No Water

      

      During the next ten years we had three children. My husband was also in a struggling place with his faith. I felt as if I was trying to hold everything together. There were stresses and stains with inherited money and what should be done with it, purchases that were not prudent, but most of all, a faith that was deteriorating. I knew God was there… somewhere, but little did I know that “He would never leave me nor forsake me”.

      I started to join other groups, such as, sales organizations, exercise groups, etc. that could give me what I needed. Ones that I thought would fill that empty hole in my life, not understanding that it was a spiritual hole that I was feeling deep inside. It is not that God left me, no, I had drifted from Him. I could no longer discern the truth.

      At church, when a problem occurred in a relationship, rather than address it according to biblical principles, I became offended. I started slacking off in attendance until by the end of those years I hardly went at all. It seemed as if there was always something in the way of my getting there. A small thing, like not being able to find one of the children’s shoes that would foil my attempt. I didn’t know I was in a spiritual battle, because I was no longer reading the Word of God, the Bible. I made resolutions to read it more, but something would always happen to discourage me. The enemy of my soul only needed to neutralize my effect as a Christian, and he knew my vulnerable areas. There were many more situations of hindrance, but I save those to tell when I speak in person because of their sensitive nature. Needless to say, this clay was getting drier and drier.

       If you watch a potter with clay on the potter’s wheel, one thing you will always see, water. The hand of the potter is always being dipped in water as well as dribbling water on the clay lump itself. This is to ensure that the clay will slip through the fingers easily.
If there is no water, the dryness begins to cause a friction buildup along with a heat buildup, which makes it impossible for the clay to be moved.

      “That he may sanctify her and cleanse her by the washing of the water by the Word.” (Ephesians 5:26) This verse is about Christ and the church, and it also applies to our relationship to Him today. Without water on the clay, we cannot be moved or shaped into the next place in our process to become a vessel. We are sanctified, which simply means “set apart”, and cleansed, which means made whole from sin, by reading the Word of God. How can the Word cleanse you? If I had been regularly reading the scriptures, I would have been able to identify my sin, know how to address it, ask for forgiveness, and my sin removed “as far as the east is from the wet”. I could use it for the plum line of my life, thereby avoiding many of the pitfalls I fell into during those years.

      I remember the last days of that time span when I was so depressed and felt nothing in my life was working, and my prayers weren’t going though the ceiling. Then someone handed me a book to read that literally changed my life. It wasn’t the particular author or title, but that every circumstance in the author’s life was substantiated by the Word as she found answers to formidable situations. It was real, and it was Truth. The Word of God became water to my soul which eventually brought me back to Him.