Experiencing Living Waters: Jesus Christ Quenches Our Spiritual Thirst

While working as a seminary teacher–a religious youth instructor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (inadvertently referred to by the media as the “Mormon Church”)– I heard the analogy that in our fallen state, each of us is like a person stranded in a burning desert, dying of thirst. At the point of complete exhaustion and dehydration, we suddenly notice a pitcher of cold water sitting on top of a sand dune. If we choose to crawl to the water and drink it, we can be saved. In this example, what actually saves us? Is it our own efforts to crawl to the water, or is it the water itself? While our efforts to crawl to the water are necessary and essential, they alone cannot save us. only the water possesses the elements sufficient to sustain life. We can crawl to the ends of the earth, but without the life-saving elements contained in the water, there is no salvation.

My carnal-minded understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ had me crawling like a crazy person but never arriving at the life-saving refreshment only the Savior offers. I was desperately trying to do what I thought was necessary without experiencing that which was sufficient. Carnal-mindedness kept me from believing in Jesus Christ’s almighty power of deliverance. It kept me trying to resolve life’s problems on my own, and it caused me to forsake the fountain of living water. The Lord, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, said, “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living water, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

While in mortality, we journey in a distant land. This fallen world is not our home; we are but strangers here. As the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) hymn “O My Father” says, “yet ofttimes a secret something whispered, ‘you’re a stranger here,’ And I felt that I had wandered from a more exalted sphere.”13

On this journey, many of us have lost sight of our dependence on the Savior to direct our way; many of us seek to quench our nagging thirst in ways that will never satisfy or sustain life. Our broken cisterns cannot sustain spiritual life because they contain no living water. They represent our false gods with no life-giving water to offer. We erect these barriers to grace as we seek happiness in and of ourselves and as we cling to vanity and unbelief. These broken cisterns can be anything from our personal aspirations to our man-made philosophies for happiness.

In our search for that which can satisfy our parched spirits, Satan may present fulfillment in the false god of self. This broken cistern will impede us from coming to our Savior and experiencing life in Jesus Christ.

For some of us, the modern god of self beckons us with programs for self-development, fulfillment, and achievement. We may feel that the next goal or the next diet will finally satisfy that for which we deeply thirst. Perhaps our personal ambitions or our hunger for personal achievement become the barriers that keep us from taking Christ’s yoke upon us and relying wholly upon Him. Maybe our hearts are set on the next bonus check, the incentive trip, or even the next promotion. Maybe it’s a certain income, an award, or an academic degree. For others it might be the showplace home, the new car, or the dream vacation. None of these things in and of themselves are evil, but when our hearts are set solely upon them, they become our gods and deprive us of living water.

As we continue on our wilderness journey toward realizing the privilege of beholding our Savior’s face, we will experience an emptying or hollowing process. Spencer J. Condie, an LDS Church leader, said, “ofttimes we must hollow our lives before the Lord can hallow them. . . . Emptiness precedes the fulness.”14

Rather than hallowing us and leading us to the deeper levels of humility, these false gods fill us with pride and self-centeredness. They are distractions from the hallowing process, and they will deter us from experiencing Jesus Christ. They will keep us living far below our spiritual privileges as they prohibit us from surrendering our lives to Christ. They will keep us from “com[ing] boldly to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16) and claiming the gifts and privileges the Lord is eager to grant us.

Our broken cisterns will never allow us the experience of coming directly to our Savior, that He may receive us into the arms of His love and quench our thirst with living water. His invitation to each of us is this: “Come unto me and ye shall partake of the fruit of the tree of life; yea, ye shall eat and drink of the bread and the waters of life freely” (Alma 5:34).

We are all invited to come and partake freely of all our Savior has to offer. No one is forbidden. There is no other way.

Source:

R. Brown, Experiencing Living Waters: Jesus Christ Quenches Our Spiritual Thirst, (Springville, Utah: Cedar Fort, Inc., 2009, pp 45-92.

Additional Resources:

Request a free copy of the Book of Mormon; Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

Learn more about Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice for us from an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (inadvertently called the “Mormon Church” by friends of other faith).

Learn what you can do to Come Unto Jesus Christ.

Notes

1. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New york: HarperCollins, 2001), 165.

2. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, 181.

3. Robert L. Millet, Alive In Christ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997),112.

4. Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, 71.

5. Colleen C. Harrison, He Did Deliver Me From Bondage, 8.

6. Don Colbert, M.D., Deadly Emotions (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 9.

7. Ibid., 20.

8. Ibid., 46.

9. Ibid., 101.

10. Shayne M. Bowen, “The Atonement Can Clean, Reclaim, and Sanctify our Lives,” Ensign, Nov. 2006.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. “O My Father,” Hymns, no. 292.

14. Spencer J. Condie, The Song of Redeeming Love, 1–2.

The New Testament authors, who provide the earliest reliable information about Jesus of Nazareth, noted that Jesus Christ often prayed during his life, especially at critical points in his ministry (Luke 5:16; 9:28).

Additionally, the Gospels also provide information about what Jesus taught about prayer.  For example, Jesus told his disciples, “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened” (Luke 11:9-10).  This is a glorious promise, one that applies moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day.  It is understated, and perhaps by some, underexamined and underutilized.  Prayer is the means by which we develop our relationship with God and the Savior, and by which he is enabled to offer the additional assistance he freely loves to give. Prayer is the conduit to God’s power, his perspective, and his peace. It is the antidote to pride, for it speaks of our reliance on the Savior and his sacrifice as we pray in his name, and through his merits.

