06-28-09

“Gulpers! Not Sippers?”

John 4: 1-15

Well, I can’t believe it has been a year already since I first stood in this pulpit! We have shared ups and downs – more ups than downs! We have shared pains and joys! We have had deaths and births! We have lost members but have gained many more! But most importantly I believe we have grown in our faith and the overall feeling here at Lewis seems to be joyous and focused on Christ! If you were here on our first Sunday together than you might recall a few promises I made to you that morning. I promised to be your pastor to the best of my ability. I promised to preach Jesus and preach from the Bible in every sermon. And I promised to pray for you every day. I also asked you to make a promise that day – to pray for 3 things. I asked you to pray for the church, for each other, and for me and my family. Let’s all renew our promises this morning together and let’s hunger and thirst for more of what God has planned for us in the year ahead.

Speaking of thirst, what do you do when you are thirsty? We live in a country where quenching our thirst is easy and almost always available.

Have you ever had an occasion when you thirsted for something, but nothing seemed to quench that thirst? I sometimes have a chocolate milk craving and I just have to go get some. Even if there is none in the house, which is usually the case, I’ve been known to go out and buy just some chocolate milk.

Sometimes we thirst for something that we haven’t had in a long time.

Sometimes we thirst for something that we just have to have. Sometimes we thirst for something that we’ve never had. At different times in our life this is also true in our spiritual journey as well.

We find ourselves going through life and everything seems to be going just fine. Then all of a sudden, we hit a dry spell! Sports teams talk about dry spells a lot, when they seem to not be able to do anything to get them out of the rut they are in. They try new things and new ideas but they seem to stay in a dry spell and victory eludes them. They thirst for that winning feeling again. They thirst for that something special to get them through the dry valley they are in.

Are we not the same way sometimes? Don’t we, as Christians, find ourselves in a dry spell every once in a while? We fall into a ho-hum attitude about God, about our daily journey with the Lord, and even about our church. And it seems like nothing can quench that inner thirst. We kind of just go through the motions day in and day out and we seem to have lost that cheerful expectancy that the Apostle Paul wrote about in Romans 12, that God is going to do something great for us! Are you thirsty? Are you thirsting only for what God can give you?

The interesting thing about God-given quenching is that God, through Jesus Christ, wants to give us much more than we allow ourselves to receive. Why do we stop the flow? We need to be gulpers – not sippers! Jesus wants to fill you up through the power of the Holy Spirit and the only one holding that back is you! Let’s lift our cups to the Lord and ask Him to fill us up today!

You know the story of the woman at the well. Our scripture reading this morning out of the Gospel of John is probably not a new one for most of us this morning. But we all need to be reminded that what Jesus has to offer all of us is living water. And we need to drink it up! The Samaritan woman at the well did not understand about this living water of life. She was not aware that Jesus Himself was the answer to her thirsting soul. We have the manual! We have all the stories! We have the rich, Christian history. Yet, we sometimes forget where to go for the quenching power we need when we hit a dry spell in our lives.

Jesus offers to all of us the quenching water of life! Are you going to just sip from the cup of the Lord or are you going to gulp it down?

Look back with me at John 4:13. The Samaritan woman wanted what Jesus had to offer. She knew the importance of water in a physical sense, but now she wanted a deeper well of the living water within her soul. Jesus told her in John 4:13, “Everyone who drinks this water (the water from the well) will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

If you are a follower of Christ, baptized in the faith, washed clean of your sins, accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior – then you have within you a spring of living water welling up to eternal life! Is your inner spring drying up? Is your inner spring of living water a little low? When was the last time you took a big ole swig from the living water of eternal life offered to you by Christ?

When was the last time you prayed, “Fill my cup Lord! I lift it up Lord. Come and quench this thirsting in my soul. Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole?” Stop being a sipper and become a gulper! We can do this in every aspect of our life. When we read the Holy Scripture we need to do so deeply and not just so we can say we read from the Bible.

When we come together to worship we should do so with great expectation that the Holy Spirit has led us here and that we will see and hear and feel Jesus when we get here and that God will have a word for each of us when we open our hearts, souls, and minds to Him.

When you walk your journey with the Lord everyday you should do so with great joy and a peace that He is with you every step you take! Because when we come to Jesus He will fill us up!

Look further with me into John’s Gospel in chapter 7:37-38. In chapter 6 Jesus fed the 5000, walked on water, and told His disciples that He was the bread of life. Now here in 7: 37-38 Jesus said, at the end of verse 37, “If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

My friends, YOU have within you the ability to drink from the living water of Jesus Christ! You can gulp from the cup of the Lord! Jesus Christ can quench the deep thirsting from within your soul! Are you thirsty? Do you have an unquenchable thirst within you today? Don’t leave here thirsty this morning. Don’t just take a little sip and hope it gets you through another day or another week. Don’t just come to church on Sundays and then forget to talk or walk with Jesus the other 6 days of the week. But since you ARE here on Sunday, ask God to fill your cup so full that you need to drink from the saucer because the cup is overflowing!

In 1995 Scott Underwood wrote the words and the music to the song entitled Another Drink. The words are simple but mighty powerful:

“I’m thirsty Lord. Yes I’m thirsty Lord. I’m thirsty Lord for the living water of life. I want a drink. I want a drink. I want a drink of the living water of life. Fill me up Lord. I don’t have to feel it. Lord make me drunk with your Holy Spirit. I’m tired of whisperin’. I’ll start to shoutin’. I don’t want a cup Lord, give me a fountain. So I’ll take another drink. I’ll take another drink. I’ll take another drink of the living water of life.” I pray that you make this YOUR song today and every day!

Let’s stop being sippers and let’s gulp down the living water of life that only Jesus can give us.