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Come, we are thirsty!

 

"The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them." (Isaiah 41:17).

My wife and I have been to Haiti twice during the year of 1999. Both times our precious Haitian partner called us on the phone saying, "Come we are thirsty." Thirsty means water is needed.

 

What is this water?

I submit that the water that we thirst for is the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

"…’If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified" (John 7:37-39).

 

How do we obtain the water, and how can we give it?

In John Chapter 6, Jesus is telling the people that they need a blood covenant. The way to obtain the blood covenant is though His Word. The result is the imparting of the Holy Spirit into our life for comfort.

"The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life" (John 6:63).

The water that quenches our thirst comes through the Word of the Blood Covenant.

What is the Word of the Blood Covenant?

When we hear the real Word from God we hear:

Words of forgiveness.

Words of mercy.

Words of grace.

Words of comfort.

Words of power to overcome.

Words of hope no matter how bad we have been.

Words of hope no matter how desperate the circumstances are.

Words of God’s performance and not our performance.

Words of loving, merciful correction and discipline.

A lot of people have the word of religion. Look at the woman at the well in John Chapter 4 who was thirsty. When she discovered that Jesus was a prophet, she tried to relate to Him in religious terms. Jesus responded with the Word of the Blood Covenant. He offered her hope and forgiveness. She was wonderfully transformed and her real thirst was quenched.

As I was meditating on our friends in Haiti, it occurred to me that many of them do not have this spiritual water for their soul. There is a lot of religion in Haiti and in our world. What we need is the Word of the Blood Covenant, the real Word from God.

Instead of the Word of forgiveness, they have the words of condemnation. Instead of the Word of mercy and grace, they have words of personal responsibility. They do not hear about God’s overcoming power. When they have been bad, all they hear are sounds of condemnation and despair. They are left without hope; they are dry and thirsty.

It hurt me, but at the same time it caused me to have a new resolve for getting the anointing Word of God to these people.

 

God allowed me to feel their thirst.

The last seminar that Carol and I did in Haiti was in September 1999. The lunch, which was supposed to be served at 12:30, did not arrive until 2:30. It was 95 degrees in the church with a few fans blowing. We had several breaks since it had started at 10:30 AM. We kept asking the participants whether they wanted to keep going with the teaching or would they rather just stop and wait for the lunch to arrive. They voted to keep going. I noticed that many could not stay alert. Finally lunch came at 2:30. We were led to postpone the balance of the seminar until the next day.

Upon returning to our hotel, we noticed that I was very dizzy and weak. I almost passed out. We prayed that I would not get sick. Carol finally mixed me some powdered Gatorade. This totally solved the problem. My problem was dehydration. I could not understand, as I had been sipping on a bottle of water all day.

Then it occurred to me that those people were not hungry, they were dehydrated. I had bottled water; they did not even have that! Their drinks were with their lunch. Imagine sitting in a 95-degree church for four hours without water. We purchased 25-gallon jugs of purified water for the next seminars, and the people really appreciated it.

Thank God that we were also able to give them spiritual water.

Our public apology for being insensitive was well received by the people.

This is an issue for believers to heed. Our bodies may be in desperate need for water without making us feel thirsty. People get very sick from lack of adequate water that causes normal body functions to decrease. Before you know it you are sick and did not realize that it was due to a lack of water.

The Lord wanted me to feel their thirst as well as their undetected lack of water. He also wants us to feel their spiritual thirst. Then He wants us to believe what He promises in Isaiah 41:15-20, which says,

"See, I will make you into a threshing-sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff.

16 You will winnow them, the wind will pick them up, and a gale will blow them away. But you will rejoice in the LORD and glory in the Holy One of Israel.

17 The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the LORD will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.

18 I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.

19 I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together,

20 so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the LORD has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it."

Make sure you drink plenty of natural and spiritual water. Then find the poor and give them a drink.

 

Larry Chkoreff

January 2000