Digging with a purpose.......

“Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug back in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after Abraham died. Isaac gave these wells the same names his father had given them. When Isaac's servants dug in the valley and discovered a well with fresh flowing water there…” (Genesis 26:18-19 NET.)

At the gathering today, with the other men that have been called to a higher discipling and training, I spend my time wondering again what my purpose and inclusion within this group of giants could possibly give to the group. That is the reason why I sit amongst them, because I don’t feel like I belong. Not because of any indication from the men gathered, but due to my own wounded past and the deep valley that I find myself walking in now.

Dr. Crabb talked today about broken cisterns and the well of living water. And how we, as foolish people, seek to wander away from God’s well to dig our own, which are incapable of handling the water we pour in them. We know where to gain the most sustaining water, yet we rely too often on our own digging ability to try and achieve a quenching on our own. Sounds like foolishness to our ears when we hear it, but not when we’re sweating from our own attempt.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to do is to ‘dig’ into my father’s past. Hard because the people that would give me voice to the parts of his life I do not know are either gone or bitterly opposed to portraying him realistically for the full realization of his story. And harder still, because I have found that I can look into his past by uncovering my own wounds, those broken cisterns of my life. The man I once was is the man my father had become. And as I wander the broken landscape of my life, I hear whispers of the man my father was meant to be.

The same names can be given to those cisterns, the deep holes incapable of giving life-sustaining water poured from the waterskins of my own woundedness, as my father had learned or didn’t ever realize were the results of his wounds his father had unintentionally given him. In reopening the wells that my father had dug, I find the story of his life reawakened. And I find a surprise that I think my father did not realize was even there; a well of fresh flowing water, a deep spring of life affirming water.

Am I to be the man that my father was? Or can I redeem the story that has continued through the generations and understand my past while changing my future?

Will I be a ‘foolish’ son that turns his back upon the very source of answers that I seek or will I dive into the murky and hidden dangers that such water holds, sure of one thing and one thing only: that this is where the source of quenching this uneasy and conflicting thirst lies…just underneath the stagnant surface?


Will I move into the painful experiences of my past that have wrought the realistic hurts of my present with the fear and trepidation that comes from my all too human desire to not know pain? One of the things I have grown weary of hearing is, “It is perfectly understandable to……” act the way I do, respond the way I do, or even sorrow the way I do; given the circumstances that I find myself dealing with. And yet, to commonly respond to common situations isn’t what I want to do. Christ didn’t respond the way that we should think, being well-versed in the responses of fallen, broken human beings should, but in a supernatural and spiritually pure way that is contrary to all we hold dear.

He didn’t dig his own cisterns even though He had more chance of doing it right than we could ever do, but in His fully human form, He responded by relying on the deep spring waters found in His father’s wells…..buried by the Pharisees of the day. And, He didn’t rename them according to His desires but kept the names given by His father, making new the things of old. In His fully human form, He showed us how to rely upon the story told of His father.

I don’t know if I am making sense, or if I am only sounding vague and uncertain in what I feel led to write today. I am conflicted, sorrowed, and weary. But even in the midst of my desert experience that I have seemed to journey on for forty years of my spiritual life, I know that there is a source—seemingly hidden under the ground that will feed the wells that have been dug by my father in his journey before me.

They will sustain me in this dry time, in the search for the quenching of my spiritual thirst. And I cannot know the location of the wells already dug unless I journey into the past of my father’s story and retrace his steps that I have unconsciously walked in blind to its deadly destination.

I will dig………not for a place to put the water of my own substance. That would be to pour what little of my joy into the thirsty sands of a desert bent on my own destruction. For this land is ruled by the one that would have me parched and withered.

No…..

I will dig in the places of my father’s wells, not seeking to uncover temporary water but rather the source of the wells themselves. The sustaining and life-giving spring of my heavenly Father.

I will dig with a purpose.

And a hope............that springs eternal.

The reason behind obeying.....

"If you keep My commandments [if you continue to obey My instructions], you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father's commandments and live on in His love." John 15:10 (Amplified Bible)

We deal in today's world with the constant stream of 'loveless' situations; the murdering of a spouse because you think you're better off with them dead, the abused children that walk the hallways of our godless schools, and the wounded families that dot the landscape of the modern church.

We fear relationships because we fear a situation without love and only steeped in pain and suffrage.

We isolate ourselves from the very answer to our woes.

I have come to learn that I cannot love. My spouse, my children, my fellow brethren, or even the lost of this world. I cannot, because I myself am a danger to the cause. I would much rather isolate myself from the societal woes and personal suffering that a relationship with others can pretty much guarantee. And yet, I long for the connection that only true relational living can bring. I live in duality and as Christ tells us, no one can serve two masters. Typically, we express that verse in financial terms, but I would submit that it also applies to the relational needs we deal with.

One master: Protection of Self.

One master: Need for communal relationship.

We are in constant struggle against ourselves if we don't commit to the God-design for relationship, that no-holds-barred kind of relating to our fellows that causes us to reach out--- despite the painfulness of relating and the certainity of disappointment-- to others in community. To deny relational living is to deny your most basic need of being accepted, of being LOVED.

It is everyone's greatest accomplishment and worst fear.....that when the time comes for us to depart this world; either for the golden streets of Heaven or the fiery, pothole littered roadways of Hell, we all want to have mattered...at least a little, to someone other than ourselves. A legacy left behind; someone who will stand at our casket and say, "We will miss them" and mean it.

It is my greatest fear, despite the loving support and relationship I have with my son and my daughter. Despite the relationships I am developing with other men, such as the group from the Men in the Woods and the M3 meetings on bi-monthly Saturdays.

I find I cannot love, unless I relate my love to others. I find that my love is meaningless if it is self-centered and self-serving. To have meaningful love means I have to be relational; relating to God's commands for me to love, relating to others demandingness to be love, and to be relational in the realisation that risking love will be painful and sometimes cause me to suffer for the sake of another; in varying degrees.

If we look at this verse, Christ tells us to be relational to love....which He is and we will abide in love only when we follow His commandments, just as He showed us as He followed the Father's commandments and lived in love with Him. Not only did Christ come to the earth to save all of mankind (excuse me, PC---humankind) but He also came to show us how to live until the restoration of the body to its original design. Live by the commandments of Christ and we will live in love. We are called to live in love and can only do so as we follow the commandments, which enable us to reflect the love we are called to live in. A complete circle, ever rotating on the axis of Christ.

Of all the things that Christ commands us to do; i.e. go out and preach the Gospel to all the nations, be in fellowship, obey the Lord your God......this is the one that underscores it all. Love.

The love of the Creator created Adam and then Eve. The love of His creation caused the rejection from the garden due to sin. The love of the Father sent His only Son to the world to die for the world. The love of the Son taught us the power of living in His love. And the love for one another causes us to seek out each other in relational fellowship.

I don't know if I'm making any sense. Throwing around big words just makes me feel like I'm.......throwing around big words.

All I know is this verse brought home to me the method of my contentment and peace in the struggles of my life. Living for love, seeking God in the obeyance (as much as this broken human can) of His commandments, and then expecting the peaceful contentment of knowing God's love will carry me on.

There is no way to fake love, especially if you believe that your capability for love comes from the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and therefore is dependent on God. You might be able to fool someone a little while, but you will be exposed in short order.

As Matthew Henry said, "The joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment, but the joy of those who abide in Christ's love is a continual feast."

You can always spot the mature Christian, because they look like they are in love...you know, that special look, the certain glow, and that abiding peacefulness. They are in love.......

In love with a Heavenly Father,

In relationship with the Spirit,

because of the loving sacrifice of the Son.

JMT
Jim