Trusting The Living Waters
“The Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive (welcome, take to its heart), because it does not see Him or know and recognize Him. But you know and recognize Him, for He lives with you [constantly] and will be in you.” John 14:17 Amplified Bible
Jesus is explaining to the disciples why it is better for them that He departs so that the Holy Spirit can come. He makes it clear that those that are of the world will not receive Him, see Him or even recognize the Holy Spirit when He comes. The world does not welcome the Holy Spirit. As believers, we have the Holy Spirit already dwelling in our spirits, but that doesn’t mean that we welcome Him into our lives. Instead, much of the Church is uncomfortable with the Holy Spirit. We are all good talking about Jesus and even discussing the Father in our lives, but as a “church” we are not overly comfortable talking about the Holy Spirit.
We keep the Holy Spirit in our spirit but we do not welcome Him into our “hearts” as the verse says about the world. Of course, our heart is our soul (our minds, intellect, personality, and will). So many Christians ignore the Holy Spirit in their daily lives (not welcoming the Holy Spirit in their hearts) and because of that many believers become frustrated not seeing the power of the Lord moving in their lives.
In Jeremiah 15 the prophet is discouraged because he is not seeing the promises of God in his life, and he has just learned of what God is going to do to the people who have rejected Him. Jeremiah is feeling sorry for himself and says this “…Will you indeed be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail and are uncertain?” Jeremiah 15:18 Amplified Bible
Jeremiah is asking God if He can be trusted! Will God be faithful to His Word or will He disappoint Jeremiah, being “uncertain waters”? Jeremiah is asking if he can trust the moving waters, the running waters of the Lord. What do the running waters refer to? In the Greek, running waters is a reference to “living waters”! Jeremiah is asking if the Holy Spirit of God can be trusted. That seems almost blasphemous to us today, and yet this is what much of the Body of Christ wonders today. We often share those same feelings of distrust for the living waters of the Holy Spirit, as expressed by the fact that we go through our daily lives without “welcoming” the Holy Spirit “into our hearts” or their soul.
It is an easy pattern for all to fall into because we are comfortable with the Jesus the Son, and the Father, but we are less comfortable with the Holy Spirit. We can trust the Holy Spirit. He is the third person of the Trinity.
J Todd Hostetler