Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them in a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in Psalms 107, 5-7.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Matthew 5, 6.
But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. The water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. John 4, 14.
Your body needs water, the same way a tire needs air. Let your fluid level grow low and watch the signals flare. Dry mouth, thick tongue, headaches, weak responses. Deprive your body of necessary fluid and your body will tell you. Deprive your soul of spiritual water and your soul will tell you.
Dehydrated hearts send desperate messages. Snarling tempers, waves of worry, episodes of guilt and fear, hopelessness, sleeplessness, loneliness, resentment, irritability, and insecurity– these are warning symptoms of dryness within.
Treat your soul as you treat your thirst. Take a gulp. Flood your heart with a good swallow of water.
Where do you find water for the soul? Jesus gave an answer.
One October day in Jerusalem, people had packed the streets for the annual reenactment of the rock-giving water miracle of Moses. In honor of their nomadic ancestors, they slept in tents. In tribute to the desert stream, they poured out water. Each morning, a priest filled a golden pitcher with water from the springs and carried it down a people-lined path to the temple, announced by trumpets, the priest encircled the altar with a libation of liquid.
He did this every day, once a day, for seven days. Then, on the last day, the priest gave the altar a Jericho loop, seven circles, dousing it with seven vessels of water. On that last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood up and cried out saying “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” John 7, verses 37 to 38, new King James Version.
The people knew him. Some had heard him preach in the Hebrew hills, others in the city streets. Two and a half years had passed since he had been baptized in the Jordan waters. The crowd had seen this carpenter before, but they had not seen him this intense.
He stood and shouted. The traditional rabbinic teaching posture was sitting and speaking, but Jesus stood up and shouted.
“Peter shouted begging for help.” Matthew 14, verses 29 to 30.
“And the demon-possessed man shouted pleading for mercy.” Mark 5, verses 2 through 7.
John uses the same Greek verb to portray the volume of Jesus' voice. Forget a kind of clearing of the throat. God was pounding his gavel on heaven's bench. Christ demanded attention. He shouted because his time was short. The sand in the neck of his hourglass was down to measurable grains. In six months he would be dragging across through the streets and the people.
The people thirsted. They needed water, not for their throats but for their hearts.
Only Jesus can properly lubricate your heart because the flow of this living water works in partnership with the Holy Spirit. The thirst related to our heart may be even more significant than the thirst designed to aid our throats.
“As a heart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalms 42, verses 1 through 2.
“The woman said to him Sir, give me this water that I may not thirst.” John 4, verse 15.
“For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Matthew 25, verse 35.
So let's talk about thirst. I'm actually pretty thirsty at the moment, but I left my water in the other room and I don't want to break up my recording here by stopping, so I'm just going to plow on ahead.
As always, I'm interested in your comments regarding what this makes you think of when you think of spiritual thirst. Where do you fall on that spectrum? Do you feel full of the Holy Spirit? Do you feel full of faith and hope and optimism and trust and charity and love and forgiveness?
Or perhaps you're parched, even dangerously dehydrated in your spirit, and you feel frustrated, confused, pissed off, mad at the world, mad at everyone, mad at God, mad at your boss, mad at your partner, mad at your friends. Maybe you feel disappointed and let down.
I feel let down by people and God all the time. Is that something you can relate to? Have you lost your sense of charity? Have you been screwed over too many times lately to cut other people a brick?
This reminds me of a time recently when I was trying to sell something online. After the transaction, I thought all was concluded, but it turned into a big hassle. Then it turned into a lengthy dispute.
As a result, I got really pissed off for a long time, but my hands were tied. There was nothing I could do. I got screwed out of some money unnecessarily and none of it was my fault. I had done everything correctly on my end. I checked all of the boxes properly and I still got screwed over.
The next time a situation came up where I was not happy about something I paid for and they wanted to give me a partial refund, I was like NO! I'm not taking a partial refund, I'm taking a full refund.
Now, why did I do that? Because, generally speaking, or at least sometimes, I would just forgive, give the person a break, maybe just give them a benefit of doubt or whatever. But because I'm so wound up, I'm so disappointed and angry and bottled up because I can't get revenge on that last situation, it's now carrying over into this situation.
So basically, I'm just like, you know, go fuck yourself. I'm looking out for me this time looking out for numero uno, and you know I'm sure many of you can relate to that.
