thirsty mankind

Christ as life meets every man’s need(sharing from the college age conference)

April 22, 2011 by Christian Student · 7 Comments

The Gospel of John is a book on life and building. It tackles nine cases of man and how Christ as life meets every man’s need. In this Gospel we see that nothing in this world can satisfy us. We were made as a vessel to contain God. We have to see our true condition today. We are a thirsty sinner and we have a thirsty Savior who is longing for our consecration. Whenever we feel thirsty, dissatisfied, and empty, we just need to come to Him and take Him as our life. God is continually flowing out to dispense Himself with His divine life as the life element to meet the need of His elect to be their pleasure and satisfaction.

Moreover, we need to drop our human opinion and submit to the Lord’s leading and revelation for us to receive the Lord’s life-giving in resurrection. His life will take care of all our needs. We should stop ourselves from doing and turn to Christ to eat more of Him receiving Him as our life and life supply. The moment we stop eating in our physical life, we are starting to and eventually will die. Just as eating is a daily and a process that takes a lifetime, it is the same with our spiritual experience. We should daily eat of Christ. The more we eat of Him, the more we hunger for His Word. May we be those who are willing to take more of Christ, that Christ would enlarge our capacity to take in, assimilate, and be saturated more with His very self.

To receive the Lord’s life and experience His resurrection, we need the saints to cooperate with the Lord to loose our bondage. The Lord requires that we love one another as implied by the washing of one another’s feet. There will come a time when we will fail in our Christian life. But we should be reminded that the Lord never gives up on His people. We should continue to remain in the church life. We just need to open to Him and repent. Surely our failure with our repentance plus His forgiveness will pave the way for the Lord to work Himself more in us and then we can experience this Christ as the way, reality and the LIFE. [sharing by sister Enjoy A. from the recent Spring 2011 College Age Conference in Wales]

Filed Under: Christ lives in me, contacting God, Enjoying Christ, expounding the truth, feeding on the Lord, His heart's desire, longings, love the Lord, serving the saints, the all-inclusive Christ, the Christian Life, the Lord's recovery · Tagged With: a thirsty Savior, a thirsty sinner, an inner hunger, as men we need God, Christ meets all our needs, eat Christ, God needs us to enjoy Him, life and building, man hungers for God, open to the Lord, remain in the church life, stop and enjoy the Lord, take Christ as life, thirsty for God, thirsty mankind, washing one another's feet, we are thirsty, we need to repent

God wants us to know Him personally, subjectively, and intimately; we need to know God!

July 7, 2010 by aGodMan · 9 Comments

So far I have been in awe at the Christ revealed in the book of Isaiah, as we have been going through the Crystallization-study of Isaiah(1). In message two we see that Christ is the Lord Jehovah, the Eternal God and we need to have a revelation of Him so that we can know Him, not only objectively in His majesty and splendor but also subjectively in His salvation by drinking Him as the divine water. Isa 40:28 says

Do you not know, Or have you not heard, That the eternal God Jehovah, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Does not faint and does not become weary? There is no searching out of His understanding.

Jehovah means “I am who I am,” indicating that Jehovah is the self-existing and ever-existing eternal One, the One who was in the past, who is in the present, and who will be in the future forever. He is the all-inclusive One, the reality of every positive thing and is whatever His people need. He is the unique Creator, the mighty one, the majestic, exalted One, who inhabits eternity.

The burden in this message was that we would know God. How can we know God if there is no searching out of His understanding (Isa 40:28)? Hebrews 11:6 tells us to believe that He is. This is the first step of knowing God. Once we believe He is we will know His doings, His ways. Then we will know His principles. This is still objective. However the third aspect of knowing God is subjective, it is to know Him personally.

We can know God personally, subjectively, intimately, because it has always been God’s intention to reveal Himself to man. Jehovah in the Old Testament is Jesus in the New Testament. Jer 24:7 says,

And I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am Jehovah, and they will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.

