Broken Cisterns

When it comes to sinful pleasures they are like broken cisterns that can't hold the water of life. A cistern is a vessel that was used in ancient times to carry and store water. A broken one was useless and did nothing but leak the precious fluid from the vessel. It lost what was needed to nourish us all. If we keep returning to this broken vessel for nourishment we will only go away in need. Just as giving a starving man a snack will only drive him to want more. As we use our sins to satisfy our hunger, we will only desire more of something that can never fill our souls. There is only One who can satisfy our souls and that one is Christ. Like the woman at the well we need to listen to what He is saying to us and apply it to our lives. Not to be as a man who looks in the mirror and walks away forgetting what he looks like. Christ has the water that will fill us and keep continuing filling us. Not leaving us empty inside wanting more. But we will never look for this living water if we still believe that our sins will someday fill us. They will fill us, but not with hope but with pain and loneliness. Filling us up with the things in life we desire not to have. They leave us feeling hopelessly alone, without any future. But the question we need to ask ourselves is why we return to a broken cistern that only gives us pain. Why do we run from what is good for us and desires to give us more? Why run to something that only gives us less. Do we expect that God will let us down, only giving us enough to get us hooked? Do we really trust that God really cares for us and He wants us to be free in Him? Because if we really believe that He does love us, why do we alienate ourselves from Him? Are we afraid that He might ask more from us that we are willing to give? Or is it a lack of trust because others have failed us. We have been let down by those we loved and trusted, and we tend to put God in the same light as we do others. We look at Him as only being there for Himself and looking for Him to abandon us when He gets what He needs. Maybe we need to look past our views of God from a human perspective and see Him as He has shown us through His word. As in Isaiah 26:3 states “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”

So do we continue to look towards our sinful passions to fill us, or do we look to God to show us the way? The only way we can ever get past our godless behavior is to trust in the One who can take them from us. But that doesn’t come easy for us when we have trusted in our negative view of God, but how can we get past this attitude of God unless we try, to step out in faith and put our hope in Him. God show us who He really is, but we have to allow him to have control of our lives and thoughts. To give over what is truly His and give Him a chance to show us the lies we have believed. Will you give God a chance today?