture? Isaiah 55, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the water and drink. You who have no money, come.”
DON JACOBS
What are signs of dryness in your spiritual life? No hunger for the Word Next is a critical spirit. That is high up on my list. Another is becoming self-absorbed. Bossiness is another sign. Striving, doing things in your own strength and restlessness – feeling unsatisfied. We become controlling. When I find myself wanting to control Anna Ruth, then I know I am dry. On our trip, it is easy to want to control. When I am willing to be controlled, perhaps that is a sign that I am drinking the Living Water. A lack of the sweetness of Jesus can be evidence of dryness. In some of the old British writings, there was a sweetness about Jesus. When that goes, we become like a hard master – the sweetness has gone. Still another is loss of interest in fellowship. When I am dry, I don’t want to share with anybody. I would rather go to church and get preached to, sing the nice songs, put my offering in the plate, but don’t ask me to share my life with somebody, especially if it means repentance. Why is it that this is the last thing I want to do? A lack of desire for fellowship and that kind of intimacy is pretty well a sign of dryness. There are a lot of dry Christians – the churches are full of dry Christians. They go to church, go through the motions, and then come home again – nothing happens. They haven’t met the Water, Jesus, yet.
The East Africa Revival flourished and is flourishing in fellowship. They are called “the saved ones” – but they are the ones who want to get together and share. Hardly a week would go by when you didn’t have a group of people getting together sharing life. It was a sure sign that somebody was dry if they didn’t attend. You can ask, “Why don’t you attend?” There are many reasons, but when it comes right down to it, you just don’t desire fellowship. There are legitimate reasons, but if the desire is gone, that is the important thing. If we no longer feel fellowship is really important, then that is a sign of dryness and in my own life that will produce dryness. It is not easy to ask forgiveness from your husband or wife, but that is a sign of the flowing water. When you stop asking forgiveness, then you get dry. As husband and wife, following Jesus is following Jesus together. If she sees me not repenting, she knows I am dry. God has given Anna Ruth freedom more than once to remind me that I need to deal with a particular thing. By fellowship, I am not talking about tea time after church which is often called the fellowship hour, but I am talking about sharing your hearts. The water flows in honesty. The thing that dams up God’s grace in our lives is really our unbrokenness. When we break, grace rushes in and we have refreshment.
Self pity is another sign of dryness. “I want my way” – it didn’t go the way I wanted it to. Disappointment, a broken dream can bring dryness. I call is spiritual thumb-sucking. Nothing in it but it feels good to suck. You don’t get a thing out of it except you wear out your thumb.
There is much I don’t understand about drinking Jesus – drinking His blood, and eating his flesh. That is the secret of it all. I want to know is it really possible to stay that way? I am sure it is but how do we access the fullness in Christ?
John 6:25 “When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, ‘Rabbi, when did you get here?’ “Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval. Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” So they asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” “Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.” Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me that I shall lose none of all that he has given me but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.”
“What miraculous sign will you give that we may see it and believe?” Jesus preached on the other side of the lake. It is evening. Jesus fed the multitude out of a few morsels – a fantastic miracle if there ever was one. The disciples were troubled. Jesus had told them that the hour was coming. John 6 is about the last couple of months of Jesus’s life. He is now looking to the cross. Now we are coming to the time when Jesus has to declare himself. The disciples would like Jesus to declare himself once and for all. They believed that he could do a miracle that would be so enormous and so convincing that people will know he was the Messiah. So they asked him, “Now that we are here, what miracle are you going to do to show your Messiahship?
John 7:2, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples may see the miracles you do.” The Messiahship was based on miracles in their heads. I don’t dispute miracles, but what place do miracles have in our walk with Jesus – in our thirsting after Jesus? Are we thirsting after miracles or thirsting after Jesus? Are we for the quiet work of the Holy Spirit or must it be dramatic? There is nothing less dramatic than repentance. Someone can stand up and tell about the cancer that was diagnosed, they prayed and the cancer was gone. That raises a good hallelujah – I even say hallelujah! That’s great! Then if somebody would stand up and say, “You know I had an argument with my wife and I am really sorry about it. Jesus broke me on it and I repented. I am cleansed by the blood. Praise God!” You probably won’t get a hallelujah out of that! I wonder why that is? Do we still have some of the spirit of the disciples in this? How will they know who Jesus is if we don’t see him do miracles?
For years in East Africa the Lord had been showing us to walk in the light. Then we had people come with big banners that said, “Come and get healed” on a certain date. That was a bit of struggle for us. We are not against healing, we are very much for it, but it is not a matter, does Jesus heal, but it is a matter of getting into fellowship with Jesus. We fellowship with him by walking this Calvary way. Here a few hours before that, the disciples had seen probably the most dramatic miracle that anyone had seen since Mt Sinai. Did that help them? They got their bellies full. The next day, Jesus appeared on the other side of the lake and sure enough, they followed him. Did they want Jesus? No, they wanted food – they wanted the miracle. They weren’t satisfied with Jesus.
One of the sisters in our fellowship in Kenya said, “The greatest thrill that heaven has is when a man or a woman repents and is cleansed by the blood and comes to Jesus.” That is the greatest miracle that one can imagine – the broken, contrite heart. They saw the miracles, but still didn’t believe. They got fed the day before and then they were there the next day, ready to be fed again and Jesus said, “Not today because you don’t really want Me, you only want what I can do for you.” That disturbed his disciples. Somebody came to them and asked, “How can we earn our bread?” Jesus said, “The work that pleases the Father is to believe.” The hardest thing in the world is to believe. I have struggled with this through the years. I come up to it, take a step in faith and I stumble, hesitate because I don’t really believe Jesus can meet my need in this. The work that pleases the Father is to believe. That was it! The disciples went home and Jesus went up on the hill to pray. The disciples were across the lake and met an extraordinary storm. Then they saw Jesus walking on the water. Jesus came right into their boat.
