EXCERPTS FROM
COME THIRSTY
by Max Lucado
The
Dehydrated Heart
Don’t you need a drink?
Don’t you long to flush out the fear, anxiety, and guilt? You can. Note the
audience of his invitation. “If anyone
thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (v. 37, emphasis mine). Are you anyone? If so, then step up to the well.
You qualify for his water.
All ages are welcome.
Both genders invited. No race excluded. Scoundrels. Scamps. Rascals and rubes.
All welcome. You don’t have to be rich to drink, religious to drink, successful
to drink; you simply need to follow the instructions on what—or better, who—to drink. Him. In order for Jesus to
do what water does, you must let him go where water goes. Deep, deep inside.
Internalize him. Ingest
him. Welcome him into the inner workings of your life. Let Christ be the water
of your soul.
How is this done? Begin
by heeding your thirst. Don’t dismiss your loneliness. Don’t deny your anger.
Your restless spirit, churning stomach, the sense of dread that turns your
armpits into swamplands—these are signal flares exploding in the sky. “We could
use a little moisture down here!” Don’t let your heart shrink into a raisin.
For the sake of those who need your love, hydrate your soul! Heed your thirst.
And drink good water.
You don’t gulp dirt or swallow rocks. Do you drink plastic or paper or pepper?
Mercy no! When it comes to thirst of the body, we’ve learned how to reach for
the right stuff. Do the same for your heart. Not everything you put to your
lips will help your thirst. The arms of forbidden love may satisfy for a time,
but only for a time. Eighty-hour workweeks grant a sense of fulfillment, but
never remove the thirst.
Take special concern
with the bottle labeled “religion.” Jesus did. Note the setting in which he
speaks. He isn’t talking to prostitutes or troublemakers, penitentiary inmates
or reform-school students. No, he addresses churchgoers at the national
convention. This is the Vatican on Easter Sunday. You half expect the pope to
appear in the next verse. Religious symbols are laid out like a yard sale: the
temple, the altar, trumpets, and robes. He could have pointed to any item as a
source of drink. But he doesn’t.
He points to himself.
Religion pacifies, but never satisfies. Church activities might hide a thirst,
but only Christ quenches it. Drink him.
And drink often. Jesus
employs a verb that suggests repeated swallows. Literally, “Let him come to Me
and drink and keep drinking.” One bottle won’t satisfy your thirst. Regular
sips satisfy thirsty throats. Ceaseless communion satisfies thirsty souls.
Toward this end, I give
you this tool: a prayer for the thirsty heart. Carry it just as a cyclist
carries a water bottle. The prayer outlines four essential fluids for soul
hydration: God’s work, God’s energy, his lordship, and his love. You’ll find
the prayer easy to remember. Just think of the word W-E-L-L.
Lord, I come thirsty. I
come to drink, to receive. I receive your work
on the cross and in your resurrection. My sins are pardoned, and my death is
defeated. I receive your energy.
Empowered by your Holy Spirit, I can do all things through Christ, who gives me
strength. I receive your lordship.
I belong to you. Nothing comes to me that hasn’t passed through you. And I
receive your love. Nothing can
separate me from your love.
Accept
His Work
Christ responds to universal sin with a universal
sacrifice, taking on the sins of the entire world. This is Christ’s work for you. But God’s salvation song has
two verses. He not only took your place on the cross; he takes his place in
your heart. This is the second stanza: Christ’s work in you.
“It is no longer I who live,” Paul explained, “but
Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20 nkjv).
Or as he told one church: “Don’t you realize that
all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in
you?” (1 Cor. 3:16).
In salvation, God enters the hearts of his Adams
and Eves. He permanently places himself within us. What powerful implications
this brings. Did Christ sin? No. Though encircled by sin, he kept it out. Can we
say, then, that where Christ is, sin is not? So if Christ lives in you, what
doesn’t live in you? You got it . . . sin! “When God lives and breathes in you
(and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead
life” (Rom. 8:11 msg).