In one of his many parables, identified often as the “Parable of the Unjust Judge,” Jesus Christ taught, “men ought to always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1). In that parable, a woman asks for redress from an avenger. She does not tire in her pleas and eventually the judge responds.  We are encouraged to continue in prayer, knowing that God knows the reason for his perfectly timed responses. In some cases, when our wills are aligned with God’s, other processes are at work that affect our lives and answers come when it is most beneficial for us and when it offers the most chance of  spiritual healing for others.

Jesus followed this parable with another, the “Parable of the Pharisee and Publican” (Luke 18:9-14). In this memorable one, Jesus Christ asked his hearers to question their motives in prayer; indicating that prayer in and of itself does not matter, but the condition of our heart is central to whether or not prayers are effectual.

During his last visit to Jerusalem, Jesus Christ identified the central Jewish institution, the Temple, as “My house” and indicated that it should be “called of all nations the house of prayer” (Mark 11:17). Mark also noted that Jesus taught, “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25). He added that the disciples should not “for pretense make long prayers” (Mark 12:40).

Matthew provides a similar overview of Jesus Christ’s teaching on prayer when he recorded, “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in he synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men” (Matthew 6:5). He added, “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do” (Matthew 6:7), providing a nuance to his earlier teachings of the Parable of the Unjust Judge for men and women to pray often and “not to faint” (see above).

During his last evening with the disciples, Jesus told them, “Pray that ye enter not into temptation” (Luke 22:40). He emphasized it again only moments later when he found them sleeping, “And said unto them, Why sleep ye? Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation” (Luke 22:46).

By example and by precept Jesus Christ taught that prayer was important and that God listens and answers prayers. Additionally, Jesus taught that a proper attitude and a pure motive was essential when addressing God if one was to be blessed by praying.

A parable, literally a comparison (Greek parabole), relates the essence of things rather than the ways things exist in fact. For that reason, parables transcend the limits of time and have meaning in an ever-changing world. The New Testament uses a loose definition of a parable when compared with the more restricted sense held by Greek thinkers. Instead, “parable” in the New Testament can describe an extended metaphor, an allegory, or a true narrative parable. The New Testament follows closely the tradition set forth in the Jewish scriptures (Hebrew or Old Testament) that a parable is anything that compares two objects to one another. “How can Satan cast out Satan?” as a parable (Mark 3:23), while using the same terminology to speak of the Parable of the Sower. The predominance of parables in the New Testament reveals that the parable was a favorite teaching method of Jesus Christ, providing the modern reader with a window into who he really was and how he viewed the world.

Jesus preferred to speak of things as they would, could, and would be instead of directly instructing his disciples on how to handle an issue. Rarely did Jesus interpret his own parables (Matthew 13:36-43); he preferred that the task of interpretation be carried out by this disciples. For this reason, the parables offer an open invitation for interpretation to each generation who uses them. Without this continuing window of interpretation, the parables become historically confined and explicable for a determined moment in history. In the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew contain more parables of Jesus Christ than any other source. Its author was apparently drawn to Jesus’ teachings in parables. Unlike Mark, Luke, and John , Matthew not only records the parables but also gathered them into several concise collections (Matthew 13 and 25) with a distinct aim in mind.

Surprisingly, only two of Jesus Christ‘s parables are given names in the text or manuscripts of the New Testament: the “parable of the Sower” (Matthew 13:18) and the “parable of the tares of the field” (Matthew 13:36). The other parables bear names that are the result of being described in commentaries, chapter headings in printed Bibles, and secondary discussions. Originally, these other parables had no standardized names. The importance of this information is that the interpretation of the parables has been inextricably linked with their names. The title “the Prodigal Son,” for example, focuses on the wayward son who squanders his father’s inheritance. In reality, however, the parable of the Prodigal Son is about a loving father who has two wayward sons, one who departs and repents and one who becomes hardhearted through jealousy. Perhaps the original intent was to show the love of a father, but unfortunately this intent is obscured through the parable’s usual (and incomplete) name.

Consider the following names and their impact on understanding the meaning of the parable: “the parable of the wheat and the tares” and “the marriage of the king’s son.” In the first example, the modern name suggests that the wheat and tares receive equal focus, but when Jesus‘ disciples asked him to interpret it, they called it “the parable of the tares of the field” (Matthew 13:36). Their understanding had been directed toward an immediate concern-the recognition of tares within the kingdom and their duty to discern them-whereas our modern name identifies both wheat and tares as equal elements.

The parable of the marriage of the king’s son initially seems to focus on one part of a rich story-namely the actual marriage ceremony, which is mentioned once but never recounted (Matthew 22:2). However, the theme of the parable then shifts to the main issue of invited and uninvited guests, with those who were expected to attend the wedding being cast out and those who had been disregarded ultimately being welcomed to the ceremony. The modern name misses the powerful conclusion that an invitation does not guarantee entrance to the wedding. In reading the biblical text, we should distinguish between the actual text and more recent commentary, such as chapter headings, footnotes, and other interpretive helps.