I think one of the things that makes it even worse is when you have or have had forces in your life that always pressured you to restrain your anger, restrain your disappointment, even if the criticism was legitimate, even if the anger was legitimate, even if you were legitimately wounded in some way.
See, when I was growing up, that was my dad. My dad would never just let you be angry, no matter what happened. If you came to him and was like, oh man, you know, I'm so mad, like you didn't have to even be swearing or something I mean. So that's not why he was saying that you could just be a kid and just, oh man, I'm so mad, this person bullied me. Or I'm so mad that I got sick when I wanted to go see my friend this weekend. Or I was so mad when someone stole my ski gloves from school and I know who did it and the school won't do anything about it, which is a true story.
I know who did it to this day. This happened when I was in middle school. This kid stole them out of my locker and I told the school. Everybody knew who it was and they didn't do anything about it. And I mean honestly, to this day I'm just like dude what the fuck is going on.
And it really pissed me off because this dude was like a big thug at school, middle school he was a bully, partly because he was bigger than everyone else, probably because the goofy bastard got held back, so he's probably older than us, you know, and he had come from a shitty area and whatnot, and of course the area I was coming from wasn't tons better, but basically he would do anything he could get away with.
He knew I had these really hard new ski gloves or snowboarding gloves. Probably saw me coming to school with them or who knows, maybe somebody was chatting about it or something, I don't know and I put them in my locker for a minute I guess I didn't get a chance to lock it yet or something and the motherfucker stole them and people told me who it was. Other students were like dawg, I saw... I'm not even going to say his name right now, but I know who that motherfucker is. They're like I saw who took them.
So I tried to confront him, which was scary and not very successful because what could I really do about it? I mean, he was like twice my size and then I thought surely this won't be trouble for the administration or the principal, right, because it's not like a mystery. I don't have to like file a report that says somebody stole my gloves and I have no idea why, launch you know an investigation, dust my locker for fingerprints and my dog everybody knows who has them.
Just go check his locker or his bag or whatever. Go confront him Like he's not a maniacal genius like we're just in middle school. Put a little pressure on him and he'll fess up or just call the cops and just be like, hey, somebody stole something. People are, you know, this is the name that's coming up, check it out.
So anyway, none of that happened, right. So obviously I was justifiably upset. They were expensive. You know my parents have bought them for me. I'm really good about taking care of things, I don't take things for granted. So when they bought me these nice gloves, like I was really going to enjoy them and take care of them and in fact I used them for? Well, no, I had. I replaced the pair eventually and I used them for many years until they wore out.
So that's just, you know, one of a trillion examples, right? And so then you know if I would see my dad, or if he would be picking me up from school or something, or he would get home from work and be like, hey, you know what's going on, or whatever. And you know I'm angry about something like that and I'd be like man, you know, this kid, you know, stole my gloves and the school wouldn't do anything about it.
And you know I'm pissed off and who knows, maybe I was wishing the guy harm or whatever. Like I said, the guy was bullying people. I mean, he was not a nice kid. You know what I mean. We don't need to get into it. You know he's just being a product of whatever. Like who gives a shit. The fact is, I don't think you should get away with it. You know what I'm saying,
but anyway. So in the midst of you like expressing any type of anger, my dad would always get on this Jesus shit with you, like he wouldn't be like oh yeah, whoa man, like what happened? Or like, tell me what's up, or you know, let's see what we can do about it, or whatever he would immediately fast forward to. Well, you know Jesus would want you to forgive him. You know, you know Jesus. You know God wants you to let that go. I mean you've done stuff for people like you know. Just, you know God will straighten everything out and I'm thinking like fuck all that shit.
I wish I could beat his ass, you know, I mean I wish I could straighten it out. What the hell do I want God to straighten it out? For you know what I'm saying Be part of the equation of getting it straightened out. And you know I'm not a violent person and I wasn't, you know, a fighter or anything. But I'm just saying this is how you feel right when you're wrong, you know, especially if it's like you can't, you know, kind of stand up for yourself successfully, because you know whatever you're afraid, or the person's bully, or they're violent, which this person was. So you know, but you're mad, you're like shit, I wish somebody would fuck him up. Or you know, won't they send him the juvie or whatever.
Like this dude is a delinquent. Like this is just one in a very long line of things, like he's always in trouble and you know I don't give a shit about whatever his parents are doing or not doing or whatever, like he, just you know what I mean. He's, he's, you know he's a nuisance, you know I'm saying, but my dad won't let you express that, he won't let you get that out, and so that would really kind of bottle you up because it, you know.
