What Really Satisfies You?

Sometimes you just feel a little drained. It happens to all of us. You’ve felt it. I’ve felt it. There’s no reason to pretend it doesn’t happen. We all have moments in life when we just feel like we’ve got nothing left to give. Why do we feel this way?

The whole idea or phrase of feeling “drained” seems like a modern concept, right? In our fast-paced world, it’s easy to hit your physical, mental, or emotional limit pretty quick. But the concept actually stretches back further than you might think. In fact, the book of Jeremiah doesn’t just talk about this common problem, it goes right for the heart of the issue in chapter two.

You see, the people in Jeremiah’s day felt empty too. God lists the cause of this emptiness, and believe it or not, the cure isn’t just better time management. (Even though we could all probably use some of that!)

God tells his people that they’ve committed two evils:

1. They left the fountain of the Living Water.
2. They tried to fill up “broken cisterns” (think of a clay jar full of cracks).

What exactly does that mean? When Jesus walked on the scene, he talked a lot about living water. In John 4, Jesus said that he came to bring Living Water, and that those who drink from that water never thirst again. Every human on earth needs water. We all need to be filled again and again, and just like that, every human on earth was born in need of God’s presence and goodness.

If we have accepted Jesus, we have access to the Living Water that is only found in him. But just like the people of Israel, we wander away from that fountain frequently. We start looking to satisfy ourselves in other places. We look for happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment in other people, our jobs, or our circumstances.

Or maybe we’re filling up broken water jars. Are there areas of our lives that are just broken? Are they taking our time, our attention, and our energy? The answer isn’t to simply reorganize the cracks. We need to take them to Jesus and allow him to heal us. It is his goodness and his water that fills and satisfies.

We will never deplete the Fountain of God’s grace, compassion, and mercy. He waits at every moment of every day to draw us in, heal us, cleanse us, and fill us up again. When we are filled with his presence and overflowing with his Spirit something amazing begins to happen. Suddenly, our patience increases, our love for others is drawn from a deep well within us, and our joy is untouchable.

We still experience hardship, but the circumstances of this world cannot drain someone who is full of the Spirit of God. That person will overflow into a world that is desperate for a drink of Living Water that satisfies.