What Fountain are YOU Swimming in?

(Note from the author: Per a request, I may start changing the colors of these posts so they're easier to differentiate from each other!)

A few weeks ago, I was skimming through the book of Jeremiah and my eye caught a verse that made me feel uncomfortable.  (Isn't that great? haha -- my public speaking textbook calls that feeling "cognitive dissonance", which is a sense of mental discomfort that prompts people to change when new information conflicts with their previous thought patterns.  And there's your college-thought of the day.)

The verse was Jeremiah 2:13, which says, "For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of Living Waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

Americans don't use the word "cistern" all too often (it's basically a well), but in Bible times a cistern was a hole dug in the ground that served as the holding tank for their water.  Now think outside the box, away from the literal terms, and see what God is trying to tell His people.

"For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of Living Waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

People make "cisterns" out of dreams, hopes, plans, people.  God is trying to tell us that only He can fulfill us -- and only He can fill us.  We are looking for fulfillment in the wrong place, in things and people who cannot possibly fill us or keep us filled. 

That sounds like me!  Maybe I haven't "forsaken" God, but I've been pulling off the song and dance of having both "cisterns" and not letting the "broken" cistern go.  I've been praying for God to fill the cracked cistern, but even if He does one day, it will be like a sieve, and no matter how much water is poured in, it will never keep it filled.  In the end I'd be splashing around in a kiddie pool with a few inches of water in it, when I could have been diving into a bottomless ocean of God's vast, fulfilling love.  Looks like I need a prayer adjustment!  Maybe you do too.

So what does this look like for you?  Have you been focusing on a cracked cistern and praying for God to fill it?  It may be a good, wonderful thing!!  But anything that is not Jesus Christ is a sieve; it won't hold water.  Not for long.  It can't.  It's cracked.  So even if God DOES choose to fill that cistern someday (and He might, and I hope He will!) our expectations must be realistic.  We can't expect those things to fill us.  They might, for a while.  But like a water bottle with a hole in it, it will slowly leak and the water level will fall.

We've all got God-sized holes in our hearts, and -- surprise! -- only God can fill that hole.  The only "water" that can fill you up is the Fountain of Living Waters.  I'd say the better bet is God's "cistern"! 

So what fountain are YOU swimming in?  The cracked kiddie pool with a few inches of water in it?  Or the bottomless ocean of God?