Let me show you how this works. It took three
hundred years, but the Black Plague finally reached the quaint village of Eyam,
England. George Viccars, a tailor, unpacked a parcel shipped from London. The
cloth he’d ordered had arrived. But as he opened and shook it, he released
plague-infected fleas. Within four days he was dead, and the village was
doomed. The town unselfishly quarantined itself, seeking to protect the region.
Other villages deposited food in an open field and left the people of Eyam to
die alone. But to everyone’s amazement, many survived. A year later, when
outsiders again visited the town, they found half the residents had resisted
the disease. How so? They had touched it. Breathed it. One surviving mother had
buried six children and her husband in one week. The gravedigger had handled
hundreds of diseased corpses yet hadn’t died. Why not? How did they survive?
Lineage. Through DNA studies of descendants,
scientists found proof of a disease-blocking gene. The gene garrisoned the
white blood cells, preventing the bacteria from gaining entrance. The plague,
in other words, could touch people with this gene but not kill them. Hence a
subpopulace swam in a sea of infection but emerged untouched. All because they
had the right parents.2 What’s the secret for surviving the Black
Plague? Pick the right ancestry.
Of course they couldn’t. But by God you can. You
can select your spiritual father. You can change your family tree from that of
Adam to God. And when you do, he moves in. His resistance becomes your
resistance. His Teflon coating becomes yours. Sin affects you, but never
infects you. Sin may, and will, touch you, discourage you, and distract you,
but it cannot condemn you. Christ is in you, and you are in him, and “there is
no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).
Rely
on His Energy
Receiving the unseen is
not easy. Most Christians find the cross of Christ easier to accept than the
Spirit of Christ. Good Friday makes more sense than Pentecost. Christ, our
substitute. Jesus taking our place. The Savior paying for our sins. These are
astounding, yet embraceable, concepts. They fall in the arena of transaction
and substitution, familiar territory for us. But Holy Spirit discussions lead
us into the realm of the supernatural and unseen. We grow quickly quiet and
cautious, fearing what we can’t see or explain.
It helps to consider the
Spirit’s work from this angle. What Jesus did in Galilee is what the Holy
Spirit does in us. Jesus dwelt among
the people, teaching, comforting, and convicting. The Holy Spirit dwells within us, teaching, comforting,
and convicting. The preferred New Testament word for this promise is oikeo, which means “live or dwell.” Oikeo descends from the Greek noun oikos, which means “house.” The Holy
Spirit indwells the believer in the same way a homeowner indwells a house.
Those who trust God’s
action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! . .
.But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking
more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this
invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re
talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you
still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on
God’s terms. (Rom. 8:5, 9–11 msg)
****************
The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness.
What a sentence worthy of a highlighter. Who does not need this reminder? Weak
bodies. Weak wills. Weakened resolves. We’ve known them all. The word weakness can refer to physical
infirmities, as with the invalid who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight
years (John 5:5), or spiritual impotence, as with the spiritually “helpless” of
Romans 5:6.
Whether we are feeble of
soul or body or both, how good to know it’s not up to us. “The Spirit himself
is pleading for us.”
I witnessed a picture of
the strong speaking for the weak during a White House briefing on the AIDS
crisis. While most of the attendees represented relief organizations, a few
ministers were invited. The agenda of the day included a Q and A with a White
House staffer charged with partial oversight of several billion dollars
earmarked for AIDS prevention and treatment. There were many questions. How
does one qualify? How much can an organization hope to receive? What are the
requirements, if any, for using the monies? Most of the questions came from
organizations. Most of us ministers were silent.
But not Bob Coy. Bob
serves a large congregation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. From earlier
conversations, I knew of his heart for AIDS victims. When he raised his hand, I
expected a policy question. Wrong. He had a personal question. “One of my
friends in Miami is dying from AIDS. He spends two thousand dollars a month on
medication. With insurance balking at coverage, I’m wondering if I might find
him some assistance.”
The White House policy
staffer was surprised, but polite. “Uh, sure. After the meeting I’ll put you in
touch with the right person.”
