Share the Well

I recently received the following email from a friend:"I'd like to get a little feedback from you on a question. The chapter? John 4, when Jesus meets the woman at the well. The question? What is the water he is refering to that will satisfy her thirst? For a long time I had the wrong idea on this water. How about you? Next, what do we need to do to be satisfied by it?"Here's the text of John 4 that the email refers to:10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. 11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? 12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? 13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. 15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.The part that leaves me with the most questions is in verse 14 where Jesus says "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;" I've got a few thoughts on what this "living water" could be, but I'd like to hear some of your thoughts on it first. As you think about it, remember that Christ said, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."

Big...really big

I'm doing some work for Caterpillar in East Peoria. One of the buildings we're working in has 1,231,000 square feet under roof. Another building has 841,000 square feet. They both have close to a mile long perimeter each. Those are really big buildings.





If you total it all up, Caterpillar has around 5,100,000 square feet of building space on their East Peoria campus.

For comparison, the average U.S. home is 2,500 square feet. Caterpillar could fit 2,040 average size homes inside the buildings in East Peoria.

It makes for a lot of walking when you're following Natural Gas piping all over the campus. :-)

Fear

Many things that are happening in our country today are a direct result of this emotion. People fear hurt. People fear death. People fear the loss of prosperity. People fear terrorism, because they see it as the vehicle that can bring all their other fears to pass.

Colin Powell has this to say about terrorism and the threat it poses to the USA:"What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?"

Powell adds, in an interview with Walter Isaacson, that to improve its image in the world, the USA should focus on welcoming newcomers. He takes on the immigration debate that has become a hot-button issue in the presidential race:

"America could not survive without immigration," he says. "Even the undocumented immigrants are contributing to our economy. That's the country my parents came to. That's the image we have to portray to the rest of the world: kind, generous, a nation of nations, touched by every nation, and we touch every nation in return. That's what people still want to believe about us. They still want to come here. We've lost a bit of the image, but we haven't lost the reality yet. And we can fix the image by reflecting a welcoming attitude -- and by not taking counsel of our fears and scaring ourselves to death that everybody coming in is going to blow up something. It ain't the case."

Entire Article

FDR had this to say regarding what should concern America: The following quote was from his 1933 inaugural address during which America was in the depths of the depression"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

read entire speech here

Jesus Christ said, in Mt 10:28, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."

Terrorism is nothing to fear. They can't take anything we won't give, but we have to come to grips with our fear of loss. We, as a nation, need to see that the things we stand for are far more important than the possessions we acquire.

If we, as a nation, had a Biblical world-view, if we could stand in the face of explosions, if we could love in the face of hate and say, "To live is Christ and to die is gain", then would the forces of terror lose.

The answer to terrorism isn't more background checks. It isn't more laws and stricter controls. It's the freedom that's found in Christ.

...one nation, under God,...

TODAY'S INSIGHT

The Congress And Supreme Court Speak

What joy for the nation whose God is the LORD, whose people he has chosen for his own (Psalm 33:12, NLT).

Dear friends:

In a previous message, I said that our national Christian and Bible-based heritage was occasionally challenged by agnostics and atheists, but after careful study, the challenges were always dismissed.

One challenge prompted an extensive study by the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. The 1854 report could not have been more clear: "At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged.... It must be considered as the foundation on which the whole structure rests.... That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants." This report distilled the collective organic utterances of the Founding Fathers, the Congress, the courts and the states.

Also, in 1892, the U.S. Supreme Court faced a similar challenge and concluded, "This is a religious people... we are a Christian people... These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation." (The Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States).

What is amazing is that in this 1892 conclusion, the Court cited 87 different historical and legal precedents from the Founding Fathers, the Congresses and the state governments, saying, "There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning; they affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation." The Court said it clearly: "This is a Christian nation."

The Court's decision was ruled by facts, and legal precedent, as it is supposed to be. Compare 87 precedents with virtually zero precedents in the 1962 case removing prayer from schools, and the 1963 case removing the Bible.

We are not talking about ancient history. In as recent as 1931, in United States v. Macintosh (1931), the Supreme Court declared, "We are a Christian people.... according to one another the equal right of religious freedom, and acknowledging with the reverence the duty of obedience to God."

Although it is not politically correct today to say so, without question America was a Christian nation. God was involved in the founding of our great nation. He has blessed America, and shed His grace on us as with no other nation in history.

Yours for helping to fulfill the Great Commission each year until our Lord returns,

Bill Bright