Jeremiah had a wonderful way of using pictures to illustrate spiritual truths. He wrote, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream” (Jer. 17:7-8).
God wanted Jeremiah to do well spiritually, whatever the results of his ministry. He wanted him to endure life’s adversities without anxiety and to help others do the same. That’s what God wants us all to do. He wants us to live life planted in the stream of the Spirit, weathering the weather and being fresh, fruitful, and faithful.
I was eighteen before I began to understand who the Holy Spirit was. I had heard about the Holy Ghost as we said the creed every day in school assembly, but I had no clue about anything I was reciting. If I had given the subject any thought at all, I imagined a sort of sheet-shrouded ghost haunting old English graveyards! Only after becoming a Christian did I learn that the Holy Ghost (the Holy Spirit) is the third person of the Trinity, equal with God because He is God.
The symbol of water to describe the person and work of the Spirit has been particularly meaningful to me. Maybe that is because at the age of eighteen I was parched and dry, having drunk at the broken springs of water that did not satisfy me. As I began to study the Scriptures, I noticed that blessing, fertility, and water are used almost interchangeably in the Old and New Testaments.
Jesus said to the woman at the well of Sychar, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water” (John 4:10). This woman had been drinking at the river of her relationships. She had had five husbands, and the man she was living with when Jesus spoke to her was not her husband. Jesus offered her a spiritual experience that would quench her thirst—a relationship with the living God.
We will never finish strong unless we understand what it means to have our roots in the river of God. Life in the Spirit means our faith is freshened by the water of life moment by moment and day by day until our confidence and trust in God are so obvious that even total strangers will notice and comment on them.
Whatever God is calling you to, I encourage you to plant your roots in the living water and experience the confidence that comes only from Him.
