Friday, May 11, 2007
He may have been the greatest American hero of his time; his name was Meriwether Lewis. When President Thomas Jefferson bought the massive Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, the size of this young country was more than doubled overnight. The land stretched from the Mississippi to the Pacific, much of it known well to Native Americans but largely unknown to white Americans. Well, Jefferson tapped his personal aide and a distinguished war veteran to lead the incredible adventure we know today, of course, as the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Following the long and winding route of the Missouri River, Lewis led his expedition all the way from the point where it ends near St. Louis to its headwaters in Montana. His longtime dream had been to find the source of that river and to drink from it. He got his dream. If only it had satisfied his thirst.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Drinking From the Source."
In a letter to a friend after he reached his pinnacle, Meriwether Lewis wrote these words: "I feel all that restlessness, which I cannot help but thinking proceeds from that void in our hearts. Whence it comes I know not, but certain it is, that I have never felt less like a hero than at the present moment." Shortly thereafter, Meriwether Lewis died of what is believed to be his own suicide.
He accomplished his greatest goals; he drank the sweet water of success and conquest and the admiration of thousands. But he still had not found what fills what he calls "that void in our hearts." Maybe you know that feeling. If you haven't gotten what you've been pursuing, whether it's a relationship, an accomplishment, a position, or you think that's why you have this incurable restlessness. If you've gotten what you thought would fill the hole in your heart, and the hole is still there, next stop: despair.
But ultimately the void is in our hearts because God isn't. In the Bible's words, we were "created by Him and for Him" ( Colossians 1:16). But we haven't lived for Him. Again, according to the Bible, 100% of us have basically done life our way, not God's way. So we're missing Him. I wish I could get into a time machine and go back to talk with Meriwether Lewis and help him understand Who he was restless for.
That's not possible, but God has put you and me together today, perhaps because He wants to show you how the thirst in your soul can finally end by drinking from the Source; by experiencing for yourself, not a religion, but a personal love relationship with the God who put you here. He says in Isaiah 55:2, our word for today from the Word of God, "Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare." Jesus, God's Son, who died to pay the penalty for you and me hijacking our life from God, made this promise: "He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty" ( John 6:35). Void filled. Restlessness satisfied. With the gap between you and God bridged by Jesus, you're finally drinking from the Source.
It starts the day you "come to" Jesus, the day you "believe in" Him, by placing your total trust in the One who loved you enough to die for you and then was powerful enough to rise from the dead. If you want to begin this relationship that you've really been looking for all these years, would you tell Jesus that right now? And then, I hope you'll go to our website. We've got a simple explanation there of how to get started with Jesus. I think it will help and encourage you. Just go to yoursforlife.net. Or you can call toll free for my little booklet Yours For Life if you'll call 877-741-1200.
There's no one else who can satisfy your thirsty soul. Beginning today, you can be, as so many of us restless seekers have discovered, thirsty no more.