Thursday, September 29, 2011
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I'll bet you turned on the water this morning and never gave it a thought. Well, you probably didn't grow up in the middle of a desert. You know, speaking of deserts, there was a great story years ago about the legendary Lawrence of Arabia. There was a movie made about his life. He had made many friends there in his campaigns and they had grown up in the desert, and they did not take running water for granted.
Well, he actually took a few of those men with him to Paris, and they stayed in a really nice hotel. And since these guys had grown up in the desert, they were amazed by this running water in their hotel room. Wow! What an event! And on the day they were packing to go home, Lawrence found them trying to remove the bathroom faucets and put them in their suitcases to take them home with them. They wanted those things back in the desert with them. At which point Lawrence explained to them that the water doesn't come from the faucet, it comes from a reservoir up in the mountains. See, they thought the water came from what the water came through.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Faucet Fascination."
Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Deuteronomy 8, and God says in verse 2, "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert." Speaking of deserts...and then He says, "He humbled you, causing you to hunger..." That's kind of curious. "...causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."
Okay, God is the reservoir. Everything we need originates from Him: the money, the friends, the transportation, the love, the spiritual support. And He sends it through earthly faucets. In this case, where He's talking about satisfying a physical need for food, He's referring to bread. And God is teaching you that bread isn't the only way to meet your need.
Now, we have a lot of earthly faucets that God's supply comes through: pay checks, special people, pastors, systems, people we've always looked to. And God can deliver a thousand different ways. We suffer from faucet fascination. We start to put our faith in the means, and then suddenly our faucet is gone: people move, people die, people let you down, jobs and companies change, things break down, things disappear. No problem! The water never came from the faucet anyway.
God has two means of upgrading our trust from the faucet to our Father. First it says here He causes you to hunger. He allows the systems to fail sometimes. Maybe you're anxious right now because you have a need with no obvious supply to meet it—no bread so to speak, like the ancient Jews. Well, we don't learn that God is our security until our usual supply dries up. Maybe that's where you are right now.
Step two: God feeds you with something like the Bible says here, "...that neither you nor your fathers had known." He comes up with this surprisingly inventive substitute for the system you have been relying on; a new unimagined means of meeting your need. And it comes in a surprising form from a surprising place. And you say, "God, it's you that it all comes from isn't it?" And you step up to a wonderful new security, one that can peacefully accept the loss of any faucet in your life. Because it was only a means that God came through.
God's your reservoir and He never dries up. So, quit trying to put those faucets in your suitcase.