The minister, determined
to bring the problem to the top of the food chain, remained standing. He held
up a few sheets of stapled paper. “I brought his documents with me. If more is
needed, I can run them down.”
The government official
remained polite. “Absolutely. After the meeting.”
He had fielded another
question or two when he noticed the minister from Florida had raised his hand
again. This time the preacher went to the bottom line. “I’m still thinking of
my friend,” he explained. “Who signs the checks?”
“Excuse me?”
“Who signs the checks? I
just want to talk to the person who makes the decisions. So I want to know, who
signs the checks?”
My initial response was,
“What audacity!” The minister seizing a White House moment to help a friend.
Then I thought, “What loyalty! Does the bedridden friend in Florida have any
idea that his cause is being presented a few hundred feet from the Oval
Office?”
Do you have any idea
that your needs are being described in heaven? The Holy Spirit “prays for us
with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all
hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers
in harmony with God’s own will” (Rom. 8:26–27).
The AIDS-infected man
has no voice, no clout, and no influence. But he has a friend. And his friend
speaks on his behalf. The impoverished orphan of Russia, the distraught widow
of the battlefield, the aging saint in the convalescent home—they may think
they have no voice, no clout, no influence. But they have a friend—a counselor,
a comforter—the blessed Spirit of God who speaks the language of heaven in
heaven. “He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless
sighs, our aching groans. He . . . keeps us present before God” (vv. 26–27 msg).
Trust
His Lordship
Denying the sovereignty
of God requires busy scissors and results in a hole-y Bible, for many holes are
made as the verses are cut out. Amazingly, some people opt to extract such
passages. Unable to reconcile human suffering with absolute sovereignty, they
dilute God’s Word. Rabbi Kushner did.
His book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
reached a disturbing conclusion: God can’t run the world. Kushner suggested
that Job, the most famous sufferer, was “forced to choose between a good God
who is not totally powerful, or a powerful God who is not totally good.”1
The rabbi speaks for
many. God is strong. Or God is good. But
God is not both. Else, how do you explain birth defects, coast-crashing
hurricanes, AIDS, or the genocide of the Tutsi in the 1990s? If God cares, he
isn’t strong; if he is strong, he doesn’t care. He can’t be both.
But according to the
Bible, he is exactly that. Furthermore, according to the Bible, the problem is
not the strength or kindness of God. The problem is the agenda of the human
race. We pursue the wrong priority. We want good health, a good income, a good
night’s rest, and a good retirement. Our priority is we.
God’s priority, however,
is God. Why do the heavens exist? To flaunt God. “The heavens declare the glory
of God” (Ps. 19:1 niv).
Why do people struggle?
To display his strength. “I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For
My own sake, for My own sake, I will act” (Isa. 48:10–11 nasb). The prophet proclaimed, “You
lead Your people, to make Yourself a glorious name” (Isa. 63:14 nkjv).
God unfurls his own
flag. He flexes his own muscles. Heaven does not ask, “How can I make Max
happy?” Heaven asks, “How can I use Max to reveal my excellencies?” He may use
blessings. Then again, he may use buffetings. Both belong to him.
****************
From how many winds is
God protecting you? His wing, at this moment, shields you. A slanderous critic
heading toward your desk is interrupted by a phone call. A burglar en route to
your house has a flat tire. A drunk driver runs out of gas before your car
passes his. God, your guardian, protects you from:
“every trap” (v. 3)
“the fatal plague” (v.
3)
“the plague that stalks
in darkness” (v. 6)
“the terrors of the
night . . . the dangers of the day” (v. 5)
One translation boldly
promises: “Nothing bad will happen to you” (v. 10 ncv).
“Then why does it?”
someone erupts. “Explain my job transfer. Or the bum who called himself my dad.
Or the death of our child.” Here is where potbellied-pig thoughts surface. God
protects Alaskan malamutes and English setters, but little runts like me?
Perhaps your Rubik’s Cube has a square that won’t turn. If God is our guardian,
why do bad things happen to us?