This morning I tried to put myself in the shoes of the disciples and how they must have felt as all of this was happening. Who is this guy? We get to the place sometimes when we just can’t figure Jesus out. One day he fed the multitude with twelve baskets left over and the next he says, “Not today.” What is this man trying to do? You will find this through John chapters 6, 7 and into 8 – Who is this Man? Some said, “No man ever did miracles like this before.” Some said, “Yes, but he is demonized – he is doing this in the power of Beelzebub.”
The disciples said, “We’re going up to the Feast, Jesus.” This was the Feast of the Tabernacles. The Feast of the Tabernacles was in September. Jesus said that he was not going because it was not yet his time. The Feast of the Tabernacles was a huge feast because it recalled the exodus, the deliverance from slavery. It was symbolized by the fact that for a whole week they had to move out of their houses and live in temporary shelter – like tents. Nobody in Jerusalem was allowed to live at home that week. The first day they offered grapes, the second day olives…we don’t really know – as they went through the week, but always reminded that they were temporary here. We strive for permanence and God wants to keep us temporary. That was seven days and this was peculiar to this feast – there was an extra day – the 8th day put on the end. Jesus appeared in Jerusalem halfway through that week. The audacity of Jesus – he walked right into the temple and talked for three days in the temple. Jesus said he wasn’t going to go but then he does. Instead of doing a miracle, he talked to the doctors of the law. Who is this Jesus anyway? The morning of the eighth day comes and I understand that the very thing that day was the water ceremony. They had a whole week of feast – the bread that reminded them of the manna – now they come to the day of water. John calls it, the last great day of the feast. John 7:37 says, “On the last and the greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the Scripture said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit whom those who believed in him were later to receive.” The ceremony was this: early in the morning, a group of people went down to the pool. Siloam was a low pool in Jerusalem. There they saw jugs or buckets of water. They carried that water from that pool up the streets of Jerusalem until they got to the temple mount. Inside the temple, they rigged up a funnel that came down and when the ceremony started, they went into the sermon about the water, that God provided the water in the desert. They were living in their outside tents for a week – now what would they do for water? God not only surprised the whole week with things, but he had something special on the last day – that was water because you can’t live without water. I don’t know exactly how it was, but I imagine when the priest poured the first water down into that funnel. The water came down under the altar and flowed out as they poured it in over and over. The water flowed right out into the street. It must have been dramatic. All was quiet watching this happen. I imagine it was in a moment of silence that Jesus stood up and they heard exactly what it says in Isaiah 55 except they were a little different words. It was a tremendous announcement. “If anyone is thirsty, let him come – not to the water – but to ME. The source of the water of Life is Jesus. Then Jesus gets back to this again, “Whoever believes in Me…”
Could unbelief be a sign of dryness? In John 6, it was asked, “What can we do to please the Father?” Jesus said that the work was to believe. When he tells us to go, we go and as we go, the Rock, the drink, follows us. Isaiah 58 talks about the springs of water that will come out of the desert. Jesus says, “Whoever believes in Me as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” We all are going through some hard stuff – the question comes up, “Is he sufficient for this?” That’s a good question! I don’t know any brother or sister who always says “yes” to the Lord. Erma Maust used to drum into us as a spiritual lesson. She said that there are times when you just have to will to believe and repent of your unwillingness to believe. I wonder if there is a deeper work of repentance – to repent of my unwillingness or my inability to believe. Do I believe everything Jesus said about Himself? What did Jesus promise? You can never exhaust this Jesus. But do we believe? The devil likes to park on our shoulder and says, “No, no, no. All that water stuff – those are just nice words. Jesus was just a good poet.” Folks, this isn’t a poem – this is LIFE. These aren’t just pretty words; this is the difference between life and death for us, in the spirit.
Erma used to say, “I don’t want to believe but I know I must believe, therefore, I am going to repent of my unwillingness to believe.” Then, when that is taken away, and the blood cleanses, I can believe. The unwillingness to believe has to be removed and the blood does that because that is a sin and the blood takes away sin.
Jesus slips away and they didn’t catch him then. A few months later Jesus is on the cross and the water is pouring out of his side. “Oh, that is what he was talking about in September.” Jesus is not only the water but the temple. Out of the temple flows this water. Can you embrace this Jesus?
I was putting myself in the disciples’ shoes. By this time they are absolutely flabbergasted. The Jesus they knew who fed the 5,000 has completely disappeared. Now this Jesus doesn’t even defend himself – not one word of self-defense. They thought they were coming to Jerusalem to see a miracle. Hold on! Jesus the Son of God dying for sinners – that is the miracle. That is the mother of all miracles. There is nothing that comes near that. All heaven is singing that song, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to whom belongs honor and glory, now and forever.”
