Wine Mixed With Water

Within biblical context, wine is a representation of joy, celebration and festivity, expressing the abundant blessings of God. For the sake of this verse, the joy aspect will be the main focus. First of all, what is joy? Joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness, but in biblical terms it is something so much more. Happiness and great pleasure come out of circumstance, but we all know that those circumstances aren't always around when we need them to be. When we are afflicted, how can we be happy? When our hearts are hurting, where is that great pleasure? It is nowhere to be found. This is because true joy flows only from the Lord. Joy is something we either have or we don't have, and it's all dependent on our relationship with our Father. When we are rightly related to Him,abiding in Him as the branch abides in the vine, we will bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit, one of which is the fruit of joy. It's something natural that grows within our life when our minds are set on the Spirit. Joy is what helped Christ to endure the cross, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2) Joy is what will get us through our afflictions as James says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” (James 1:2) Joy is what’s acquired by the anticipation, acquisition or even the expectation of something great or wonderful. Joy is knowing that what lies ahead, the glory which shall be revealed to us, the heaven that awaits us, is so much greater than the trial we face now. The joy of the Lord is literally our strength to get through anything.  As Nehemiah said, “...do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10)

We understand what joy is now, how we make it our own, but what takes it away? If we are living joyless today, especially in our dark hours, how come we have lost that joy? There can be a number of things, but from my own experience I would like to share. In John 16:22 Jesus says something interesting, and seemingly contradictory “...no one will take your joy from you.” Well then where is my joy? No one took it from me, therefore there's only one way I lost it… I lost it. By my own doing I have lost my joy. Has the joy been magically evaporated, never to be found again? No. I simply have to go back and find out where I left it and put it back on. When we lose our joy, it can be a number of things, but it boils down to one thing, we took our eyes off God. We stopped intentionally focusing our gaze upon Jesus and His goodness and started looking to our own troubles, fears, unhappiness and pains. I love the way Paul puts it when he says “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6) When our mind, our heart, our soul is set upon Jesus, we will experience life and peace. The things of this world are so trivial, so passing, and we do wrong to set our minds upon them. Surely we have responsibilities, but it becomes an issue when we are looking more at what we have on our plate, rather than who we are in Christ.

Let us not mix our wine with water. Water serves only to dilute that which we are meant to take in its fullness. At a certain point, we can have so much water in our life that we won't taste the effect of the wine! What water are you mixing with your wine today? There is something that is diluting your joy, somewhere you left your joy; remove the things which dilute, go back and find the joy. It make take time and discipline, and the longer you've been missing your joy, the longer it would take to regain it, but spend time meditating upon the word of God. Remembering His promises and implanting His goodness in our hearts is the quickest way to fullness of joy.  

Living and Walking

Galatians 5:25

NKJV

“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

The “if” in this is not just a hypothetical thing for those who are in Christ, it is a realized thing. We can interpret it more in the way of “since we live” because Christ has given us His Spirit. Jesus said that it is the Spirit which gives life, and that the flesh is no help at all. This is so important to remember as we come to the Lord each day, because we are easily tripped into relying on other things for our life. Our lives are now hidden with Christ, and we are primarily spiritual beings before we are carnal; we are new creations in Him. Paul says in Ephesians 2:6 “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Therefore, we truly have lives marked by the Spirit of God, and every aspect of our lives is brought into the spiritual realm.

Since we understand that Christ has raised us up with Him to sit in heavenly places, and we live our earthly lives in the power of His Holy Spirit, what do we then do? How are we called to go about our day? What manner of life are we to lead? First of all, we aren't meant to lead. We are meant to follow. “Follow me” is what Jesus so often asked people to do, and that command has not changed. We are made to be led, even if we have leadership skills. Ultimately our leading comes from the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ and He beckons us to follow Him wholeheartedly. Secondly, Paul is asking us to walk in the Spirit because we live in the Spirit. Walking can mean so many different things though, and to get a proper understanding we need to know what Paul’s original intent was. The word “walk” in the Greek means, in this context, to walk in a straight line and to conduct oneself rightly. Translated into the verse, it then says this, “let us walk in a straight line and conduct ourselves rightly in the Spirit.” Such a wonderful picture of the life of a Christian this paints! Once again I'm reminded of God’s call to “be holy, as I am holy.” We are not left without the ability to do so! Jesus has given us His Spirit to walk in this way. So today, as we walk with Jesus, as we strive for that divine holiness of life, let us not do it in the flesh, but by the Spirit of God.

Keeping The Heart

Psalms 27:14

NKJV

Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!

How do you hold up when the trials press down? When strength wavers, and our hearts droop, what do we look to for refreshment? Recently I've been blessed to have endured a trial that the Lord used to chasten my heart. God has shown Himself to be a jealous God (Nahum 1:2) and will not allow His children to hew out broken cisterns when He has an overflowing fountain available for them. I'm thankful for the ways and works by which God directs our affections to Himself, firmly, but also gently.

