For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me—the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all! Jeremiah 2:13
One hot summer day, I filled a jug with water and tea bags and let the tea brew in the sun all day. That evening I transferred the tea to a pitcher and placed it in my refrigerator. A couple hours later I opened the door only to find a puddle of tea running down the shelf from an unnoticed crack in my pitcher. My broken pitcher couldn’t hold any tea.
We run the risk of being like that cracked pitcher.
In the passage above, God is lamenting how His people, the Israelites, have abandoned Him. He was offering them an abundant life in a covenant relationship with Him. He referred to Himself as the fountain of living water. Yet the people tired of that relationship and turned from God to cracked cisterns, which could hold no water at all. In other words, the people abandoned God and started to worship the false idols of the nations around them. When they did this, they themselves became marred by sin, no longer able to have a healthy relationship with God.
Why would they do this?
Their bloom of love for God had faded. Somewhere along the years, they tired of the relationship, of following God’s rules. To them it probably looked as if their neighbors in the nations around them were having a lot more fun than they were. The neighbors didn’t have nearly as many laws to uphold. The Israelites were looking for the next exciting thing.
Have you ever felt like that?
When we become bored, we often disconnect from God. When we stop reading His word, praying, studying the Bible, worshiping, and listening to Him, we are at risk for exchanging the truth of God for lies. We become vulnerable to the temptations around us. We allow our red, hot love to cool to lukewarm mediocrity, and if we don’t reconnect, we may let our relationship fizzle out all together. Soon we find we’ve wandered over to the land of the cracked-pot gods doing things we should never be doing, wondering how we got there.
Reignite the flames
If your spiritual life has burned out, reignite the flames. Recommit to prayer and ask God to show you what your purpose is for this season of life. Make time with Him a priority each day. And start looking for the opportunities He is providing that you have been missing, while saying no to the opportunities the enemy has deceived you with. Keep the fires of your first-love God going. His creativity and love for us never fades. After all, He is the fountain of living, read that life-giving, love-breathing water. Be a vessel that is intact enough to hold and absorb that water and then share it with others.