First of all, I think people need to get their anger out and you can tell me, hey, you know what? What? What waves do you think are legitimate or not? You know, many people I grew up with got their anger out through violence. Other people got their anger out verbally by, like you know, attacking people verbally or insulting them or, you know, ripping on them, you know, trying to tear them down somehow because that was like the only weapon they had.
You know, some people try to use the law, like, whether that's, you know, through criminal law, getting people in trouble or through civil law. But you know, growing up in the hood, like I, you know I'm not a snitch like that. So you know I'm not really, I'm not really into all that. So I'm definitely not trying to get involved, you know, criminally with the law.
I mean I would sue someone if I needed to, but you know, but anyway, what would you do or not do and why? And what do you think you know the Christian perspective on it is?
I would tell my dad, I'm like dad, like just saying you forgive somebody. That's just like a facade right, Like that's just on the surface, like I can tell you that yeah, dad, I forgive them, yeah, you're right, that's what Jesus would have me do. But it seems to me like if Jesus was really concerned about us, you know, forgiving people, that would have to be like down to the heart level, like to feel forgiveness, to have that anger, you know whatever, either expelled and, you know, extracted and exported so you no longer feel it, or somehow you know it's replaced, or you know your feelings of anger or disappointment or whatever are, you know, transformed into forgiveness and understanding and patience, and which no doubt would be healthier. And maybe you know that's why God was recommending it, because it's healthier.
But I'm like, hey, man, like you know, fuck that shit. Like you know, really, you're just kind of. You know you're teaching me to suppress my natural emotions, like you're not validating them, you're not respecting them, like any human being who has something that is then stolen from them is going to feel some negative emotions about that, does not make them a bad person, that does not make them a bad Christian, that does not make them less of a Christian or less of a, you know, like we're not saints, and even if we were saints, I don't know that people you know attain, I'm not Catholic, so I don't know, I don't know if somebody you know can, somebody that's been declared a saint, you know, does that mean they've never had angry thoughts or vengeful thoughts or whatever, or does that mean that they, you know, went on to forgive and espouse and live that out? I don't know, but I'm just saying human beings experience anger.
Anger is obviously one of the ways that, as you know, living organisms we. It means obviously something given to us right, it's part of our survival mechanism. You know, we get angry. That's a sign that somehow we're being trampled on or disrespected or our needs aren't being met. And I think a lot of people feel angry and I think there are a lot of reasons for that
For some people, the reason is that their faith is told them, you know, or their church or whoever has told them that they're not “supposed to be angry, they're supposed to forgive.” You know, forgive and forget.
And it's like, well, you know, I don't know how to do that Like just in a literal sense, like how do I get my mind or heart or emotions in line with that?
Like it seems more realistic to me that you know some people go and exercise it out. You know they'll go and exercise or go box or something like that. Go for a run. You know some people yell and scream just to themselves or sometimes they take it out on other people. You know they get home From work it's been a shitty day and you know they're just yelling at whoever's you know around.
You know a lot of people try to suppress or turn that anger inward. You know what they say. Some people say that's one. You know definition of depression. You know anger turned inward, I don't know. In some cases, I can see that. In other cases, I'm not sure. Some people just use substances right, drinking or drugs or sex or whatever to not feel that anger. If there's nothing productive, they can do with it.
One thing I've tried to do is I've, you know, gotten older is use that anger as a motivation. So, like for me, like I said, I'm not a violent person and I'm not somebody that wants to be in trouble with the law and I'm not an assassin or something like that. I don't have any organized crime connections, right. So for me, that isn't. You know, I'm going to hone my skills like Liam Neeson and go kill these people or I'm going to, you know, hire somebody to go. You know, fuck somebody up or whatever. Like. Those aren't the ways I'm going.
So you know, I need to put that, put that energy into something else. So for me, that could be writing, or that could be sharing some ideas with you, or that could be, you know, motivating myself in terms of who I don't want to be or who I want to be in the future, or how I can prevent myself from being victimized in the future.
You know what are, you know legal and ethical ways and you know just wise ways that I can keep myself from being in a position where that I end up angry or disappointed or, you know, somehow cheated.
But anyway, my dad won't let you do that, he won't let you be angry. It doesn't mean that he never got angry, but his way of relating with you was you weren't allowed to be angry and, as you can imagine, that doesn't really facilitate. You know great lines of communication. When you can't communicate with your parent, you know you're communicating with a parent. You know just honestly about just fundamentally obvious, honest things, right, there's nothing to disagree about.
