Our Salvation In Jesus Alone Series

After thinking about it the man decided to trust the instructions. He poured the entire jug into the pump and began to work the handle. At first, nothing happened, and he wondered if he had made a mistake. But he continued to pump with what little strength he had left until some water began to flow from the spout. Suddenly he had so much water that he drank all he wanted, took a shower, and filled all his containers.

Now the note also said: after you have finished, please refill the jug for the next traveler.” The man refilled the jug and added to the note: “Prime the pump, believe me it works”!

That’s faith and love. Do we hold onto our own understanding and what we have or do we give it all up and trust in the words of Christ to live by them and we make sure we share it with others so they too will not perish? I think the choice is obvious. We need to pour in all the water to receive the living water in our lives and to share it with others. The well will never go dry!

Then once we have experienced what God has to offer, the living water, we need to tell other people, “Go ahead prime the pump, believe me it works”! (Randy Lekliter, Sermon Central)

II. We Need a Deeper Spiritual Insight

that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

Someone once asked me how we could best strengthen the church today. In addition to biblical literacy, I told them by building families. A study by Barna research found that if both Mom and Dad attend church regularly, 72% of their children remain faithful beyond high school. If only Dad attended church, 55% remain faithful. If only Mom remained faithful, 15%. If neither parent attended church regularly, only 6% remain faithful.

Our upcoming generations have lost the skills of character and critical thinking. Your convictions are the immovable pillars of your character that are ingrained the strongest from your parents. The second thing you have to have is critical thinking. We have become a culture that believes things we see on media blindly. One of the greatest catalysts to think more critically is to view things with the wisdom of God through the Holy Spirit. This was the continued prayer of Paul for the Ephesians.

Abraham Lincoln said, "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day."

Universities these days are concerned about ideologies. Here’s how an ideology works: “What’s wrong in America? White privilege. What’s wrong in America? Systemic racism. What’s wrong in America? Abuse of women.” They want you to buy into the fact that everything that’s wrong in America can be explained by an ideology. They don’t want you to think critically about it. Instead, they want you to be sucked up into a “one-size-fits-all” ideology. That way you don’t have to think about the problem, you can just assign blame.