I wonder if you have you ever heard that old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” I’ve heard it many, many times over the years and said it a few times as well. I have never, however, found myself in circumstances that better fit that familiar saying than I find myself in right now.
Life has been less than fun lately. This less-than-fun stage started because I tried to help someone. I tried very hard to show someone something it took me a long time to learn. I had hoped she could learn it much quicker than I did, at a much younger age than I did and that it could help her to be the person she really wanted to be. I wanted her to see that she didn’t have to let where she came from dictate who she had to be. She could be a wonderful person, an awesome mother and a wife any man would love to have if she would just step away from her past and step fully into her present…but she wouldn’t do it. She chose to give her present life to her past life, and she hurt herself and so many others around her when she made that choice that most of those she hurt have walked away from her forever. Much like the horse in the old saying, I tried so hard to get her to see the water I had led her to, but I couldn’t make her drink. She didn’t want the water when it was in plain sight. She would rather continue drinking from the same old puddle that has already proven it will not sustain her.
I will never truly understand how a person could prefer to slurp water from a muddy puddle than to drink from cold, clear, purified water that is offered to them…especially when the offer has no strings attached. But maybe I do understand because as I typed that last sentence, I realized I do the same thing all the time. Jesus has offered us His living water; and, though I have accepted His gift to quench my eternal thirst, I still return every so often to that muddy water and take a little sip. Sometimes I don’t realize I am kneeling in the mud until after that first sip; but sometimes I know exactly where I am going to end up as I am heading to that puddle, yet I make the conscious decision that I will just stick my fingers in the water and play in the mud a little but never really take a sip. I know this plan never really works, but I lie to myself and ignore my conscience and get a little muddy anyway.
I am like the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well in the book of John, chapter 4, beginning in verse 7. I have made more bad choices than I want to allow myself to remember; but, like the woman at the well, He didn’t care how much muddy water I had trudged through. He shared His eternal living water with me without reservation.
“When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
“The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
“Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’
“‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and his herds?’
“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water 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.’
“The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water so I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
I have drank from Jesus living water. He has forever quenched that eternal thirst in me, but every once in a while I decide to stray off His path and find myself playing in the mud that gets deeper with every step. Why do I do it? I don’t know. I’d like to say that the devil made me do it, but I know better than to listen to that deceiver. He never makes me play in the mud. He just makes it look a little less muddy than it really is. Every time, I can only blame myself and then refocus my eyes back on Jesus and the living water He led me to.
“John 4:7-15.” NIV Archaeological Study Bible: An Illustrated Walk through Biblical History and Culture: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005. N. pag. Print.
forgiven faith 