I had some shit. The mother fucker stole it. I knew who it was. Nobody could do, nobody did nothing about it. Like there's nothing controversial about that, right, it's not like a biblical issue where I quote, shouldn't be upset about it or something, right?
So anyway, things like that hurt your relationships when people don't let you express your natural feelings and validate that and be in those emotions with you and support you.
But getting back to the main point of this lesson is it's much more difficult to overcome anger. It's much more difficult to let a slight go. When you're spiritually dehydrated,
when you're full of the spirit, when you feel blessed or you feel God's looking after you or you feel he's answering prayers or you know you've experienced the healing or a deliverance for yourself or a loved one or a friend. You feel like you're getting a glimpse into God and God's power and friendship and companionship. You can be much more charitable and generous and forgiving. That's when you're full of the holy water, right? That's when you've really like your cup runneth over, when you've been fully satiated. You know, you see the fruits of the spirit, right, like that's.
I think part of the one of the ways of gauging whether you're spiritually dehydrated is if you're able to I don't even want to say able to, because that's again like, that's like a work, right, I want to put work aside. I want to like talk about genuine, you know, authenticity in your heart. I'm not talking about forcing something because, like I said, I don't think you can force yourself to forgive someone. You can force yourself, maybe, to take a different action. You could say, oh, I'm not turning that person in, or I'm not going to, you know, tell the principal. Or I'm not going to tell the boss or whatever, because I'm going to let that go, not because I'm not mad, but because that's like my principal, or that's what I'm shooting for, or whatever, or that's the type of person I want to be.
But that doesn't just magically change your heart and I think that's one of the mistakes of the way, like the word is preached, right, because ultimately we are depending. To me, it seems like, ultimately, we're depending on the finished work of Christ on the cross, sins, forgiven and wiped out, including whatever, whatever anger or unforgiveness or whatever. I don't think us being, you know, christians. I don't think you know preaching to us and trying to persecute the human being's natural emotions is reasonable, effective or godly. I think it just creates hypocrites out of us because we can't live to that standard.
Like to me, like you know, christ's example of forgiveness is an aspirational example, like that's not us, right, that's something that we're witnessing, that we're aspiring towards or we're hoping that. You know, as we're filled with the spirit, as we drink, like of the living water, that we take on more and more of that character. But for someone to be in the pulpit and be like you know hey, you know you holding on to anger. You know God doesn't want you holding on to anger. God will be angry with you. You don't want God holding on to his anger with you. So, don't you know?
It's like yeah, dude, like okay, like best case scenario. I understand what you're saying, but like there's people sitting there in the pews who have some things to be angry about, even if they're things they're angry at God about which like would just step it up to another level of being a no-no. Right, like surely you can't be angry at God? Why won't you be angry at God? I mean, if you're trusting God and you feel let down or whatever and you're hurt, you very well may get some anger out of that, but nobody will give you permission to be angry. Or let me not say nobody, say it's uncommon, right, like in the Christian world of the Christian mainstream.
Right, like the Christian party line, I never heard somebody get up and preach a sermon and be like, hey, I want everybody just to take today and be angry and know that God isn't angry with you, because I don't think God is angry with us or I don't think. I don't think. I mean it's hard to call something the good news, gospel, if it's bad news. It would be bad news if God were mad at us. Right, his own creation. You know we can't really do any better. Right, we're doing our best, like just to get by. We would like to be doing better. We ask God, you know, to do better, to be better, but we're not See. Some people say it's by through the works, though, that you have to show that Like that you're going to be performing for God. I don't subscribe to that because I don't think one. Like I said, I don't think you could force your heart a certain way. If God's all-knowing, he's going to know what your heart is right. So it's not like, oh, I'm just going to be, like, okay, I'll just tell God I'm not mad, and then I forgive them and I'll just say those magic words and then God won't be mad at me, or then it won't be a sin or whatever. It's like dude, that's absurd.
God knows you're mad. He knows if you're mad at him. He knows if you're mad at you know anyone in your life or stranger or no organization, it doesn't matter, right, like there's. If it's God, god has to be omniscient, right, he has to be all-knowing, and that's what people are afraid of, right? And if he is all-knowing and you are angry, or you take out your anger or you don't forgive someone that he knows that, and then that's a quote sin, and then that will be punished and like wow, like talk about condemning the crowd.