Have they? Have bad
things really happened to you? You
and God may have different definitions for the word bad. Parents and children do. Look up the word bad in a middle-schooler’s dictionary, and you’ll read definitions
such as “pimple on nose,” “Friday night all alone,” or “pop quiz in geometry.”
“Dad, this is really bad!” the youngster says. Dad, having been around the
block a time or two, thinks differently. Pimples pass. And it won’t be long
before you’ll treasure a quiet evening at home. Inconvenience? Yes. Misfortune?
Sure. But bad? Save that adjective
for emergency rooms and cemeteries.
What’s bad to a child
isn’t always bad to a dad.
What you and I might
rate as an absolute disaster, God may rate as a pimple-level problem that will
pass. He views your life the way you view a movie after you’ve read the book.
When something bad happens, you feel the air sucked out of the theater.
Everyone else gasps at the crisis on the screen. Not you. Why? You’ve read the
book. You know how the good guy gets out of the tight spot. God views your life
with the same confidence. He’s not only read your story . . . he wrote it. His
perspective is different, and his purpose is clear.
God uses struggles to
toughen our spiritual skin.
****************
When we lived in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, I used to take my daughters on bus rides. For a few pennies,
we could board a bus and ride all over the city. May sound dull to us, but if
you are two years old, such a day generates World Cup excitement. The girls did
nothing on the trip. I bought the token, carried the backpack, and selected the
route. My only request of them was this: “Stay close to me.” Why? I knew the
kind of characters who might board a bus. And, God forbid that my daughters and
I got separated.
Our Father makes the
same request. “Stay close to me. Talk to me. Pray to me. Breathe me in and exhale
your worry.” Worry diminishes as we look upward. God knows what can happen on
this journey, and he wants to bring us home.
Pray about everything.
And don’t skip Paul’s
ingredient of gratitude. “Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has
done.”
Be like the shepherd boy
David. Rather than be frightened and intimidated by the giant Goliath, he felt
confident of the outcome, because he focused on what God had done in the past.
When Saul refused to let him go head to knee with Goliath, David produced God’s
track record.
“I have been taking care
of my father’s sheep,” he said. “When a lion or a bear comes to steal a lamb
from the flock, I go after it with a club and take the lamb from its mouth. If
the animal turns on me, I catch it by the jaw and club it to death. I have done
this to both lions and bears, and I’ll do it to this pagan Philistine, too, for
he has defied the armies of the living God! The Lord who saved me from the claws of the lion and the bear
will save me from this Philistine!” Saul finally consented. “All right, go
ahead,” he said. “And may the Lord
be with you!” (1 Sam. 17:34–37)
Are you afraid of a
giant? Then recall the lion and the bear. Don’t look forward in fear; look
backward in appreciation. God’s proof is God’s past. Forgetfulness sires
fearfulness, but a good memory makes for a good heart.
Receive
His Love
Grab hold of this verse
and let it lower you down: “God is love” (1 John 4:16).
One word into the
passage reveals the supreme surprise of God’s love—it has nothing to do with
you. Others love you because of you, because your dimples dip when you smile or
your rhetoric charms when you flirt. Some people love you because of you. Not
God. He loves you because he is he. He loves you because he decides to.
Self-generated, uncaused, and spontaneous, his constant-level love depends on
his choice to give it. “The Lord
did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous
than other peoples, for you were fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you” (Deut. 7:7–8 niv).
You don’t influence
God’s love. You can’t impact the treeness of a tree, the skyness of the sky, or
the rockness of a rock. Nor can you affect the love of God. If you could, John
would have used more ink: “God is occasional
love” or “sporadic love” or “fair-weather love.” If your actions
altered his devotion, then God would not be love; indeed he would be human, for
this is human love.
And you’ve had enough of
human love. Haven’t you? Enough guys wooing you with Elvis-impersonator
sincerity. Enough tabloids telling you that true love is just a diet away.
Enough helium-filled expectations of bosses and parents and pastors. Enough
mornings smelling like the mistakes you made while searching for love the night
before.
Don’t you need a
fountain of love that won’t run dry? You’ll find one on a stone-cropped hill
outside Jerusalem’s walls where Jesus hangs, cross-nailed and thorn-crowned.
