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Broken
Cisterns
.
Are you driven by soul-thirst, yearning for satisfaction? There
is a spring of living water, rising from hidden depths, pouring into our
hearts, satisfying us even as it makes us thirst for more. Stoop down and
drink. Only God can satisfy your heart. Everything else will deceive and
disappoint. “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never
thirst,” said Jesus. “But the water that I shall give him will become in him a
fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
David H. Roper
“They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns — broken cisterns that can hold no water.” — Jeremiah 2:13
Picture yourself swinging a pick, digging from dawn to dusk,
chiseling a cistern out of the hard, unyielding stone.
You stay on the job, working through the biting cold of winter
and the blazing heat of summer.
After years of strenuous effort, you finally complete the task.
Then you step back and wait for your cistern to fill — and it
leaks.
You discover — too late — that all cisterns, no matter how well constructed,
will leak.
The story is a picture of the futility of our attempts to find
satisfaction in life. It’s an age-old problem.
God told the prophet Jeremiah that His people “have
forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters.”
Instead, they had expended their efforts on “broken
cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).
Are you driven by soul-thirst, yearning for satisfaction?
There is a spring of living water, rising from hidden depths,
pouring into our hearts, satisfying us even as it makes us thirst for more.
Stoop down and drink.
Only God can satisfy your heart.
Everything else will deceive and disappoint.
“Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give
him will never thirst,” said
Jesus.
“But the water that I shall give him will
become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).
David H. Roper was a pastor for more than 30 years and now
directs Idaho Mountain Ministries, a retreat dedicated to the encouragement of
pastoral couples. He enjoys fishing, hiking, and being streamside with his
wife, Carolyn. His favorite fictional character is Reepicheep, the tough little
mouse that is the soul of courage in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of
Narnia. His favorite biblical character is Caleb—that rugged old saint who
never retired, but who "died climbing."
Our Daily Bread Ministries. Our mission is to make the life-changing wisdom of
the Bible understandable and accessible to all.
https://odb.org/2005/08/25/broken-cisterns/
John 4:9-14 English Standard Version
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask
for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with
Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it
is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he
would have given you living water.”
11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with,
and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well
and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”
13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be
thirsty again,
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give
him will never be thirsty again.[a] The water that I will give him will become in him a
spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Footnotes
a.
John 4:14 Greek forever
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+4%3A9-14&version=ESV
