Springtime — the Living Waters

Springtime — the Living Waters

Regeneration & Renewal

For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over, gone.

Blossoms appear in the land,
Pruning-time has come.

The voice of the turtledove
Is heard in our land.

~ Song of Songs 2:11-12

Many ancient cultures viewed the Spring season as a time of regeneration of life after winter: when spring flowers ‘miraculously’ sprout from beneath the ground, when trees that appeared dead during winter revive in a rush of new blossoms & green growth, when birds who had been silent all winter suddenly reappear. These seasonal cycles were so bewildering that many ancient cultures created pagan gods to represent them. Some of these rituals — harbingers of spring — were vicious & savage, particularly what is known of the Scythians & Celts. I won’t go into any more details here.

One fertility god Christians are familiar with is Baal, center of Canaanite and Phoenician culture (remember Jezebel was a Sidonian-Phoenician princess). Although Baal was only one of many Canaanite gods & goddesses, he was so prevalent in Israelite society that he is mentioned no less than 48 times in the Books of Samuel & Kings alone. Basically, Baal worship, along with his consorts Asherah (Ashtoreth) & Anat, was a form of imitative magic that supposedly controlled seasonal rainfall and subsequent productivity of the land. Following Anat’s example, participants frequently cut & lanced themselves to produce blood offerings (1 Kings 18:28). It is also possible sacred prostitution & human sacrifice were performed. Needless to say, the LORD YAHWEH was so appalled by His peoples’ worship of these and other pagan gods, He allowed the humiliation & punishment of being conquered & then exiled from their homeland.

Now for some lighter news. Many Spring flowers are associated with the regeneration of Spring; crocuses especially, which are so prevalent throughout the middle east & Levant they have ancient names in both Hebrew [karkom] and Greek (krókos). Also cultivated in West Virginia are snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), daffodils (Narcissus sp.), and the ever-popular hyacinths & tulips. Along with crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths & tulips are all originally native to the eastern Mediterranean, along North Africa, Greece & Anatolia, thru the middle east to Persia. It is quite conceivable they were used in ancient spring celebrations there.

I am the crocus of the plain,
The lotus of the valley.

~ Song of Songs 2:1

Like many plant & animal names in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word translated here ‘crocus’ [habasselet] is quite ambiguous, and could refer to any number of flowers in the region, including asphodel, crocus, hyacinth or narcissus. Traditionally, this same word, however inaccurately, is rendered ‘rose’ in the KJV, NKJV, RSV & NIV.

As for the stability of Earth’s seasonal cycles, the same can be said for the water molecule, H₂O. Water is so stable the ancients considered it to be one of the four elements that made up all of nature, along with earth, air & fire. Indeed, classical scientists thought so until the late 19^th century; only when electrolysis was developed could it be proved that water actually consists of two elements, hydrogen & oxygen. It is so prevalent in our solar system that it is now believed to exist on or in every major planetary body, except Mercury & Venus. Sound like the stability & omnipresence of the Holy Trinity?

Along with the flurry of new growth in Springtime, nature has a marvelous way of regenerating itself. While most people fear severe storms, they can actually be nature’s cleansing mechanisms. Wind & rain from a strong thunderstorm or squall line will knock deadwood out of trees, flush stagnant ponds & lakes, even wash city streets. Nature quickly rebounds from these storms, it’s man’s artificial structures that suffer the most damage. Of course, the largest, most intense storms are hurricanes, but after the initial damage, even these can have beneficial effects long after the storm passes. Two examples:

1. Although hurricane Hugo devastated the Carolina coast in September 1989, by summer 1991 there was an unanticipated positive effect. Throughout North Carolina’s estuaries Hugo stirred up nutrient sediments lying long dormant at the bottom of tidal salt marshes. When those nutrients were released, plankton exploded in a rush of new growth and life flourished at all levels of the food chain. For the next several years, fishing in Pamlico & Albemarle Sounds was the best in recent memory.

2. When hurricane Floyd grazed Florida’s east coast in September 1999, I lived only one-quarter mile from the beach. Despite a mandatory evacuation, my roommate & I decided to ride out the storm. On the morning of 13 September, the storm roared by as a Category 4, 140 mph winds of the eyewall only 40 miles off Central Florida’s east coast! Next morning was the most beautiful, pristine day: on the beach the air was calm & piercingly clean; the waves flat, the beach sparkling smooth from scourging by the tide the previous day. The storm surge had been high enough to breach the dunes; trash that was on the beach washed over onto Hwy. A1A, which itself was blocked in several places by the sandy overflow. Next spring, there was an outbreak of new growth along the dunes.

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He sends the springs into the valleys;
They flow among the hills.

He waters the hills from His upper chambers;
The earth is satisfied with the fruit of His works.