SHEILA BURT
I would like to share about my life and what God has been doing. I belonged to a family that always went to church but it wasn’t until I got to college that I really started thinking about God. The question that the Lord posed to me was, “Who do you really think Jesus is – is He God’s Son?” When I accepted Jesus as God’s Son is when I became a Christian. After I graduated from college, about three or four years later, I went to a conference where Roy Hession was speaking. I heard a message that I had never heard before. It came afresh to me. I had read Calvary Road and as I was reading it, I came across a little line that said, “Shyness is a sin.” That was a real eye opener for me. Could that be possible? I had never thought of that as a sin. I had always thought of it as human nature. That was the nature God gave me and I was shy. (You wouldn’t think that of me now, would you? Shows how the Lord can change you!”) Reading that had prepared me for what I heard at the conference. I heard the message of repentance, but I also heard that we could go to Jesus, to the cross with our sins and his blood could cleanse. When I first heard it, it was all double-dutch to me. I didn’t understand it because I had never applied it to my life and I had never seen the need to apply it to my life. After I heard about it, I went to bed that night and said to myself, “Lord, I am not a sinner. I have never done anything awful.” It shows how we can deceive ourselves. I remember waking up on a Friday morning and saying something to a friend of mine. This friend said to me, “Are you sure that you are not jealous?” It was as if the Lord sent an arrow straight into my heart. It just took away everything because I realized that I had been jealous and the source of the remark I had made came from jealousy. That was one thing that I thought I would never have to cope with – jealousy. I was absolutely speechless. I never realized that I could take this to Jesus – that I could bring my sin of jealousy and the remark I had made and he could forgive me and cleanse me. That was the first time I saw myself as a sinner and Jesus as my Savior. It turned my Christian life upside down. I didn’t just have a guide and a friend – I had a Savior. I saw myself in a totally different way.
It was on that holiday that I met Richard. After that we got married and we went to the conference next year on our honeymoon. We were desperate to get there. After that we moved from Nottingham to Linden. That was a shock because I had been involved in the church and schools in Nottingham and I knew lots of people. When I moved to Linden, there was nobody apart from Richard. I had no church, no fellowship, and no friends. Because I didn’t have these things, I felt like my legs were taken from under me. The Lord made me very thirsty and because of this I came to him and I threw myself on him. He asked me, “Are you satisfied with me alone? I have taken away all of the things you have been doing for me. I have taken away all of the crutches. Are you satisfied?” I had to say, “Yes, Lord, I will be satisfied if there is nothing else – only You.” The Lord taught me then that we can’t find our water for life in the things we do even if they are things we do for Jesus. You have to find your source in Jesus.
We had been having a Bible study at our home every Thursday for twenty years and about a year ago, I was beginning to have a problem. I found I had nothing to share. I was dry as old bones. I had nothing to offer to the conversation. I didn’t know why this was. I went to the Lord and asked him, “Is there sin in my life?” Nothing rose to the surface so I just kept going, but I was really getting desperate. I was getting so dry and parched. There was nothing from the Lord. Eventually I went to the fellowship group and shared with them how I had been feeling, how I had really come to the end. The next morning I woke up and the Lord said, “What about all those books you read?” These books he was talking to me about were not very edifying. They were trashy, romantic novels and I read them morning, noon and night. I would sit down at breakfast and have a book there. Everywhere I went I had a book and was reading these constantly. The Lord said, “If you are constantly reading those books, there is no room for Me to speak in your life.” I knew he was right. There was no room in my heart and mind for Jesus because I was filling it with other things. I got up that morning and I took all of the books and got rid of them and I have never read one of these trashy novels since. It was quite startling. I had spent years reading them all of the time. Just like that, the Lord changed me! But he had to let me become so dry and so parched, that I was willing to do anything to get a drink form him again. I didn’t care what I had to do. I just wanted to share these two things – how the Lord had made me very dry and thirsty and gave me a real desire to find him.
When I first went to Southwold Conference and I first heard the message, the Lord made me thirsty but he didn’t leave me thirsty. He preached the message to me in my heart before I got to the stage of being thirsty so I could go and drink from him. I praise the Lord for that. With my reading I was very dry and had nothing to share, but yet again, when I went to him, there was all I needed. Like Don said, “the rock came behind”. We need to be thirsty before we turn to the Rock. We need the thirst before we can truly turn to the Rock and we are willing to drink anything he has for us.
Life is not always easy. Life has its problems, but Jesus is with us in everything. Sometimes we don’t feel as if he is with us – we have to believe and act on it. I can only put my trust in Jesus. I learned that you cannot put your trust in anybody else because others are human, sinful and will let you down. They don’t intend to, but they will. Jesus will never ever let you down. You cannot put your trust in self. I can’t even put my trust in me because I will also let me down. I have to take “me” to the cross and that is the only place where I can get strength from Jesus. I can only put my trust in Jesus. The answer is always found in Jesus. You go to the cross with your sin, the blood cleanses, but I also found the answer to the battle in my life was to be found in what Jesus had done on the cross. Jesus is the center, Jesus is the source. “See I am doing a new thing…now it springs up – do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland>” I can testify that this is so, so true.
RICHARD BURT
I became a Christian at the age of sixteen in a youth group run by Dave & Alfie Wilson. It was a “One Step Forward” campaign. The people went one step forward from where they were and I wasn’t anywhere so I thought, “Where do I go?” They said, “Come and meet Jesus. He will change your life.” I thought, “That is a good idea” so I went forward. I was counseled. Luckily Alfie and Dave Wilson had gone to a conference run by Roy Hession and so I learned about repentance and walking in the light. I thought that this was wonderful and for several years I was very happy as a Christian. I was a policeman for thirty years. We got married. We met at the conference and things were going quite well. We kept going to the fellowship conferences, but I was dry and I kept hearing the words from 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, will repent of their sins and from heaven I will heal them. I will forgive their sin and heal their land.” I thought, “Well, that sounds like a good idea. I quite like the sound of that.” But then how did I go about humbling myself? I wasn’t a very humble person. I drove fast cars for a living. They weren’t even mine. I didn’t even have to pay for the petrol. I was involved in exciting things at work. I was extremely self-reliant.
