A Parched, Dry Land // The Holy Spirit and Me, Part 1

So many people live out a spiritually parched existence and all along God has a plan – a plan of power, a plan of peace, a plan of intimacy, a plan……of abundant life. His name is the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes life can feel, well, parched and dry. We can be doing all the right things – living life, being a parent, working, whatever it is we do – but it's as though we're giving out all the time and not drinking anything in. And we look at life and think, "Hang on, I'm doing all the right stuff. Why does it feel as though I'm running on empty?"

And so people go looking in all sorts of weird and wonderful places to fill up again. Day spas, meditation, holidays, coffee shops, yoga, you name it and we look in some funny places for that … I don't know … spiritual reality.

So, how thirsty are you? How dry, how parched do you feel? Let me invite you on a journey this week because as it turns out Jesus understands that dry and parched and thirsty thing, and my hunch is He has a plan.

It's funny reality, but living life can drain the life out of us, it's a paradox isn't it? But it's true, whether you do work or study or maybe work at home, you're a husband or a wife or mum or a dad or a volunteer or doing all the good things in life that we do. Giving out like we're meant to do, it's all great, but you can stand back and you take a look at that – all the things that we do in life, that stuff together that we call life – and even in the midst of all that good stuff there can be something missing.

We live in a world that's thirsty for a spiritual reality. There's a hunger in so many people's lives and can I say, even in people who say, "I believe in Jesus." There can be emptiness and dryness and an unsettled feeling to say, "I'm doing all these things but there's something missing, there's some spiritual reality that's not in the puzzle and until that particular piece of the puzzle is there, I'm not whole, I'm not complete." I wonder if you know anyone like that?

Our soul and our spirit can feel like a dry, parched land, like a desert and we need to drink in that authentic something, a deep draft of fresh, clear, living water. I wonder if it wasn't always part of God's plan that we need that something, that we need Him. Have a listen to what He writes. He says in the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament:

I will make rivers flow on the barren heights and springs within the valleys. I'll turn the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into springs. I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia and the myrtle and the olive. I'll set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know and may consider and understand that the hand of God has done this, that the Holy one has created it.

See, God knows that life drains the life out of us, God knows that sometimes our life is like that parched land, like that desert and He turns around, through Isaiah and says:

I want to make rivers flow, I want to put springs in that place, I want to turn your desert into pools of water and the parched ground into springs. I want to put trees and life into that void for you and the reason I want to do it is so that when you look at it, you'll know it was my hand that came to do this for you, that it was I who breathed life into you, fresh, living water.

God uses this picture all through His word, through the Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament about the way that He pours life and His sprit into us.

There's a beaut story when Jesus … His disciples had gone on into the town and He's at a well outside the town but He doesn't have a bucket to put down into the well and draw water. And there's a woman there, a Samaritan woman. Now the Jews and the Samaritans did not get on, I have to tell you, and this woman was out there in the middle of the day in the heat lugging water because she herself was an outcast. And He comes to the well and He says to her, "I need some water". This is the story:

When this Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" because His disciples had gone into town to buy food and the Samaritan woman says to Him, "You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman, how can you ask me for a drink?" Because the Jews didn't associate with the Samaritans, and Jesus answers her and says, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him for a drink and He would have given you living water.

 She said, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with in the well it's so deep, where are you going to get this living water from? Are you greater than Jacob who made this well?" And Jesus answers her, "Everyone who drinks this water, you get thirsty again but whoever drinks the