Heart Tracks - Cracked Cisterns

 "For My people have done two evil things: They have forsaken Me - the fountain of Living Water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all." Jeremiah 2:13......"If we've believed and trusted Him for full healing and wholeness, the 'cracks' in our lives will always allow our strength and confidence to 'leak' out.' " Beth Moore

Have you ever noticed how a crack in a plate or cup collects dirt, and no matter how hard you try to get it out, there remains a darkness over and in that crack? All our efforts to make it clean and whole fail, and while we can do some cosmetic things to cover it up, the crack, and the dirt, remain. It's a good picture I believe, of how many in the church today, and many churches as well, are living out their lives.

I don't think a lot of us would feel we should be included in the harsh and cutting words of the Father in Jeremiah 2. We probably don't feel that we've forsaken Him, or that we are rejecting His Living Water. But are we willing to submit to the searching of His Spirit in order to discover to what degree we really might be doing so? What unhealed cracks continue to exist in our lives, our families, and our church fellowships that we have succeeded in "covering up" so they are not visible, at least on the surface? How much "dirt" continues to find a home there, affecting every aspect of those lives, families and fellowships? 

Pastor's think that moving to a new church will make everything better. But they take their wounds, their cracks there with them, and are dismayed when what happened before happens again. Churches rid themselves of one pastor, and then believe that all will be better when they get a new one. And it is, until the same problems they had with the last leader emerge with the new one. The cracks, and the dirt within remain. And the water of His strength and Life leak out. It's the same with relationships, marriages, jobs, and our walk with Him. The cracks remain, and they continue to allow His Life to steadily drain out, and a people and Church that is to be marked by His healing wholeness, isn't. We're cracked and broken cisterns and we can never hold the water of His Life for very long until we come face to face, our face to His, with this truth.

All our efforts to make it better are doomed to failure. There is only One who can take the cracked cup of our lives, our families, marriages, and fellowships, and make the cup anew and cleanse the dirt within. It starts and ends with face to face honesty with Him. We confess. We repent. We are forgiven and cleansed. There is no person, relationship or fellowship that will not find this to be true, or Him to be faithful. And when it happens, we are no longer cisterns, but deep wells of His Living Water. The woman who was marked as unclean by society by her ongoing bleeding, was willing to come out of the shadows and into the open in order to be whole. Are we?

Isn't it time that this were so in our lives, our families, and our fellowships? It surely can be. The question for us is, will it be? Remember the famous line from the movie "A Few Good Men?" Jack Nicholson's character stated flatly, "You can't handle the truth." Can we? Until we can, the cracks and the dirt remain.

Blessings,
Pastor O