You know everybody stand up who hasn't felt angry this week? You know you guys that are so close with God that you haven't even been angry this week. You just kind of forgiven everything. Everything's rolled off your back From God's kingdom. Like, truth be told, that would leave a lot of people sitting down. They leave a lot of people seated, right. I personally would argue it should leave everyone seated.
But some people will stand up because they want to be seen, as you know, following the law, right, Because they want to show that off. And you know they can be on a whole spectrum, from just totally self-deluded and not even seeing themselves accurately in terms of how angry they are or have been or whatever. Or they could be doing it literally just for show, you know, for fellow congregants or to the pastor or whatever. Or, you know, most goofily, like a show for God, as if God's going to be like, oh, they stood up. That must mean they're like obeying my commandments. That's awesome. Like God wouldn't be the one, the one most in the know about where your heart really has been right.
But when we're full of the Spirit and we've had a really a chance to drink down, you know the figuratively the holy water To me. When I think of that, I think of like my spirit being filled, it being hydrated, it being at peace. It's not desperate, it's not reactive, it's not grasping, it's not, you know, ventral, it's not impatient, it's not thinking the worst. You know, we all like to be in that place and my understanding and my take would be that's the place that God wants us to be.
God wants us to be hydrated, god wants us to be full of the Spirit, god wants us to be able to walk without weariness. Now, obviously, you know to do that is impossible, right to like, reach some state of perfection with it, at least on this earth. But I mean, again, it's aspirational, right. God's offering it to us. He's saying drink of this water. You know as much as you can. You know, let me, you know, my yoke is light, right, you know, it seems from the word he's trying to lighten our burdens, not heavy them or increase their weight through guilt or through, you know, reapplication of the law. You can't do this. You can't be mad, you can't, you know, take any action. You can't, you know, just turn the other cheek. And you know, you know, all that talk really did not help my relationship with my dad.
It did not make me a better Christian, because when you deny the anger, it just festers, it just multiplies. It doesn't just magically disappear because somebody tried to coerce you into it or coerce you away from it. It just doesn't work that way. That's the opposite.
So I think when we're telling people, you know to forgive, we need to give them some kind of grace to go along with that. First, we need to tell them that Christ has already forgiven them. So this isn't a matter of forgiveness, so isn't a sin thing, or you're in debt to God, or now God's going to punish you. You know, some comes around, goes around, things going to happen to you, or something like that.
First we just have to give people a break. And then, you know, listen to them, help them, don't look down on them, be honest, like you haven't felt that way yourself. To me, like that's like would be the useful fellowship you could share with somebody, instead of, you know, trying to be holier than now and come swooping in with a bunch of you know, a bunch of scripture about how what they're feeling is illegitimate and against God. You know, god made me, god knows what I'm going through, god knows how I feel. You know I mean
Two, like what a small version of God that is. You know, because when people say that it's almost like when people criticize people for being angry or not being forgiving enough or whatever, whatever that means to them. I'm thinking what a small version of God like you're acting. Like God's like never seen this before, like he finds it upsetting, like you know, like one day he's watching you and your, your mind or your heart, and he's like, oh wow, man, look how upset he is. Man, that's like really, just you know I, you know, wow, my, my limits. You know it's such a pearl clutcher, like I'm clutching my pearls because I'm just shocked and I'm offended and and I'm like that's you really think God's like that flimsy?
You think God's that weak, that easily offended? Like that's absurd. I mean talk about, you know, putting God in a small little box, like here God is saying Salvation is available to everyone. That includes people who have done a whole lot more than just get angry about something. It doesn't have any restrictions. As far as I'm aware, that means it includes every type of angry or evil or vengeful thing that you can think of that people have done. So that includes, you know, serial killers. It includes mass murderers or you know whatever you think are the most evil things
of course, some of those things I think are equally bad but are more subtle or more accepted right, like what about the you know the boss that's discriminating or cheating people out of their work or their pay, or not giving people an opportunity to earn because of something in their heart? That's not right. Or what about people you know in a big corporation that know something's harmful and just keep on selling it, no matter how many people it hurts or kills or whatever, even those people Christ has offered salvation to.
So, like, if you believe that, if you believe what you know Christ was saying, unless you're trying to qualify what he said and be like well, you know, he said he would, he was offering forgiveness, but, like, just up to a point, you know he forgives Jaywalkers. He doesn't, you know, forgive murderers or drug dealers.