I find this self-reliant is still a problem with me. I don’t like to be broken on things. We went and shared what happened with John Collinson, a brother in England, and with Roy Hession. They said, “The Lord seems to have broken you.” I had heard a little bit about brokenness. The Lord had said to me that this was the only way of breaking me so I would do whatever he said. I came to the point where I told the Lord, “Lord, whatever you want has to be better than what I have now. Now I have real peace and real life so break me if you must.” And he did.
Things slowly improved. A couple of years later Sheila said, “I think we should go to Africa.” I said, “Why do you want to go to Africa? There are other places we could go that has sunshine, swimming pools and everything else.” We had a friend in Africa who said, “Oh, do come and stay and see my hospital.” I said to Sheila, “I don’t really want to go. You do realize that they have animals there that eat you.” She still insisted that she believed God wanted us to go there. After much praying over it, I realized that God wanted to break me again. He wanted me to say, “Lord, if you want me to go, I will go.” I realized then that brokenness is not an event – it is an attitude. It is a way to live but God has to continuously teach me that.
I hate speaking in front of people. A few weeks ago, Ian McLellan was having a day conference and he phoned me up at home. We were just going shopping. Sheila was just outside waiting for me and the phone rang. I answered it. Ian said that they were having a day conference and asked if we were coming. I said we were. He asked, “Will you give a word in the afternoon?” I told him that I don’t do that and he knew that – he has known me for 20 odd years. But I told him that Sheila would be delighted to do it. Ian said that they had prayed about it and they really felt that I should do it. I said, “All right, Ian, I will do it.” I just wanted to get him off the phone. I put the phone down. I had to walk 7 yards to the back door and by the time I got there, Sheila asked, “Who was that on the phone?” I said, “It was Ian. He wants to know if we were coming to the day conference and he wanted to know if you would speak in the afternoon. I told him that you would bring the word.” She felt that was okay. Between the phone and the door, I thought of the deception. It worked! I thought I was off the hook! The meeting was about three weeks away. After about two weeks, the Lord said, “Come on. You know you have to be broken on these things. You said you would be willing to do whatever I wanted you to do. Now you have to do it.” So I confessed that I had sinned and I was cleansed in the blood again. It seemed like it was a repeated cycle. That is what it is.
Walking is a series of simple steps taken over and over again. We are washed in his blood; we are filled with the Spirit. They are not difficult steps but they have to be taken time and time again if we are going to walk. That is how we walk. I confessed it to Sheila that it was really me that they wanted to speak and I had lied to her. We went to the conference and it went well, but I still don’t enjoy standing up in front.
Lately God has been showing us in Psalm 46 about being still. “Be still and know that I am God.” When I looked it up in Young’s Concordance, it says, “On one particular occasion, be still means to let go, to release.” I was looking up the date in my Bible and I just noticed that there were two stories here about letting go and God spoke to me about it. The first one is John 8:7 where the woman caught in adultery is brought to Jesus. They tried to trick Jesus. He starts drawing with his finger in the sand. He said, “He who is without sin cast the first stone at her” and they all walked away, starting with the eldest. A lot of us think that sexual sin is a young person’s sin, but I must tell you it is not. Temptation is temptation whatever age you are. At the end of the story, Jesus said to the woman, “Leave your sinful life behind – go and sin no more.” That smacks of that Psalm – Let it go.
Luke 9:59, Jesus said to a young man, “Follow me.” The man said, “No, first let me go and bury my father.” He wanted to stay with his dad until he died, and then he would bury him and then he would follow Jesus. Jesus said, “You follow me now…let go of the present, let go of your plans, and follow me. They had to let go of their plans and do what Jesus wanted.
Matthew 6:25, Don’t worry about what you are going to eat or drink or wear – leave that to Me – that’s in the future. Let go of it. In letting go you prove that God is who he says he is. If you have never let go, you will never know the proof of it. When you hang on to these things, you can’t hang on to Jesus. It is in hanging on to Jesus where we find forgiveness. It is in hanging on to Jesus that we know what he wants us to do today. Don’t hang to things of the past. The devil will bring them up time and time again, but we must not hang on to them. You must challenge him saying, “Look, Jesus says this is forgiven and you are not to hang on to these things.”
In Ezekiel 25 there are prophecies about the nation round about Israel. All these nations have done different things to the nation of Israel. Some were quite serious things – but some had just laughed at Israel’s misfortunes. “Hah! Look at you – you thought you were great and you are knocked down.” Different sins, different nations. I thought that is a picture of us really. I am here – I am from a different nation – from England. Probably if you looked at your backgrounds, you have come from every nation in Europe. But Jesus says in Revelation that he has taken us from all these nations, but Jesus has cleansed us and brought us into his kingdom where he is the King. That is the message I want to bring – Jesus is the King. If we walk humbly with him, be sure if we don’t humble ourselves before God, He will find a way to humble us. It is not easy and it is not nice, but what he did on the cross was not nice. There is a song that goes, “Teach what it means that cross uplifted high, with One the man of sorrows, condemned to bleed and die. O, teach me, Savior teach me, what it cost thee to make a sinner whole, teach me, Savior teach me, the value of a soul.” It cost Jesus everything to come from heaven so that I can be broken, forgiven and cleansed. I praise His Name.