Jehovah is the name of God in relation to man and Jesus means “Jehovah the Saviour,” or “the salvation of Jehovah“; hence, Jesus is not only a man but Jehovah, and not only Jehovah but Jehovah becoming our salvation. In God’s full salvation He not only forgives our sins, exempting us from the penalty of our sins and removing the record of our sins from before Him; He also washes away the traces of sins in us, making us white as snow and white as wool (Isa 1:18).

In the book of Isaiah God considers that He is our salvation as living water. To be our salvation the Triune God was processed to become the life-giving Spirit as the living water, the water of life. This water is the redeeming God as the consummation of the Triune God for us to drink and enjoy. Isa 55:1 says,

Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, And you who have no money; Come, buy and eat; Yes, come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price.

To come to the waters and drink tells us that we need to be ones who are thirsty for God. Psalm 42:1-2 says,

As the hart pants after streams of water, So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, For the living God.

Rev 21:6 also tells us that God will give to him who thirsts from the spring of the water of life freely. My response is to pray, Lord make me thirst for You that I would drink the divine water to know You more and more each day. Amen. [guest post, brother Moh]

Filed Under: Christ became the Spirit, contacting God, Enjoying Christ, feeding on the Lord, longings, O Lord Jesus!, the Christian Life, the Lord's recovery, the Word of God · Tagged With: believe that God is, Christ is the Eternal God, Christ is the Lord Jehovah, Crystallization study, crystallization study of Isaiah, He is our salvation as living water, Jehovah the Saviour, Jesus is the salvation of Jehovah, know God subjectively, know God's doings, knowing God personally, Lord make me thirst for You, my soul thirst for God, the living water, thirsty for God, thirsty mankind, we can know God, we need to know God

Only Christ can Really Quench Our Thirst and Satisfy Us Fully

April 14, 2010 by aGodMan · 11 Comments

The Gospel of John shows us many instances of how Jesus, as the Incarnated God-man, came to meet man’s many and varied needs. In reading through this Gospel, we see that, in the parables and events shown, Jesus met fallen man’s need. In chapter four, man “being thirsty” displays that he is seeking for something in human life that will quench his desires, or somehow meet his need.

Consider the famous case of the Samaritan woman at the well here in chapter four. Here was one that was coming to a physical well, a place for drawing water that would quench and satisfy her thirst. Coming to this well at the heat of the day, rather than in the cool of the day, she probably realized that others would not be present. As a shamed woman who had had “many husbands,” she was seeking satisfaction in the human life, ever thirsty for a relationship that would satisfy her. Yet at this well was a man, Jesus, who somehow knew her situation, and went out of His way to come to this same well. As we read through the passage we see in verse 7: “… Jesus said to her, Give Me something to drink.” The incarnated One who asked for a drink was Himself the “living water”!

Later, in verse 10, He offers the woman the living water. Her response is to ask, in verse 11: Where then do You get this living water? Jesus then points out: “Everyone who drinks of this water [perhaps pointing to the well] shall thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water gushing up into eternal life.” (Verses 13 and 14).

The woman realized that she was thirsty and needed the living water that could quench her thirst, so that she would not thirst again! She did not need the water at this well, she needed the living water. Only Jesus can be this living water, to satisfy us, and only He can bring in healing. It is clear also that once this woman tasted of Jesus as the reality of the Living Water, she was a changed woman. Although her life was full of sin, full of disappointment and shame, she would leave her waterpot and go into the city to declare “Come, see a man who told me all that I have done. Is this not the Christ?”(verse 29).

How many do we know that seek after many things, (perhaps marrying and divorcing), trying to acquire things that will make us happy or “satisfy”? Yet, we are still empty and thirsty, and still seeking. Only Jesus can be the real “thirst-quencher”, and He is ready to satisfy our longing thirst, the empty sense within. Only He can bring us to drink of the Living Water, which is Himself. When we drink of Him, we are filled within, and we can gain true satisfaction! Oh, Hallelujah for such a drinking, that is available to us, anytime! [guess post: bro. David B.]