You know, like he's like oh yeah, I forget, you know I'm offering forgiveness. Sike sike, , no, I'm just playing. I can forgive you motherfuckers for all this shit. That's crazy. So to me, like, if you're going to take the word and say that that salvation is available and Christ not only said that, but he demonstrated that much to the disagreement of people that were obsessed with the law.
Right, because he was with sinners and people were saying like you know, if you're godly or whatever, why you surround yourself, you know, with sinners and a crisis? Like well, because these are the people that need me. If you're all holy and purified and perfect, then don't worry, you don't need me to be around you, you don't need any salvation from me, you don't need my blood poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. Man, you're straight man, you're already good. I'm over here where these people really need me. Man, they got some sins. Man, they got some guilt, they have some anger. Man, they have some hatred, they have a lot of ill deeds. You know they've been naughty more than they've been nice. Man, these are the people I need to speak to. And yet for so many people, just regular lay Christian people or even pastors and Christian leadership, don't want to be seen loving on or forgiving the sinner.
Pastor, why? You? You know with those people, you should just be. You know with the godly, you know with us. You know in our group or our you know, and it's like, well, that's not all. The pastor's job is the pastor has to help. You know, people get their thirst quenched, the thirst of their spirit, the thirst of their soul, that perhaps they can find and can enjoy peace of mind and forgiveness for themselves and for their enemies. The pastor has to be able to preach that, he has to be able to live that out. And that may look different than you think it should look, and that's where, you know, some critics of Jesus were saying. They're saying, oh well, you know this guy spending time with the, you know the tax man, and you know, you know you know, people that society at that time had deemed, as you know, unclean, you know unkind, disreputable, dishonest. But see, christ wasn't afraid to sup with those people, he wasn't afraid to share the word with them, to comfort them, to love them.
Now, granted, you know, see, people will say, yeah, but you know, if you're hanging around people, then their you know attributes rub off on you. Okay, so in the midst of us extending one another forgiveness and understanding, we won't always be around saints, or people that think, or people that people think are saints. Right, which, I would, you know, argue, is that that's the whole point. Is we're just, we're all imperfect, right, we all fall short of the glory of God, right, we've been redeemed through him. So we embrace that with confidence. We don't need to compete on this issue.
So to me, I'm thinking and I'm interested to hear what you guys do. You know, how do you reach people that are you know outside of the fold whether that's you know outside of the fold just like to just do a matter of degree of like, yeah, there are questions, but you know you don't think they're, you know, really seriously trying to follow God, whatever that means to you, or people that are unsaved, or people that are in other religions, or people whatever.
And, by the way, I just want to say personally that I'm not here to judge anybody. It doesn't mean that I don't judge people. I can get mad and get judgemental and judge people and all that shit, and I know God forgives me for that. That's just a human thing. By being honest about it, I can receive some ministry right from Christ or from other people and I can share some of that understanding and love with other people. By denying it, that's going to disrupt the communication and the relationship between me and God and me and other people that could use my support and whose support I could use.
But how do you guys feel about that? I know a lot of people preach to just be around the godly. Again, I don't know how you would determine exactly who the godly are. Or do some people have A's and B's and C's, and are we grading on a curve? What do we mean by that? What do you do you go someplace and preach to the outsiders, the quote “sinners”, and how do you “protect yourself” or protect your heart from adopting those things, but still be able to love people without judgment?
You know it's a good question, and I expect everyone has a different answer for it. I'm personally cool with whatever your answer is. I don't really give a shit what your answer is. I think it'd be interesting, though, to know, and for other people to hear, what a spectrum of approaches there really are and that, unless you're like a real law-focused Christian, Christ has shaped us all in ways to fit into the puzzle of spiritual life with others uniquely.
There has to be somebody that's willing to talk to the drug dealer. There has to be somebody that's willing to talk to the murderer. There has to be someone that's willing to talk to the pharmaceutical executive who decided that they should hide the studies on how this drug kills people and go on ahead with it. Somebody has to talk to that guy, somebody has to befriend that guy. Somebody has to listen to that guy to love that guy, to tell him that Christ loves him. Someone has to invite that guy into the fold.