STEPHANIE SIMONSON
I became a Christian when I was 18 at college at a service. I was raised in a home where we went to church on Easter and Christmas but I thought I was a Christian. I had gotten off the path thinking, “The Bible was written a long time ago. Is there really a difference between all these religions?” I was sort of in a wishy-washy phase. When was 24 I met Jon. It was like the truth came right out of his mouth – like God was speaking right to him. He said that you either believe that Jesus was the Son of God, that he died on the cross and rose again or you don’t. I told him, “You are so right and I do!” It was so freeing as I saw that the Bible is the Word of God. It was also the beginning of my putting Jon on a pedestal where God belonged. Jon had been walking with the Lord longer than I had and he knew so much. I knew so nothing about the Bible. I still have an inferiority complex about that.
What I wanted to share is that when we were on our way here to the retreat, I asked Jon to pray for me because I didn’t know what to share. We were having some great fellowship. When Don spoke on Friday night about taking sips from everything, that was really the breaking point for me. God took away all my sips. I was doing pretty good. If I get sleep and I have enough time not to be stressed to do all of the things I enjoy doing, and I have my husband who loves me, then I didn’t need Jesus. I was eager to know about the Word and was in a Bible study, but God took away my sleep with baby number one and continued with baby number two. He took away my free time. And our relationship was really rocky and it was hard. We were in a downward spiral and I really felt that there was no way out of this. Jon was an idol to me. Everything I wanted to learn about Jesus, I filtered through Jon. It always had to be what he thought. I didn’t have the personal relationship with the Lord like Jon did. When we would get into an argument, to have resolution, I needed him to hold me because then I would know everything was OK. One time the argument wasn’t resolved and there was not repentance on either side. I had to go to bed and he was still up. I thought, “I can never go to sleep. I am just going to lay here and cry.” I had met Ted and Betty and I thought, “I need to call Betty tomorrow and find what I am going to do.” I was looking to other people. The Lord spoke to me and I think this was the first time that I told the Lord that I needed a comforter and that I was not feeling comforted. But after I prayed I was comforted and I felt it. I still think back to that first time. It helps to build my faith, that what he says in the Bible is true and he is faithful. That was the beginning of my starting to look to Jesus.
John 7:37 says “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture says, streams of living water will flow from within him.” Words that really stick out to me are “Come to Me”, not come to all of my other “sips”. My dear friend Mary Kaye asked me, “Practically speaking, what does that mean?” Jon said, “You are in the desert and you look to Jesus. You start crying out to him and all the rest will flow.”
About two weeks ago, Betty and I were having fellowship. We were talking about focusing on Jesus rather than on my husband expecting him to meet all my needs. That night was a hard night and I was looking to Jon to fill a need. I was feeling uncomfortable about something that had happened and he couldn’t help me or comfort me. I was so upset and absorbed in my own sin. I knew I needed to be looking to Jesus, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. Betty had said that you can’t muster this up in your own flesh but just come in your helplessness. That was two weeks ago and here we are at the retreat. Last night I woke up and felt so nauseated. I kept getting sick and I could see from the look in his eyes that Jon was pulling away from me. He was getting frustrated with me and when I am sick, I feel like everybody should take care of me especially my husband. He should wait on me hand and foot. When I see that look in his eyes it normally brings out the worst in me. But the words kept coming to me, “You can’t look to Jon to fill your need. I felt so thirsty and I told Jesus “I need you right now to be my comforter. Help me relieve Jon of the burden and whatever help he can give me to accept it.” I came to Jesus and he relieved the burden and he kept helping me. That was another big point for me – if I turn to Jesus and not to my husband to meet my needs, he can just take it away. It was a big blessing.
I had meditated on Psalm 23 recently at a women’s retreat. I couldn’t get past the first verse, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” He has been teaching me that this last year – He is my shepherd – not my husband, not my friend Mary Kaye, not Betty – I need to look to Jesus. These other sips are extra bonuses that he brings into my life. It has been a blessing to start to see what that means in my life and to see how he can grow me. The song, In Christ Alone, is that same thing. It is in Christ alone – my comforter, my All in All. I pray he will continue to keep me there. I can understand when I hear the saying, “Kiss the rod” because I felt that way last night. This sickness was not good timing and I could get frustrated about that, but I was so grateful that Jesus met me in that and that I now have a taste of what it means not to look to people but to the Lord Jesus.
JON SIMONSON
We talk about living water. Throughout my day I get in little deserts all the time. The living water is right there for me but I need to be honest with Jesus about my need. Sometimes I am not very honest – I will be honest about part of it but not all of it. Someone in our Saturday morning men’s meeting recently brought up Isaiah 35. It is about streams in the desert and it is what it is like to walk with Jesus. Stephanie and I had a difficult situation where it would end up in a fight. I was on the couch feeling completely defeated. There seemed to be no answer. What could I do? I remember thinking, “I do not know what to do about this. Lord, I am in a desert. This is the same thing we keep going through.” I felt so defeated. At that point, Jesus turned on the light and showed me my sin. Even if I know I am wrong, her sin looks bigger. I knew I could get a sip of something to get me through but it would only come back later. I wanted my wife to have empathy with my weakness. I felt I was lowering myself to admit this to her and she could not even relate to me. The Lord showed me that it was not her job to relate to me. Unless he helps me see my sin, I am blind. All of a sudden, Stephanie had a pencil in her eye and I had a huge log in mine. I went to Jesus and he gave me patience. He that has been forgiven much loves much. A lot of times I don’t have that forgiveness. That living water refreshed me – I could not believe that in the desert, there was some water. Nothing had changed but now there was water in the desert.
