Heart Tracks - Always A Well

"Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water." Genesis 21:19....."For out of His fullness we have all received." John 1:16...."Hagar and her boy were dying of thirst with a well of water less than a bowshot away....There is always a well - all is well." Ann Voskamp

Beth Moore commented on the above Scripture once, saying something on the order of our depending upon canteens, or skins of water that we carry along with us. We fill them and we carry them. The problem is, they will always run dry. Not so the well and the water of life that is Christ, and who is always there. Even in the deepest and driest of deserts. Our problem is that we, like Hagar, cannot see them. We won't see them, unless He opens our eyes to their presence, to His Presence. As long as we have our dependence on our canteens and skins of water, we'll continue to thirst though right before us is He who is Living Water of Life.

When Hagar was sent away by Abraham, he provided her with a skin of water, and she went of on her journey with her son Ishmael, looking to it for her well being. How often do we do the same? How often do we look to our own particular skins of water, whether they be our possessions, bank accounts, successes, ministries, or even past experiences of Him? None of them, not even our richest experiences of Him can be sufficient in the desert we face today. They will always run dry. He will let it be so. He doesn't wish for us to look to our canteens, but to His well of life that is His Son, Jesus Christ. In the midst of the most burning of deserts, that Well of Life will be there for us, but we won't see it as long as we're looking to our canteens. The full canteen that we carry gives us a sense of being in control. As long as we're depending on that sense, we'll never see the well. When the Father leads us into the desert, He makes a terrifying command; leave our skins and canteens behind. Depend on Him to lead us to His wells, for they will be all along the way. It will be so because He is with us all along the way. He is the Way. What's the skin, the canteen, that we can't let go of? What's keeping us blind to Him as our Source and our Source alone?

There's something else that keeps us blind to Him and depending on our canteens and skins. It's our forgetting that He has been our Source and Help before, and His promise to be so again. In Genesis 16, an angry and jealous Sarai drove a fearful Hagar into the desert. In despair, Hagar sat alongside a spring, waiting to die. The Lord appeared and told her to return to Sarai, promising to make a great nation of her. She exclaimed, "I have seen the God who sees me." Here, some years later, she forgot that, and so in her present desert, could not see that same God or His provision. How often have we done the same? How often have we been unable to see the same Father again that we once saw before? Where is that happening in us right now?

Do we live in dependence upon Him, or our canteens? The first yields a life lived with eyes wide open, seeing and discerning Him in all places. The latter makes us aware only of the canteen and its contents. We're conscious of the canteen only, not the Well of Life right before us. In the first, we see the One who always sees us. The second only sees the lack, not the Source. He bids us in the desert, to let go of our canteens. Dare we? Dare we walk in dependence on He who is the Source of Life itself? Or do we continue to cling to our empty canteens? To which do you look to sustain you on your journey?

Blessings,
Pastor O