There are no free refills

  Have you ever gone to those restaurants that don’t give free refills? Annoying right? Just like when you do something that's supposed to help you, and it just ends up draining you. It's like drinking out of an empty cup. You're still doing the act of sipping, but you're still thirsty. 


Another way to explain is that after a long run, your body needs water. Instead, you choose to drink a big cup of Diet Pepsi. You're fine for the time being, but you're eventually going to be thirsty again. This analogy remindsme of the bible story about the woman at the well.



In case you don’t know the story, a woman goes to visit a well and Jesus, who is sitting there, asks for a drink. If she were a Samaritan and he was a jew, he had zero business talking to her. She questions why he was speaking to her, and he replies, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him,m and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “ You have nothing to draw with,th and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,  but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman, of course, gets excited and says, “ Sir, give me this water so I don’t have to ever come back”. Jesus tells her to get her husband. She said I have no husband. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”  ( The rest of the story is in John 4).

The woman kept having to go back to the well to get water, and Jesus offered her water that would never make her thirsty again. If you couldn’t already tell, this was never about water. Well, kind of. This is about what Jesus has that the world can’t provide. When you try to fill that empty space in your heart with drugs, alcohol, people, or friends, you will always have to keep going back. That woman was afraid of being alone, so she had to latch on to whatever velcro sticks and eventually had to find the next person because it would never be enough. Jesus is saying that when you follow me, I will not only be enough, I will be an overflow. I will exceed any expectation you ever had for anyone. I say all this to say, in the world, there is no such thing as free refills. Things of this world will continue to take from you more than they give. It will literally cost you everything. The question you should ask yourself is, Is it worth it? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heart surgery is scary, but necessary

  I hear a lot of stories about people who have to get big operations. You know the very scary ones that have a 40% success rate. But yeah, these operations are the ones that make you sit and reflect on all of your life decisions. It's a serious thing to go through, and the recovery, I know, sucks. My mom, when I was 13 years old, had gone into cardiac arrest and died for 38 minutes, and she had to get open heart surgery to get a defibrillator put in, and if you don't know what that is, it's basically this device that acts as a resuscitator if your heart were to stop again. She was in the hospital for a month. There was a time when she had a breathing tube down her throat so she couldn't talk. When she finally came home, her recovery was slow, and she couldn't eat certain foods, still can’t eat certain things, she can’t lift over 25 pounds, and she had to quit her job working for my school.  My point is that having to experience almost losing my mother and watching ...
Read more

My conspiracy Theory

  Parenting has become a conspiracy. It often feels like those in parenting committees are gatekeeping important files and documents from others who have questions. I might be a bit dramatic, but this situation is problematic for me. It mirrors the challenges I faced throughout my childhood, where I wasn’t allowed to question any decisions my parents made. I was labeled as “defiant” or “rebellious," but really, I was just exhibiting the natural curiosity that all children have at a certain age. Every child is inherently curious, though some express it differently than others. I was the kind of kid who asked "why" a million times. You would think that’s a normal way to be, but it wasn’t seen that way by the adults around me. I often heard phrases like, "Because I said so," or "You'll understand one day." I was never satisfied with those answers, and I’m still not, primarily because they don't make sense. I’ve learned that anything worth knowing...
Read more

The Blame Game

  While listening to a podcast, I heard them talking about when sin first entered the world. FYI, it's in Genesis 3. Instead of reading just Genesis 3, I read 2 chapters before, and dare I say, I’m impressed with God. There was no perception of time, and no one was rushing. Hi,m and he still got it done in 7 days. No, 6 sorry. He rested on the 7th. Can you even imagine? I sure can’t. I attend school 5 days a week and need 2 months of recovery. Anyway, I got to Genesis 3 and I ended it a little confused. Here's what I comprehended: Serpent chats it up with Eve, gets her to eat the fruit, she gives some to Adam, they both find out they were naked, God catches them in 4k, curses the serpent, punishes Adam & Eve, makes them clothes, and sends them away. The thing I didn’t fully understand is what Adam did wrong. The only reason he ate the fruit was that his wife gave it to him. I re-read it, I wanna say 5 times before I fully understood the entire message. First things first, l...
Read more