Dig Out Those Clogged-Up Wells This Year

This morning in my devotions I read one of those little gems in the Old Testament. The story is contained in the Book of Genesis and is about the patriarch, Isaac.

Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the LORD blessed him. The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. So all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. Then Abimelek said to Isaac, "Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us."
So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar, where he settled. Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them. (Genesis 26:12-18)

There are always enemies, always Philistines, filling up the wells of our lives. Left to themselves, of course, the natural direction of wells is to fill up so that we can no longer draw out water. And spiritually, the direction of fallen humanity is always towards regression, not progress, towards devolution (a downward spiral), not evolution (an upward spiral). We are always in a war. When we stop fighting, when we stop drawing near to Christ, the enemy of our soul always fills up our wells with earth.

What I mean by the filling up of the well, is the overall experience of the loss of intimacy with God. It is the experience where we say to ourselves, "I used to feel God's presence. It has been such a long time since I felt truly alive in God. I used to be excited by the prospect of meeting with God. My love for God and my desire for God used to burn white hot. I used to treasure Jesus above everything else. But now I find that I am dull to his voice and dull to his correction. I am less concerned about grieving the Holy Spirit. There are a growing number of things that I treasure above friendship with Christ."

What are the signs in your life that your spiritual well has been clogged up? Let me share with you some of the signs of the clogging up of my own spiritual well. When I see the following occurring in my life, I know that I have given ground to the Philistines (the world, the flesh, and the devil). Perhaps you can identify with some of these signs:

1. I find myself wasting more time escaping into entertainment. I watch more TV, and more movies. I'm online more checking box scores and reading the opinions of sports pundits.

2. I lose my zeal in sharing my faith and looking for divine appointments.. Evangelism always flows from an overflow of spiritual life. When my passion for Jesus flags, so does my passion for evangelism. I stop being sensitive to divinely given opportunities to share my faith.

3. I waste money on unnecessary purchases. I stop caring about the fact that I am to show the same concern for the health, comfort, and feeding of other people as I show myself (that is, after all, a part of what it means to love your neighbor as yourself). Instead, I wildly over-balance the comfort, care and feeding of myself compared to what I share with others.

4. I lose self-control in my appetites, in my speech, and in my temper.

5. My conversation drifts towards the utterly secular and away from a focus upon Jesus and the thing that are close to the heart of Jesus. In fact, those subjects begin to carry with them a slight degree of boredom.

6. Old habits start reappearing in my life, especially speech problems such as gossip, slander, sarcasm and bending the truth.

7. Maritally, there is a loss of warmth and relational connection with my wife. We begin to experience more friction between us. We find ourselves just functioning together, not encouraging one another or praying for one another.

8. I find an unwillingness in my life to sacrifice, to really tighten the belt so that it pinches my flesh. When the well of my life is filled up by the Philistines, I find myself unwilling to "give financially until it changes my lifestyle." And I find myself unwilling to be really inconvenienced in service. In other words, I become less willing to go out of my way to help someone in need, or to show up at a meeting that doesn't particularly interest me.

9. All of these things are rooted in my agreement with the lie that I can stay in the same spiritual position with God whether or not I fight or wrestle or discipline my flesh, or deny myself, or repent.

Let me ask you a personal question. Do you see any of my nine indicators of the filling up of my spiritual wells in your life? Can you add to my list?

Our wells are not only filled up individually, but also communally as a church. What are the signs that the church's spiritual wells are being filled by the Philistines (the world, our own flesh, and the devil)?

1. As a church we lose the message of the Kingdom of God. What is the message of the Kingdom of God? It is the wonderfully good news that God's activity in Jesus formed the decisive turning point in all of human history. It is the wonderfully good news that the future broke into the present in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The message of the Kingdom is the wonderfully good news that the powers of the age to come, including such things as healing, deliverance, signs and wonders, prophecy, and all the biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit can be experienced in part, now! It is the wonderfully good news that the future justice of the Kingdom can be experienced in part, now! And the future reconciliation and bringing together of people can also be in part, experienced right now! Whenever the church lowers its expectation for the presence and power and wholeness of the Kingdom of God, our well is being filled up.

2. We depend more upon what we can produce by our systems, our techniques, and our organizational prowess. The church engages in much less prayer. There is less attendance at prayer meetings. There is much less listening to God. There is much less worship. There is much more dependence upon techniques, even spiritual techniques (if we could just get people in the church to pray all night, or get people in the church to engage in a certain type of spiritual warfare, or all fast for three days, then we will see a breakthrough). Dependence upon techniques, rather than a true seeking of God and the welcoming of his presence is always a sign of the filling up of the wells.

3. There is an across-the-board loss of commitment by the church: in coming to worship services each week, in volunteerism, in small group attendance, in financial giving, etc.

Why not begin this year with a commitment to dig out the wells for yourself individually, and to pray that we as a church would communally dig out the spiritual wells of the Vineyard.

How do we dig out the wells?

1. We must take ourselves in hand. Where we see a general slackness and laziness, self-indulgence in our lives, we must be willing to pinch our sinful flesh and say "no" to ourselves. That means refusing to stay up watching worthless television programs, setting the alarm so that you meet with God in the morning, making a commitment to small group and church attendance (regardless of the weather, our feelings, our busyness, other commitments, etc.).

2. We must repent of quenching the Holy Spirit by the lowering of our expectations for the presence and power of the Spirit. We must also repent of grieving the Holy Spirit through our self-indulgence.

3. We must individually and as a church return to prayer - our own individual prayer and our community prayer times.

Let me appeal to you as pastor here at the Vineyard.

1. Make a rock-solid commitment to take time every day to pray. If you need help in your own prayers, may I suggest something that I've been doing for the last couple of years? I have been using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. We have copies of this book available in our bookstore. In the morning I either pray through the morning liturgy, or I pray through what is called The Great Litany. These form the framework for my prayer to God. This framework might greatly assist your prayer life as well.

2. Consider coming to Morning Chapel once a week at Vineyard Columbus. We meet from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. We use the Book of Common Prayer as a framework for our praying. We read scripture together including the Psalms, and we take communion together. Everyone who goes to Morning Chapel reports that they are blessed by the experience.

3. Come out for our quarterly All-Church Intercessory Prayer meetings. The next one is going to be Wednesday, January 31st at 7:30 p.m. Small group leaders, why not invite your small group to join you at our All-Church Prayer meeting?

In 2007, let's follow the example of our father, Isaac, who dug out the wells the Philistines had filled up.