The Wells of Salvation

A Devotional by Margot Cioccio

Isaiah 12:3
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

(There is a video I recorded of a song called The Well 

if it does not come to my e-mail followers please click on the title to get back to the site)

While I was at the Navigate conference several weeks ago and was feeling kind of fuzzy brained after a very early morning and most of the day spent traveling. The first night's worship service which was wonderfully refreshing. My church experience is more of one of serving and ministering to others, so it is a treat to be able to sit back and enjoy the fruit of the labor and ministry of someone else. I was talking to my pastor who was also at this event and he also shared the same experience. Its not that we don’t experience and worship God during the worship services where we are leading and serving. We do but it has a different dynamic of God flowing and ministering through you rather than simply receiving. I think there is value in making sure your leaders get away to be refreshed from time to time during the year. For me the Navigate conference was a powerful time of refreshing ministry.

As a leader I have learned that unless you become a “well” or plant yourself by the stream of living water you quickly become dried up and burned out. The demands for water from the people you are ministering to will quickly leave you empty unless you are daily spending time in the presence of the Lord to be refilled. By spending that daily time alone with the Lord over time you become a well of salvation where others many come to drink. I have been trying to encourage people to become wells. If you have been a believer very long you really should know how to tap into the river of God's Spirit that flows from His throne. Sadly I find that even people who have been Christians a long time seem to be clueless and come parched and weary running from well to well or drinking from the cups of others. Its time we learn to go to the source.  We do not need an intermediary to go be for God on our behalf. We are kings and priests before our God. We have been adopted and grafted into the family tree. Yet too many of us wander around like beggars when we should be dishing out food and living water to the broken and hurting.

It is possible if you are in a church ministry position for your well to become dry because the demands are great. Its easy to get so busy serving that finding time with Jesus becomes very small compared to the demand placed upon you for living water. It is also possible to have living water flowing through you and not realize that you have a leak. I experienced this myself recently.  I prayed for a woman and I felt the power of the Holy Spirit flow through me in a powerful way, her need was so great that she left me empty. It was in that moment as I tried to be refilled that I realized that my well had a bunch of leaks that made it difficult to refill my own well. I'm sure this is a bit out there, its hard for me to describe. The Lord gives me pictures like leaky wells to help me understand spiritual concepts far beyond my understanding. Its like trying to explain what makes an airplane fly to a child. For me it was an issue of leaky faith. God had told me some things and the circumstances were causing me to doubt what God had said and confirmed to me previously. There are times I feel like Joseph, God gave him visions of his destiny and purpose as a young man. Then he is betrayed by his brothers, sold in to slavery. While in slavery he is wrongly accused and put in prison. While in prison he interprets some dreams and is right on but still he finds himself being tested and tried by that vision that God had given him so long ago. Surely he must be crazy - right? It was 33 years that his life was seemingly on hold.
I am sure he must have had times where his faith wavered and leaked. I'm sure there were days that he felt discouraged and confused. There are some things that no matter how crazy and impossible they may seem that God keeps saying "hold on, I'm working it all out. The story is not over yet. You may have some of those kind of things too. I think Joseph made it through because he new how to be connected to God. Rather than shake his fist at God for his long years of hardship he allowed God to use it to mold and shape him. He pressed and became closer to God rather than turning away.

I am more and more convinced that most of the people I encounter during a day and quite often even the Christians don’t know where to get their own living water. Many Christians run from meeting to meeting to drink from the wells of others. Which is great, thats one of the reasons God raises up leaders in His church. I don’t think in general that people are being encouraged enough to develop that personal intimate relationship with the Lord. We need to move from babies that need to be fed milk in bottles and spoon fed to become mature believers who practice the presence of Jesus and are filled to over flowing.  For a long time even as a leader I did not understand what was happening. I would just find myself running on empty because people were drinking from my cup or pitcher and I would need to go find someone else with water to spare to get filled up. It is funny to think there could possibly be a drought of living water but I have noticed a verse that says in Amos 8:11 there can be a famine of the word of God. So I suppose there can also be a famine. We can become dry. Spring up oh well with in my soul.

 Amos 8:¹¹ “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD,
   “when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
   but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. 

Prayer:

Dear Lord, 

Cause us to become so connected to you that the river that flows from your thrown flows through us. Cause us to become wells that keep not only our own sprit watered but gives us enough to share with the parche and thirsty. Help us to disciple others to go directly to you as their source. 

Lord if there are leaks in our cup, in our pitcher or our well, I pray that you would repair and heal those broken places in our lives. Show us those places where we have started to give up on the things you have spoken to us.  Refresh and restore us even if it is many years like it was for Joseph be near us and help us to trust you. Become our source and cause us to become wells that reach deep into your underground river.

Finding and Fixing The Leaks

A Devotional by Margot Cioccio

John 7:37-38

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the Feast,

Jesus stood and said in a loud voice,

“If anyone is thirsty, 

let him come to me and drink.  

³⁸ Whoever believes in me,

as the Scripture has said, 

streams of living water will flow 

from within him.”