When you feel unloved, ascend this mount. Meditate long and hard on heaven’s
love for you. Both eyes beaten shut, shoulders as raw as ground beef, lips
bloody and split. Fists of hair yanked from his beard. Gasps of air escaping
his lungs. As you peer into the crimsoned face of heaven’s only Son, remember
this: “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while
we were still sinners” (Rom. 5:8).
Don’t trust other
yardsticks. We often do. The sight of the healthy or successful prompts us to
conclude, “God must really love him. He’s so blessed with health, money, good
looks, and skill.”
Or we gravitate to the
other extreme. Lonely and frail in the hospital bed, we deduce, “God does not
love me. How could he? Look at me.”
Rebuff such thoughts!
Success signals God’s love no more than struggles indicate the lack of it. The
definitive, God-sanctioned gauge is not a good day or a bad break but the dying
hours of his Son. Consider them often. Let the gap between trips to the cross
diminish daily. Discover what Brainerd meant when he said, “My heart was
swallowed up in God most of the day.” Accept this invitation of Jesus: “Abide
in My love” (John 15:9 nasb).
****************
From
the file entitled “It Ain’t Gonna Happen,” I pull and pose this suggestion.
Let’s make Christ’s command a federal law. Everyone has to make God’s love his
or her home. Let it herewith be stated and hereby declared:
No person may walk out into the world to begin the day until he or she
has stood beneath the cross to receive God’s love.
Cabbies. Presidents.
Preachers. Tooth pullers and truck drivers. All required to linger at the
fountain of his favor until all thirst is gone. I mean a
can’t-drink-another-drop satisfaction. All hearts hydrous. Then, and only then,
are they permitted to enter the interstates, biology labs, classrooms, and
boardrooms of the world.
Don’t you ache for the
change we’d see? Less honking and locking horns, more hugging and helping kids.
We’d pass fewer judgments and more compliments. Forgiveness would skyrocket.
How could you refuse to give a second chance when God has made your life one big
mulligan? Doctors would replace sedative prescriptions with Scripture
meditation: “Six times an hour reflect on God’s promise: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love’ ” (Jer. 31:3 nasb, emphasis mine). And can’t you
hear the newscast? “Since the implementation of the love law, divorce rates
have dropped, cases of runaway children have plummeted, and Republicans and
Democrats have disbanded their parties and decided to work together.”
Wild idea? I agree.
God’s love can’t be legislated, but it can be chosen. Choose it, won’t you? For
the sake of your heart. For the sake of your home. For Christ’s sake, and
yours, choose it. The prayer is as powerful as it is simple: “Lord, I receive
your love. Nothing can separate me from your love.”
****************
Nine-year-old Al trudges
through the London streets, his hand squeezing a note, his heart pounding with
fear. He has not read the letter; his father forbade him to do so. He doesn’t
know the message, but he knows its destination. The police station.
Young boys might covet a
trip to the police station. Not Al. At least not today. Punishment, not
pleasure, spawned this visit. Al failed to meet the family curfew. The fun of
the day made him forget the time of day, so he came home late and in trouble.
His father, a stern
disciplinarian, met Al at the front door and, with no greeting, gave him the
note and the instruction, “Take it to the jailhouse.” Al has no idea what to
expect, but he fears the worst.
The fears prove
justifiable. The officer, a friend of his father, opens the note, reads it, and
nods. “Follow me.” He leads the wide-eyed youngster to a jail cell, opens the
door, and tells him to enter. The officer clangs the door shut. “This is what
we do to naughty boys,” he explains and walks away.
Al’s face pales as he
draws the only possible conclusion. He has crossed his father’s line. Exhausted
his supply of grace. Outspent the cache of mercy. So his dad has locked him
away. Young Al has no reason to think he’ll ever see his family again.
He is wrong. The jail
sentence lasts only five minutes. But those five minutes felt like five months.
Al never forgot that day. The sound of the clanging door, he often told people,
stayed with him the rest of his life.
Easy to understand why.