Isaiah 41 says, “The poor and needy search for water but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. (That is exactly where I was). But I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. Just around that time Betty had sent an article by Festo Kivengere entitled My Name is Jacob. I had never seen Jacob in that light before. Jacob connived his way into the blessing. His father asked him what his name was and he said he was Esau. He did not want to admit the truth about who he was. All through his life he hides until he wrestles with God and finally admitted, “I am Jacob.” That is when the living water got to him and God told him that he was no longer Jacob but Israel. I don’t know if this is accurate or not but when he says, “the poor and needy search for water and there is none. Their tongues are parched with thirst but I the Lord will answer them. I the God of Israel will not forsake them.” He says, the God of Israel – the God of that person. When Jacob finally admitted and was honest about who he was, he became Israel and the living water came to him.
Roy Hession says, “God is not looking for good hearts but honest and pure hearts.” My heart is deceitful above all things and I need Jesus to open my eyes to see my sin, so I can come to Him because it is a burden to me and to others. “I will make rivers flow from barren heights and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into springs.” I never saw it so clearly as that night. When you are in a desert, the Christian thing to do is you have to have some discipline to get out of that desert. But Jesus met me in the desert – right in that place. What is going on here? This was a desert but now there is living water. I don’t have to go anywhere. Jesus comes and meets me when I need him. “I will put in the desert the cedar and the acadia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.”
Last night Jesus helped me to be honest – with God and with others. I did not want Stephanie to get sick and I found myself feeling very impatient with her as she continued to get sicker. I thought, “I am repenting but she is getting worse. This is very stressful. I am going to have to go home. I can’t take this!” It sounds weird but that is what I was thinking. Finally, by his grace I called out to him to open my eyes. In Revelation it says we are deaf, dumb, naked and poor – that is what I am and I needed Jesus to give me salve for my eyes and true repentance. I kept making excuses to myself, “I feel uncomfortable and people are not going to be able to sleep and really what it was, I did not want to be associated with my sick wife. Jesus doesn’t act like that, but that is where my heart was. Jesus would want to help her – He wouldn’t be embarrassed. I need Jesus to push me out of the way – not me changing but His life living in me. He helped us both. That was living water for me again last night. I am Jacob – that is who I am. Living Water comes and changes everything.
JEAN PRATER
I had never heard the message of repentance and it was like living water to my soul. We invited Pam and Roy Hession to our home for lunch one day. They were only in our house for five minutes and Roy was repenting to Pam about something. I didn’t know about making things right. John and I had had so much hurt and pain in our lives and had been through so many struggles so that was a real eye opener. They told us we needed to go to Camp-Out (a revival fellowship conference) the next summer. Some of our friends went to the Camp Out and came back and couldn’t quit talking about it. So John and I decided to go and we went for 12 years. God ministered to us very deeply. John and I have tried to learn this way of walking with Jesus.
I was raised on Riverdale Avenue in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It is a beautiful avenue with trees all along. The house we lived was built in 1905, a great big rambling house. Half of it was a boys’ school. My dad attended there during the war. My mom and dad got married in 1939 and dad ran the boys’ school. There were sixty boys and we had 20 boarders. I was raised around boys all of my life. There were never any girls. When I was ready for grade one, my dad said, “We have a good school here so I will send my daughter here” so I was the only girl with 60 boys. You would think that I would know how to talk to men, how to communicate and that I would really like men, but it was just the exact opposite. They didn’t like me. They resented me because they didn’t want me around so they could tell their jokes or they would say, “I don’t like going to school with the principal’s daughter.” Up until grade 6, we had boarders so I was always around boys. I got so I didn’t like men. I had been hurt by men so I grew up not liking men. When I reached 18, I built a solid wall around myself and I said, “No man is ever going to enter my life.” I pushed men away. Men would often ask me out, but I would just push them away. I didn’t dress stylishly because I didn’t want to attract men’s attention. I didn’t know how to dress. I grew up hating myself, thinking I was neither good nor beautiful. I wasn’t special. I thought that I could not do anything. I felt I never measured up to my dad or the boys at the school. I also had three brothers so I never developed my womanhood. I didn’t know how to be a woman.
John and I met on a blind date. My first job was at TransCanada Mortgage and the head secretary there got to know me quite well. She thought John and I would be the perfect match. I know they weren’t Christians. I had already been to Bible School so I kept refusing because I thought anyone they matched me up with would not be a Christian. Finally I couldn’t refuse anymore and I wouldn’t lie so I decided I would go out with him but not to a dance or a movie. So we went bowling. So we started going together. I honestly did not know what love was. John fell in love with me and we became engaged. He gave me a ring. I just kept crying and crying and finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I had made a down payment on a wedding dress and a month before we married, I finally said, “Lord, what are you saying to me?” I finally told John, “I can’t get married.” I was terrified about the thought of spending a lifetime with a man. He was so hurt. He went to his mother’s that night. He had become a Christian right after we met and he said it was a good thing he had gone to his mother’s otherwise he would have gotten stone drunk because he absolutely loved me.
I gave him back his ring on Monday night. On Thursday he called and wanted to go out for dinner and asked if we could just start begin friends, just going out once in a while. He kept my ring in his wallet for 6 months. He said he would never give the ring to me again, but I could ask for it back. I saw how deeply I had hurt him. The love gradually began to grow and in six months, I thought, “Yes, I could marry John.” Six months later we got married.
