[UntoHim]

Sometimes we Christians can be a strange and funny lot. We take simple metaphors, and then (wittingly or unwittingly) make a metaphor out of a metaphor. And then we make another metaphor out of...well...you know what I mean. Before you know it, we are putting up banners in meeting halls with slogans such as "The Triune God dispensed into the tripartite man as the seven-fold-intensified-life-giving-Spirit to be dispensed into the human spirit for our enjoyment (take deep breath) so that man can express and enjoy God and bring forth the ultimate expression of God and man as expressed in the local churches (take deep breath) and ultimately in the New Jerusalem which is the ultimate expression of God mingled with man for the expression and enjoyment of the Triune God".

Somewhere in Coastal Orange County California, on a nice fall day in 1975, I sat as a captive audience, of sorts, in a Friday night Gospel meeting of the Local Church of Witness Lee. I was already a believer. I had already drunk of the living water (or so I thought?!?) Here were some crazy Mormon-looking young people, standing and singing "WHAT, NEVER THIRST AGAIN? NO! NEVER THIRST AGAIN! WHAT NEVER THIRST AGAIN? NO! NEVER THIRST AGAIN! AND WHOSO DRINKITH, JESUS SAID, SHALL NEVER NEVER THIRST AGAIN!" I was like "the women at the well" in John 4. The Lord Jesus was speaking a life-giving metaphor - "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" (vr 10) This woman, as sinful and in the wrong religion as she was, was not as unperceptive and dense as most of us. She said, "SIR, GIVE ME THIS WATER!" And here we sit 2,000+ years later, deeply and sincerely pondering and questioning this ancient metaphor, when we should probably be standing up and shouting at the top of our lungs "SIR, GIVE ME THIS WATER!"

No worries my friend Trapped, this thread will not be closed. It will not be closed until one of you directs us perfectly to the Living Water, and perfectly to the Tree of Life. And even then....why close it? I'm thirsty. I want the living water. I'm hungry, I want the tree of life. I don't want to thirst again, I don't want to hunger again.

Here's the lovely and talented Emma Yang to save me from this train wreck of a post.....

Never Thirst Again!
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