Many times, we approach ministry situations feeling inadequate or empty. We may feel that way even after major encounters with the Lord, major fillings, powerful times in His presence. Why? I don’t know exactly–but I do know something else capable of altering how we function in light of these empty times: God has called us to be more than reservoirs of His power. He has called us to be channels. Here are five thoughts:
1). Remember the conflict the Lord had with Israel articulated by Jeremiah so many years ago? “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:13) Israel chose the container over the source of what needed to be contained.
2). Human nature gravitates towards security and control. We want to control the water so we build something to hold the water. We want the security of knowing we can have the water on our terms, how and when we want it, hence the building of cisterns. A cistern was a pit, a whole in the ground used to store water, but they were notorious for leaking. So are we.
3). A channel provides us with a much different concept than a cistern. A channel is something that water flows through. It has nothing of itself except its availability. Channels have much higher capacities than cisterns because they stay connected to the source. That’s what we need to do, and that’s what the prophet said that the Lord wanted. The Lord wants us to stay intimately connected to Him.
4). Jesus once said about Himself, “…the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5:19) And He said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.” (John 14:10)
5). Apart from the life of God dwelling in us, we can do nothing of ourselves either (unless we think we have more on board than did the Son of God!). There will be times that we feel powerful, and there will be times when we feel inadequate. Both are true. In Him, we are powerful, but in and of ourselves, we are weak.
Changing the metaphor now from containing water to properly relating to the Lord, we have this expression from the pen of the Apostle Paul, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7) It is not only important to learn that we should not try to control the life of God and restrict it to a cistern. We must also learn sufficiently that God deserves the credit for all the wonderful things we may do as we live in Him. Learning this lesson makes all the difference in how we properly relate to the Lord and how successfully we function in life and ministry.