It was very difficult because John and I didn’t know this way of repentance. Marriage was very difficult for us and the area that was difficult for me was that John was a man and I would hold him at arm’s length. I feel bad about that but you can’t cry over spilled milk. John has been very kind to me. Most men would not put up with me. God told John that I was the one for him. The area that was hardest for me was the physical side of marriage, even still to this day. It is something I have to work at. I grew up never feeling like I was loved by my dad. My mother and I have a lot of problems. John and I have had a lot of counseling. We are very grateful. I am an absolute control freak – so is John. We have been two control freaks together! Is that ever interesting!
I have to repent a lot because I try to control my husband and I get frustrated when I can’t control things. I want things my way and I think I know best. I need to learn to listen to my husband because most of the time he is right. I love my husband very deeply and we are learning to walk together.
We have got into network marketing which is very interesting. I am learning how to stand up for myself and how to take no from a person. I have to take rejection and I want to be accepted. I want to be liked. When someone said no to me, I used to cry for days. Then I realized that that would not work so I learned how to take rejection. They are not rejecting me – they are rejecting something they don’t understand and maybe they don’t need it or perhaps it is not for them. John and I are learning to walk together in this area as well and be a team together.
This last spring for four months I was very, very sick. One day I was fine and the next day I was absolutely looney. John had to look after me. He had to lock the door at night because he never knew where I would be in the morning. I would get up and prowl around. I forgot how to dress, how to change my clothes, how to cook or grocery shop. John did absolutely everything for me – even fed me. That was the weirdest disease. The doctors did not have a clue what was wrong with me. Now I am much better but my memory is bad. That is OK – John can remember for me. We are so glad to be here. It has been a real blessing to us.
JOHN PRATER
One of the things Jean didn’t share was that she originally told me what it meant to become a Christian. I was very confused at the time but it was only a few weeks after we had been going together that I went forward and accepted Christ. She also told about our breaking up for a year and she shared what it did for her. What it did for me was absolutely huge because I was in love with Jean before I met Christ and then I was in love with Christ after I became a Christian. The two blended together and I couldn’t separate the two. Jean literally walked out of my life and I realized that Christ was still there. I had to separate the two – my love for Christ and my life for her. I lost her love for a period of months, but Christ became very real in my heart. As a new Christian it was a simple walk but it was a walk by faith.
As we learn this walk with Christ, the walk of repentance, God has used this particularly in our family situation. It started out with our daughter walking out on us. She ended up marrying an American here in the U.S. and then ended up going through a divorce. A similar situation happened with our son. He said his girlfriend wasn’t pregnant when they married but she was. They had about 10 years of a horrible marriage. She walked out on him, married another fellow but forgot she had to divorce our son first. I look at my own heart of hating my own daughter-in-law. That is where my heart is with her. The Lord has to meet me daily on that. We don’t know from one week to the next if we can see our two grandchildren. Sometimes we will go for months and she won’t answer the phone and let us talk to them. Then she will phone us and act like nothing is wrong and we can see them. God is still teaching me to love her.
This walk of repentance has been special because God has taught us it is a daily walk. We thought it would be easy and that we had learned it but it is daily. Jean mentioned about her health challenges. It was at a point where I virtually could not leave her alone. I couldn’t sleep at night – she talked about suicide. We still don’t know what it was. She has had many tests. I had to lock the bedroom door, not only for my sanity to get some sleep but for her safety. Today she is virtually back to where she was before. It really was a touch from God. I started out asking God, “Why do I have to do all of this? Why does she have to go through this?” I got to the point where God reinforced my love for her and I did it out of love. Even as early as yesterday, Jean had disappeared and I asked Gary if he had seen her. I didn’t know where she had gone and my mind went back to a year ago. She could have gone anywhere. She could have headed up to the highway. I was feeling resentful thinking I would have to go through this again. I asked Betty & Ted if they had seen her and they had seen her walking up the path. She was doing her Canadian walk. But the Lord had met me at that point and I just knew she was okay. By the time I met her, I didn’t ask her to forgive me. I felt it was between the Lord and me. I struggled and had resentment toward the Lord and I asked his forgiveness and He met me for that. It is a fresh walk for me. God meets us both daily, if we didn’t know this walk of repentance, we could not deal with our ex-daughter-in-law or with our son who is now living with another girl. We really like her but not the lifestyle they have chosen. God is using this and we thank God for what he is doing in our lives.
Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory to the Lamb. For the cleansing blood has reached me, Glory, glory to the Lamb.
DON JACOBS
This will be our last trip to the West Coast. Like Simeon said as he held the little baby Jesus, “Now I see and now I can go on to glory.” I would encourage you to follow Christ. Keep the emails going. If it possible for us to do more interchange, that would be good. We praise God for the faithfulness of you all and we pray that you will continue this Way. You can’t pay for something like this, people bearing their hearts to you. Where do you get this? Here. It is so precious to me. How we would love to see everyone in a fellowship like this.
Unless the Lord provides the bubbling of the water this morning, I am in trouble. This cold has been a struggle and I went to bed last night feeling physically dull. Pray for me. It is pride that wants to do it well.
