Waterless

These people are springs without water. – 2 Peter 2:17

On that place we affectionately call “the farm” where I spend so little time, there is a small “lake” (a pond, according to my wonderful wife). Anyway, when it was being built the excavators had difficulty with the water from underground springs keeping the soil so wet the dozers had problems removing the dirt. Every night the hole would get a few inches of standing water. Now, three or four years later, the water level keeps going down. Very little rain has caused the springs to dry up and there’s not been enough run-off to keep the lake full.

This passage in Peter occurs in the midst of a discussion about “false-prophets and teachers” Peter says these folks have abandoned the straight path and become arrogant, focusing on their base instincts rather than Truth.

The more I read, and the more I see of the 21st century Church, the more I am reminded of “springs without water.” Understand that I will not here continuing to talk about false teachers, rather I want to take Peter’s metaphor and apply it to believers. If we think of that water coursing through the life of believers as the presence and power of the Spirit of God, we can quickly see that for many, many folks in the Church of Now, there is precious little water. Many have lost their desire to pursue the “things of God.” There is little focus on Bible Study and Prayer, at least from a collective perspective (check the attendance at your local Church during Prayer Meeting and Bible Study, that is, if they have that anymore). There is not a lot of attention given to reading and exhortation from the Word of God. Preaching has become “topical” rather than expository, messages from God have become homilies from men, and any points proclaimed after twenty minutes are largely lost on folks who have mentally departed. “Koinonia” is little understood and even less practiced, and the command to “assemble” on a regular basis is ignored by most folks.

I will stipulate that one of the great losses in the Church is “the rain.” We seem to lack a clear, accurate dissemination of Truth. Theologians spend considerable time debating what Truth is and the water so desperately needed is dammed up by useless rhetoric. Individual dams in the life of believers have been built through lack of obedience to revealed Truth. Is it any wonder then that the springs are dry?

The solution is simple! More water! It’s way past time to blow-up the dam. More now than ever before we need to “open the flow” of God’s Spirit in our lives, convicting of sin, and imparting revelation of Truth to the mind and heart. We need the shared commonality of our daily walk to build the Body and free the mind of believers from the chains of slavery to disobedience.

Need some dynamite?