~ Psalm 104:10,13

Q: OK, Eric. You’ve been rambling ’round about on four different subjects. Now, how does the regeneration of life during Springtime, spring flowers, the stability & omnipresence of water, and nature’s cleansing all come together?

A: Regeneration & renewal of spiritual life by the living waters of Jesus Christ!

Granted, Christ’s cleansing is supernatural, but let’s first look at a simple glass of water: is it half-full or half-empty? There are those, Christians included, who constantly complain about what they don’t have (the glass half-empty), instead of being thankful for what they do have (the glass half-full). At Promise Keepers 2004 a minister gave an excellent demonstration of the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit’s living waters, starting with a half-full glass. This was then filled to capacity with useless gunk of all kinds, to the point where the liquid was disgusting as sewer water & undrinkable. He then proceeded to pour in gallon after gallon of clean, fresh water, until all the garbage was washed out and the water was again fit to drink. This is how we must allow Jesus to wash our souls, “to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). VCA’s Cleansing Stream class offered many excellent examples of how proper spiritual alignment can enhance the flow of Christ’s living waters, and conversely, how being ‘out of alignment’ can impede them.

In the spiritual sense, pulling out the bitter roots of anger & envy, then not filling them with Christ’s living waters, is like cleaning house and then leaving the home empty to invasion: a wide open invitation to demons and seven of their buddies to move right in (Luke 11:24-26). I have learned the hard way that as the old soulful garbage is washed away the empty space must be filled with the Holy Spirit, otherwise all manner of nasty things can happen. In the gardening sense, this is akin to pulling out weeds by the roots and leaving open holes in the ground. If the holes are not refilled with soil, any number of things could fall in, such as more weed seeds and trespassing neighbors.

According to Dan Mohler, many people looking for healing are going about it the wrong way. Folks attempt to dredge out their own garbage and force it onto the Holy Spirit, in essence trying to press God into the mold of their own iniquities. I must admit, I’m starting to believe this is the mistake I’ve been making the last four years. The prophet Jeremiah warned of such a situation:

“Those who depart from Me
Shall be written in the earth,

Because they have forsaken the LORD,
The fountain of living waters.”

~ Jeremiah 17:13

Instead of allowing the living waters of Christ to simply flow through their spirits, washing out the old junk, they end up returning to the dust of the ground, ‘written in the earth’, instead of being written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

For the cleansing flow to work properly, we must allow ourselves to be a stream, not a reservoir. The living waters must continually flow through, for if we bottle them up, they will stagnate like a farm pond with no outlet. How then can we distribute Christ’s healing power to those in need?

The first time I felt these living waters, a real physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit, was in November 2003. That day I was extremely depressed, and for the first time prayed for Christ’s healing to save me. Next thing I felt was a water splash, a waterfall of warm water, that did not bounce off my skin, but flowed through & permeated my soul. I looked up in amazement because I was sitting under a covered gazebo on a clear sunny day!

Despite the enormous amount of literature & songs that have been written about the living waters, there is surprisingly little in Scripture. Most of what we base our belief on is in these three passages from John’s Gospel:

Jesus answered and said to her [the Samaritan woman at the well], “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” … And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” … On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” ~ John 4:13-14; 6:35; 7:37-38

Therefore with joy you will draw water
From the wells of salvation.

“Thus says the LORD who made you
And formed you from the womb …

‘For I will pour water on him who is thirsty,
And floods on the dry ground;

I will pour My Spirit on your descendants,
And My blessing on your offspring;

They will spring up among the grass
Like willows by the watercourses.’ ”

“The LORD will guide you continually,
And satisfy your soul in drought,
And strengthen your bones;

You shall be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

~ Isaiah 12:3; 44:2-4; 58:11

[Paul recalled Ananias saying to him] “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.”

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

~ Acts 22:16; Hebrews 10:22

A brief note here on baptism: I have come to believe that water baptism is a symbolic return to the womb of God. As when the ‘water breaks’ when a woman gives birth, so a saved Christian is born again (John 3:3), bursting forth from God’s living water. The spiritual changes baptism initiates can be described as:

regeneration of the spirit towards Christ (paliggenesías) (Matthew 19:28; Titus 3:5);

transformation of the corruptible (phthorá) into the incorruptible (aphtharsía) (1 Corinthians 15:42; 1 Peter 1:22-23);

which leads to the renewal of life (anakaínoseos) (Romans 12:1-2; Titus 3:5);

to become a living sacrifice to Christ, cleansed by the sprinkling (rhantízo) of Christ’s blood (Hebrews 10:22).

But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration [paliggenesías] and renewing [anakaínoseos] of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. ~ Titus 3:4-7

So Jesus said to them, “Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” ~ Matthew 19:28

[Then one of the elders answered, saying to me] “They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” … And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb … And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts” ~ Revelation 7:16-17; 22:1; 21:6

What more can I add to that?

Blessings in Christ Who guides us,
~ Eric