What are the indications that we are dry in ourselves? One is the lack of desire for fellowship and honest, open repentance or a haughty spirit and looking down on others. Self-pity is one of the most common signs of dryness. Another sign is when the sweetness of Jesus goes – he is like a person in a book, just someone we like. Or another is a critical spirit. We begin to criticize others. If we aren’t dry, it will dry us up. Our hunger for the Word diminishes and we no longer open the Bible in anticipation, like “Ah, what is here for me this morning?” Carrying a grudge – some grudges go right back to a relationship with a parent. At some point, the grudge follows you. By the work of God’s grace, we must give up the grudges. I keep score sometimes with others. When I begin to do that, I know I am dry. Release the grudge. We become self-absorbed in our work or hobby. Or we become bossy as someone mentioned. It is that compulsion to control. Striving – it is one of the tools Satan uses so often. We think we can maintain our walk with Jesus by being good. And then another sign is restlessness with no peace. There isn’t that deep sense of peace. “Let the peace of God rule in your heart.” Another sign is when we begin to make rules and formulas to keep our spiritual life alive. Oswald Chambers said, “When people say they will have fellowship in their private time, it isn’t meeting with the Lord, it is meeting with your private time.” Habits are good but they have to be constantly under review. Sometime it is good to break some of those spiritual habits because we depend upon them. We worship it rather than Jesus. That is a sign of dryness. Or we begin to fill our minds and imagination with trash. We begin putting our eyes and minds on things that are really not of the Lord. There is so much trash out there. Finally, we are easily irritated. Irritation is one of my chronic sins. I am a project-oriented individual. When I grab hold of a project, everything has to go. I must get my project done. That can be good, but if anything interferes with my project and I get irritated, that is not good.
This is our list. What do we do when we find ourselves in a dry place? We need to be honest about it and say, “I am dry.” We are getting sustenance from other stuff so we have to leave that. There must be a deliberate determination to drink from Jesus and turn away from those supports we have.
When we were in Africa, I realized that I had so many crutches in my culture to get me through hard spots. Out in the middle of Africa, you can’t listen to Bach, you can’t go to a ball game – you are just there sitting and all the scaffolding that has been there all those years is gone. The Lord used all of that to bring me down. My entertainment, my reading, my relationships – that was what was carrying me. God began removing that scaffolding. It is a matter of turning from the scaffolding and turning to Jesus. That is when I crumbled.
We need to be real. Our culture says we have a lot of worth, but when it comes right down to it in spiritual things, I am broke! Without Jesus I am nothing. William Carey, the great missionary to India, on his gravestone it says, “William Carey, a worm of God, saved by grace.” It is hard to think of myself as a worm. I would rather think of myself as an eagle. Isaiah says, Remember the rock from which you were hewn.
We dread brokenness but that is where there is blessing. Brokenness is the door to grace. My desire is that I repent my way into heaven. John 4:13-14, “Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 7:37, 38: “On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ What does that look like? Out of dryness, because of the work of grace, there is a spring of water flowing out, not just satisfying me, but it will flow out to everybody. Does the outflow make a difference in our lives – in our families, at our work, with our friends? My mind goes back to Isaiah 35:1,2 - “The desert and the parched land will be glad and the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.” The Jews started back to Jerusalem through the desert. The desert rejoices. The dry landscape rejoices. We are here to change things. We are to push water into the dry places. This isn’t about the Israelites; it is about the desert itself. Even the desert rejoices when someone comes to Jesus. Now the water will flow out of that person to change everything. We create our own atmosphere in the dryness. In a sense, we live in an aura of grace. This grace flows out from us to others. “The wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance with divine retribution he will come to save you. We need steadiness. Sometimes our hands get weak and our knees tremble. The Rock will follow you. Don’t curse the dryness. Accept the dryness. It is hard to do – if we keep pushing it away, the water won’t flow through us. Our attitudes dam up the water. Your God will come and save you.
“Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and steams in the desert.” We followers of Jesus should expect radical change. Everyone one of us has been radically changed as we heard yesterday. The blind see – the deaf hear – the lame walk – the mute speak. I think we have every right to expect change. It doesn’t always come but we can expect it.
The Living Water will find a way. Don’t give up. What does this world care about grace? You know, the desert is waiting. How does this water flow? Jesus says, “This water will be in you a living spring.” The thing that struck me this morning is the chapter opens with, – “Hey the dry place is happy because it knows we are coming.” There is only one thing that can change the wilderness - it is this water. Our culture is a dry place. The major theme for our culture is so contrary to what we know about the walk with Jesus. “I am just going to enjoy my own water.” Jesus said, “This water will be in you to rise up and flow out to change your surroundings.”
Several years ago I spoke at a pastors’ conference in the upper Nile. I was on the train and it was late in the evening. This train stopped in the Sahara desert and there was a farmer who just prepared his field that was dry, dry, dry. He had prepared it and everything was right but the only thing that was needed was the most important thing - water. I began to think that maybe our lives are bringing that water into the dry place – there are people who have never come so close to that flow in Jesus.
I have been counseling missionaries around the world for many years. I often ask them how things are and many will say, “Oh great.” And the more we would talk sometimes an irritating situation would come up. “That Mary, I wonder if you could move her somewhere else?” You know what I have discovered – you can take that Mary away and another one will take her place. The Lord often challenges us, “I am not going to remove the irritant, but I will give you grace to absorb it.” The grace is there to change us. I am the one that has to change. I can’t say “Lord you change that so I will be happy.” We want him to change our dry places.
As soon as people get reconciled by brokenness and by receiving the grace of God, God often does change the circumstances. He changes me to start with. Once he gets me to accept the circumstance, then he begins to change the other things. But if I want him to change the other things first before he changes me, it never works. The flowing water comes from me. One thing can always change and that is our attitude. Look at the Israelites – they came into this dry situation – and the flow of this water is in them, and it changes the situation. The deaf can now hear and the blind can now see – why? Because the people who had the flow of water have come into the desert. That water within them will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The grace in your own life will give water to other people. The dry people around you can eventually be streams of living water.
