Deceitful Hearts and Living Water

        A lot of data gets plugged into my memory bank these days in which I really have very little interest. We usually like to know the weather forecast and in trying to find out that information, we also learn about the latest breakup in the Hollywood group of the latest and more horrific crimes committed upon humanity. We used to have a game similar to “Can you top this?” Each one's story gets more magnified as each tries to outdo the other. Society seems to be bent on trying to produce a more horrible event and so we get the barrage of news comments that really do not interest me. To me, the obvious answer lies in a change of heart. That is simple to say but we realize that it isn't going to happen because man's heart is bent on going another direction. Jeremiah 17:7-9 says, “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

        A change of heart could take place but that will only occur when people come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. There was a withered tree at Washington Bible College and a fellow student and I would look at that tree as waited for our entrance into a class and compare it to Psalm 1. We would say that it's roots were not reaching the water and therefore was destined to eventually die. Jeremiah makes the same comment as did the Psalmist in that a person who receives nourishment from God is one who will be fruitful and one who will grow not fall apart when the going gets tough. Jeremiah brings that out in verse 7 and 8 but then goes on in verse 9 to present a big problem and that is the condition of the heart of mankind. Trees can't move themselves to the water and so will die unless something happens in which they cannot control. We could transplant them or give them a water source and thus make them fruitful. I was in a mining town in Chile in the desert, a part of the Anaconda Copper Mines and every tree had a pipe coming to it with a continual water supply. If you wanted the tree to live, then it had to have water. We know where our water source is because we have experienced the Living Water. If hearts are going to be changed from their wicked state, then Living Water has to be applied. Who is going to do that? It's going to up to believers to share the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Living Water, to unbelievers. We keep on proclaiming the old, old story over and over again and it is the story of how the Lord Jesus Christ came to die for our sins. It is our testimony of what Christ did for us. It is the story of John 3:16 or First John 5:11-13. It is the story of salvation. Man's ways are certainly not God's ways and so a change needs to be made and only God can do that. Praise God today that He saved you and me and many others and that He alone is the answer to the problems of our culture today.