So people need to. And then, you know, not only do each of those people need to be put aside, but every one of us needs that as well, because we can be sitting thinking like, well, shit, I'm not any of those categories. I never killed anybody. I've never, you know, turned a blind eye, you know, to some major thing that was hurting people. Or I've never, whatever think of, whatever you think are like the worst things right For most of us we're like we don't fall into that category at all. So like, how is that even a fair question?
I would say it's a fair question because all sins are equal and you know I'm open here and to some countermanding scriptures on that or whatever. But I'm just saying that's how I'm taking it, that all sins are equal. So there's no way to build this hierarchy of how I'm better than she, is better than he is, better than her, is better than you know. I'm not. I'm not subscribing to that. That's not what I've gotten out of God's message and if you think about it, I think that would be a really goofy way to do it.
Anyway, because you know we're products of you know whatever our parents, our environment, our history, what's happening to us, our circumstances, so like we couldn't all be judged the same anyway, like we're in a certain context, we're a certain person. I mean, if I grew up with you know killers, maybe I would be a killer, but I didn't choose that any more than somebody that grew up with you know really nice people that you know basically goes around just trying to do good, whatever their little quote sins are throughout the day or whatever.
It's not because they're, like, inherently a better person, right, they're a different person, they're having a different experience, they're facing different challenges, they're reacting differently. But I think, rightly, this is one of the things that really sticks in the craw of a lot of people about Christianity is the hypocrisy, and it's ironic because Christ what actually made him mad, was the hypocrisy right. So it's kind of like kind of this recursive situation because people are like, well, if Christ is loving, love and forgiveness and all that, then why are you trying to mix that message with some type of judgment? You know, is he loving and forgiven, or did he forgive me or not? Because most of us, the way we're taught or the way we like to think, or you know, somehow we are, our minds are twisted into, like I said, prioritizing or judging or creating a hierarchy or something, and so you know, we can't believe, we can't forgive those like below.
You know this threshold, you know I'll forget everybody. I just don't, you know, forgive murderers, you know. I don't forgive rapists. I don't forgive people, you know, that have shot people. I don't forgive people who stab people. I don't forgive, you know, corrupt politicians, you know, but I do forget, you know. I mean like we have all these, you know. If then you know conditional caveats and asterisks on who we think should be forgiven or not, and what I would propose is that that's really a manifestation of spiritual thirst in the sense that, to the extent that we're deprived of Christ's message of universal, unconditional forgiveness, we become so thirsty, so dehydrated, so hard-hearted that we fall right into that hypocrisy. We fall right back into that judgment and we feel justified in that right Because we feel judged.
When people preach judgment to you, you internalize that judgment. Most people judge themselves pretty harshly. It doesn't mean they make some good people, it doesn't mean that that turns their life around or anything like that. I don't think that's actually a good method in most circumstances, but that's just internalizing what many of us have been taught, which is this kind of mixed you know, yeah, you're forgiven. Or you know, oh, you need cleansed again today. You know not forgiven, but yeah, I did something bad today. Okay, I need to go back to Christ and ask for forgiveness for that, or I need to. You know, go and turn away from that again today, or I have to go Like it's like, dude, you're. You know you're forgiven, it's a finished work or it's not. You believe that. You know, you saw through what the Bible, that Christ went out and extended love to everyone, including those who even including those of his own followers who didn't think he should be doing it
His own followers, some of his own people, were offended by the love and forgiveness he was, you know, expending on what they saw as unworthy, you know, irredeemable. But when we've consumed the Spirit, when we've received that healing, fresh water which hopefully we get a taste of every day through the word, through communion, through prayer, through just walking with God and allow God to be expressed through us, you know we're thirsty. We're thirsty for the word, we're thirsty for hope and peace and freedom and forgiveness and patience and tranquility, and we need that refreshment all throughout the day.
Because how long does someone live without water? I mean, just from a biological standpoint, not very long. How long does somebody, does it take before someone becomes thirsty? Really not long, about a few hours at most. So if even like in the physical, if even in just kind of our temporal existence, in our body, which is really a miraculous machine, it's really kind of just uncomprehensible really, the way the body works and yet it's very subjective, you know, it's very dependent upon hydration and so that's such a great metaphor. I think that's why it appears in the word so much is, because it's such a relatable metaphor and such a foundational, like we know again, as in the human beings.
We can all agree that we can't go along without water. When we go without the spirit, without the spiritual water, we break down. We go without the physical water, we break down. We go without the spiritual water. Our character breaks down. Our fruit breaks down. Our strength to face another day breaks down.