Not quite a week ago I prayed for a woman and I felt the power of God go out of me. I suppose much like what Jesus experienced when the women touched the hem of his garment and was healed. He said who touched me. He was in a crowd of people, I'm sure he was being jostled and bumped by many people. But it was a woman who touched the hem of His robe with faith to believe she would receive something. In that instant Jesus felt the power flow out of Him.
In that instant as I prayed for that woman, I felt the power of God flow out of me. That woman came to me for prayer believing that she would receive something. Not from me but from God through me.  I after praying with her felt empty and light headed and needed to call out to God to refill me. I have felt drained and tired since that time. So I have rested as much as possible and tried to press into God to be filled yet I have continued to feel drained.

Yesterday I was reading Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest and God helped me to connect the dots. In the November 24th passage called Direction of Aspiration. He says "Only when God brings you to a sudden halt, will you realize how you have been losing out. Whenever there is a leakage, remedy it immediately. Recognize that something has been coming between you and God and get it readjusted at once"

I realized upon reading that that I had a leak of faith in my life. I could not see it when I was full but having been emptied I was able to realize the leak. So today I have been tracing the leak back to its source. There has been something that the Lord told me to hold on to, that I have based upon circumstances, been telling myself that I need to let go of.  As a result of letting go a leak has been growing. It started out small but it has gotten bigger. I've had to go back to the Lord and repent for letting go of something He told me to hold on to. I am thankful that the Lord was gracious to expose the leak for me by allowing me to be emptied by the faith of a person I prayed for recently.
What my leak was, is much like the secret things that Mary treasured up in her heart. Thing that the God had shown her that made little or no sense at the time. Yet she held on to them and waited, and trusted that in time they would make sense. Even now they make very little sense in the light of present circumstances but the Lord tells me that my letting go of what He has told me to hold on to is the cause of the leak. So I take those promises and I hold them. I ask the Lord to forgive me for my doubt and unbelief and I ask Him to seal the leak and fill me back up.

I wonder if you may also have developed a leak in your faith. That perhaps you have let go of something that the Lord has shown you and told you to hold on to. My pastor has a series of drawings that he did of the condition of his heart. In the first there is a whole side blown out of the heart and water pours through it. He said he wondered why his heart could feel nothing. It could not contain the love of God because it leaked out as fast as it came in. He cried out to the Lord to fix it and the Lord took that broken heart and submerged it in His living water. The heart was still broken but submerging it in Gods presence kept the heart full while God worked on healing what was broken.
Perhaps your heart is like that unable to hold the love of God.  Its time to acknowledge that you have a leak that needs to be repaired. Oswald Chambers writes. "Spiritual leakage begins when we cease to lift up our eyes unto Him. The leakage comes not so much through trouble on the out side as in the imagination, when we begin to say - I expect I have been stretching myself a bit too much, standing on tiptoe and trying to look like God instead of being an ordinary humble person. We have to realize that no effort can be too high."

I don't know about you but some of the things that God has shown me and has called me to, at times seem way too lofty for one as broken as myself. Yet he calls me to hold on to those things that He has called me to walk in and to not let go of someday even though it seems far off in the distance at present.  Letting go of the things He has shown me causes many other things of faith to begin spring leaks. If I let go of one thing that He has shown me and told me to hold on then other things begin to leak and my faith begins to un-ravel in other areas. Quite often the things He shows us and asks us to hold on to seem far fetched and down right impossible. That is why it requires faith. Faith pleases God. I don't presume to know how God will work these things out, I only know that my part of faith and obedience is at this time to hold on and to believe that God is working and is able. I see now that moving from that place of holding on, short of being told by the Lord to let go only causes leaks of faith to spring up all over the place in my life. I know that a big part of my purpose in the kingdom is to carry living water to the thirsty,  to be a well of His presence. I can't do that if I am leaking faster than I am able to be filled. So I must allow the Lord to repair the leaks. I must repent of my disobedience, my doubt and my unbelief of trying to shake free of something that He has given me to hold on to.

I don't know who you are who will read this post. I suspect if you are reading it that there are probably some leaks in your faith life that you need to allow the Lord to plug. There are things He has shown you and dreams He has allowed to remain that await His timing.  He as not called you to let them go no matter how impossible they may seem in this moment.  Repent of your doubt and unbelief and for your lack of obedience to His call. Today He wants to plug and seal those leaks and fill you up to overflowing. Today He calls you to journey farther with Him to have faith and to trust Him more than you have to this point. There is a calling on your life and by faith you need to move towards becoming the person he has called you to be so that at some point in the future you will be prepared to walk in the things that now are only little visions of hope that He has called you to hang on to.

Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Help us find the leaks of faith in our lives presently. Help us to repent of those places where doubt, unbelief, double mindedness have snuck in. Help us to see those subtle shifts of belief that have caused us to think we should let go of things that you have called us to hold on to. Help us repair the leaks and then fill us up Lord to overflowing so that we may walk in your plans, purposes and calling at this present time and in the future.