Many of us can relate to drinking drips from the broken vessels of this world. We all know what our flesh reaches out for to gain strength, comfort, relief or healing. Even more so we know how they never satisfy. This week I've been shown where true sustenance lies, in a way that I can proclaim that I've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. The Lord had allowed sickness to come upon me, and while for many reasons, one stuck out the most, and that is why I've chosen this verse. Throughout the entire time I was sick, the Holy Spirit had this verse ringing in my ears. I can confidently say that man does not only live by bread alone but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of God. Gods Word gave me the strength I needed to press on through the trial, and come out the other side in closer communion with Him. There is something so wonderful about the dark days and how the light shines so brightly for us. We can truly understand when the Psalmist writes that “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me,” it is a reality for us.

The most difficult thing was not the sickness, but maintaining my mind and hearts posture towards the Lord through it. It's so easy to fall into wrong thoughts about God and ourselves, and so hard to say “Bless the Lord!” Job gives a wonderful example of suffering to us, how he didn't lose faith in his God even though he lost everything else. He could not be brought to curse God because of his circumstances, and so the Lord desires of us that same heart. Those moments where there is no way out but waiting are crucial for us to maintain our hearts, to keep the loins of minds girded up. Once even the smallest foothold is given to Satan through the thoughts he sneaks in, he creeps in deeper and deeper and we find ourselves trapped in our own minds. Every thought must be taken into captivity under the name of Jesus. Otherwise, we are an open target, fresh bait just waiting defenseless for any work of darkness to make us it's slave. Check your heart when you're in the trial, ask the Lord for Scripture to lean upon, and don't let a single thought take root without it first being taken into the captivity of Christ.

Thirst

Psalm 63:1

NKJV

“O God, You are my God; Early will I seek You; My soul thirsts for You; My flesh longs for You In a dry and thirsty land Where there is no water.”

At one point or another in our life, we will know what it feels like to be parched. A thirst beyond thirst, where every fiber of being longs to be satisfied with even the smallest drop of sustenance.We may look around, high and low, near and far to gain this relief. Some may even find it, but it's only temporal. When in a dry and thirsty land, the resources are so limited. From horizon to horizon our eyes only behold the dryness of the desert we've ended up in. We wonder achingly whether or not help will come, or a spring will rise up from the earth, or water pour out of the rock like it did for Moses. When it gets to this point, without being rightly related to God, we lose hope. Before coming to God with our thirsts, our parchments, we must go through Christ and be washed in His blood. None can enter the throne room of God without purity, purity which comes only by Jesus’ atoning sacrifice. Once we have walked through the door that Jesus has opened for us, we can begin to cry out for our God to quench our thirst.

God does not use the water of the natural world to satisfy our thirsty souls. Sooner or later, earthly water will need to be provided again, or we could find ourselves dead. We can correctly relate the world we live in to be this earthly water, which never fills that hole inside of us. So many things cry out to us like harlots on street sides, seducing us into thinking eternal satisfaction lies in the pleasures of life. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are nothing to joke around with. They are dangerous, even to the life of a believer. If Peter warned us in his first letter to “be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, (I Peter 5:8)” then how serious it is that we do so! This is where death lies in wait, when we are least expecting it, when we stop being watchful for it. The wages of sin are death, and everything the world has to offer us is sinful in its very nature, for it resists the things of God and chases towards it's own desires and lusts. Greed, hatred, deceit, immorality, pride, striving, lusting, idolatry, all these are trademarks of the world we live in. This world is the dry and thirsty land where there is no water. Since a human can't last more than a few days without water, how can we expect to truly live off the false sustenance the world gives us? We can't, but there is One who can give us just what we need to live again.

The water God provides us is living, and is offered to us through the living Christ. For life to be given, there has to be life to give away. Since our God is limitless, and does not know anything but overflowing abundance, we can trust our Source to be faithful all through eternity. At one word He created all the waters of the earth, breathed life into Adam, fashioned the stars we look at during the night. Similarly, with one word He can pour out the living water we need to sustain us and bless us in our temporal abode. We can receive rest for our souls, peace in our hearts, and joy in every fiber of our being. This is a reality for some Christians, and yet for others it's not. Why? I'm learning this still, but I've come to know one thing about why; we are unwilling to yield everything to Christ. Gods perfect peace is only attained through surrendering every minute detail of our lives to Him, and then trusting Him to keep us in fellowship with Him. We were not saved by works, and we certainly aren't expected to maintain by works. Even our Christian walks are deeply fed through the grace of God, and if we want the life God has for us, well, it all begins with surrender. Let us always seek our Father earnestly, desiring to know where and how we can more fully surrender ourselves to Him, and then let us wait upon Him to follow through with His abiding presence.