Can you imagine a more ominous noise? Its echo wordlessly announced, “Your
father rejects you. Search all you want; he isn’t near. Plead all you want; he
won’t hear. You are separated from your father’s love.”
The slamming of the cell
door. Many fear they have heard it. Al forgot the curfew. You forgot your
virtue. Little Al came home late. Maybe you came home drunk. Or didn’t come
home at all. Al lost track of time. You lost your sense of direction and ended
up in the wrong place doing the wrong thing, and heaven knows, heaven has no place
for the likes of . . . Cheaters. Aborters. Adulterers. Secret sinners. Public
scoundrels. Impostors. Church hypocrites. Locked away, not by an earthly
father, but by your heavenly one. Incarcerated, not in a British jail, but in
personal guilt, shame. No need to request mercy; the account is empty. Make no
appeal for grace; the check will bounce. You’ve gone too far.
The fear of losing a
father’s love exacts a high toll. Al spent the rest of his life hearing the
clanging door. That early taste of terror contributed to his lifelong devotion
to creating the same in others. For Al—Alfred Hitchcock—made a career out of
scaring people.
You may be scaring some
folks yourself. You don’t mean to. But you cannot produce what you do not
possess. If you aren’t convinced of God’s love, how can you love others?
Do you fear you have
heard the clanging door? If so, be assured. You have not. Your imagination says
you did; logic says you did; some parent or pulpiteer says you did. But
according to the Bible, according to Paul, you did not.
And I am convinced that
nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The
angels can’t, and the demons can’t. Our fears for today, our worries about
tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away. Whether we
are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will
ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ
Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:38–39)
****************
Thomas had his doubts.
Didn’t matter to him that ten sets of eyes had seen the resurrected Jesus. Or
that the women who had watched him being placed in the tomb watched him walk
into the room. Let them shout and clap; Thomas was going to sit and wait. He
wasn’t in the room when Jesus came in. Maybe he was out for bagels, or maybe he
took the death of Jesus harder than the others. In one of the four times he is
quoted in Scripture, Thomas pledges, “Let’s go, too—and die with Jesus” (John
11:16).
Thomas would die for
Christ. Surely he’d die for the chance to see the risen Christ. But he wasn’t
about to be fooled. He’d buried his hopes once, thank you. Not about to bury
them again. No matter what the others said, he needed to see for himself. So
for seven days he sat. Others rejoiced; he resisted. They celebrated; he was
silent. Thomas needed firsthand evidence. So Jesus gave it. First one hand,
then the other, then the pierced side. “Put your finger here and see my hands.
Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”
(John 20:27).
And Thomas did. “My Lord
and my God!” (v. 28).
Only a God could come
back from the dead. And only a God of love would come back for a doubter.
Desert God—he’ll still
love you.
Deny God—he’ll still
love you.
Doubt God—he’ll still
love you.
****************
Perfect love is just
that—perfect, a perfect knowledge of the past and a perfect vision of the
future. You cannot shock God with your actions. There will never be a day that
you cause him to gasp, “Whoa, did you see what she just did?” Never will he
turn to his angels and bemoan, “Had I known Max was going to go Spam-brained on
me, I wouldn’t have saved his soul.” God knows your entire story, from first
word to final breath, and with clear assessment declares, “You are mine.”
My publisher made a
similar decision with this book. Before agreeing to publish it, they read
it—every single word. Multiple sets of editorial eyes scoured the manuscript,
moaning at my bad jokes, grading my word crafting, suggesting a tune-up here
and a tone-down there. We volleyed pages back and forth, writer to editor to
writer, until finally we all agreed—this is it. It’s time to publish or pass.
The publisher could pass, mind you. Sometimes they do. But in this case,
obviously they didn’t. With perfect knowledge of this imperfect product, they
signed on. What you read may surprise you, but not them.
What you do may stun
you, but not God. With perfect knowledge of your imperfect life, God signed on.
Interviews and
information available from McClure Muntsinger Public Relations,
Pamela McClure, pamela@mmpublicrelations.com,
615.595.8321