Famine
Pt. 2 - Patterns That Parch
I. Introduction
Two weeks ago I stood in this pulpit and challenged you to examine your own level of passion, pursuit and hunger for God. I told you that I believe we as a movement - Christianity - we are in the midst of a famine. However, I want to tell you that I believe the famine has come to roost and taken up root in Passion. Here are some of the symptoms I said reveal this fact ... the glazed over eyes, lack of passion, participation or anticipation for worship, lack of concern, lack of action, lack of obedience to the Word, lack of any discipline when it comes to study, treating gathering, as commanded by Scripture, as optional and low on the priority list. All signs of a famine. I can feel it. I can see it. I also told you this famine is a direct result of the plague of plenty. We are so blessed that we take for granted what we have. We long for yesterday thinking it was better and we become incredibly picky because when you have plenty you begin to become more concerned about preference than presence. So the type of worship song, the preference for style, etc. cause us to turn away as if it won't sustain us. I asked you an incredibly important question . . . What if manna is still the means by which God desires to fill you. Our desire for fish when God is still using manna could cause us to starve while pushing away angel food cake!
But I also told you that I also believe the famine is in its early stages and we can take steps inside this body and personally to stop it. We can take steps to stop the long term terrifying implications of it. Which brings us to today. I want to talk to you about one of the keys to stopping a famine before it becomes wide spread and fatal.
Text: John 4:1-18
Jesus realized that the Pharisees were keeping count of the baptisms that he and John performed although his disciples, not Jesus, did the actual baptizing. They had posted the score that Jesus was ahead, turning him and John into rivals in the eyes of the people. So Jesus left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee. To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon. A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch. The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans. Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.” The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this ‘living water’? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?” Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.” The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t ever get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again!” He said, “Go call your husband and then come back.” “I have no husband,” she said. “That’s nicely put: ‘I have no husband.’ You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough.”
I could point you to countless stories throughout Scripture that validate the truth I want share today. The Children of Israel's pattern of disobedience leads to repeated circling, bondage, and turmoil. Solomon's pattern of pursuit of pleasure resulted in a spiritual famine. The Pharisees' pattern of legalism resulted in a famine of form with no power. The man who positioned himself at the Pool of Bethesda had a pattern of waiting on someone else to access God and it resulted in 38 years of paralyzed famine.
However, I landed in today's text. There have been countless messages preached from this text. In fact, when I received my dad's notes for last week I had finished this message and realized he was using same text! I personally have preached about the fact that Jesus will adjust His schedule to get to us. We preach that Jesus will go where others won't go to reach people no one else will touch. We preach about the water that satisfies. You heard dad's examination of this text. All good. However, there is something else revealed in this account that is germane for our issue with famine . . .
Famine is a direct result of patterns that parch.
Patterns can parch. I want you to notice that this account is really about a woman that is living in a constant state of famine simply because of the patterns of her life. Jesus initiates a spiritual conversation and tells this lady she can have spiritual water that will bring wholeness to her. She reveals her emptiness and I believe desperation for filling when she says "please' let me drink so I won't be thirsty again." She all but says I am tired of coming here every day. Then Jesus exposes the pattern that has produced the famine in her life . . . "Go and get your husband." "I have no husband." "You are right you have had 5 and the man you are shaking up with right now isn't your husband." Jesus i attacking a pattern that this woman has of substituting and settling for human relationship in place of heavenly relationship. She constantly and consistently goes back to the same well and the same pattern which for her was men! She is literally trying to fill the void in her heart. She continues to visit that same well over and over again even though she had already proven it would not and could not satisfy.
How many of us continue to go back to the same well only to discover that it won't fill us? Too many of us are locked into patterns that parch. We are locked into jobs we hate. Worry patterns even though we have proven that the worry changes nothing and is often needless. Relationships that drain us but we won't get help or walk away. Spending patterns that are unsustainable in hopes that the next purchase will fill us with peace. Repeated trips to the same well and we are continually thirsty. Jesus stops this woman in her pattern and says that won't work.
Here is what Jesus knew that we have to get today if we are going to break the famine in our own lives . . .
Any need that is repetitive needs a system to resolve it.
If you do not have a system to resolve a repetitive need, then that need will produce a pattern that produces famine.
This woman's repetitive need for relationship with no system in place to fill it caused famine.
Another account reveals this same truth. It is the story of Gideon. The account is set against the backdrop of no system to stop the enemy. Every time the Israelites would plant the enemy would come and steal their crops. They had no system in place to resolve the invasion so famine was the result.
Here is an practical example to help us understand what I am saying . . . Mortgage. If you buy a house, which comes with a repetitive need to make a payment, but you have no system in place to secure the money necessary for the payment or no system in place to remind you to send the payment in on time, then you will experience famine.
The reason some of us are experiencing a spiritual famine is we don't have any systems in place to deal with our hunger and so then we have become comfortable in famine.
Patterns that parch must be countered with patterns that provide.
What am I saying? I am saying it is essential to self diagnosis and pinpoint patterns that parch and then step in and put patterns in place to stop the famine. Too many of us are waiting on God to bring us out of famine and He tries but because we haven't identified and stopped the patterns that produced the famine in the first place we eat/drink and then our pattern kicks in and we go right back to famine.
So let me see if I can help us.
If the pattern that patched us is no prayer, then we establish a system of prayer. If the pattern that parched us is not being obedient in giving, then we set up a system - an automatic withdrawal - that systematically sets a pattern that will provide. If the pattern that continues to produce famine in my life is a pattern of starting/stopping, then I set up a system of accountability with someone that will make me finish something. If the pattern that dries me out is secrecy, then I put systems in place in my life that expose me to scrutiny. If pride is a pattern that starves me, then I put a system in place of humbling experiences to remind me who I really am. If I have a pattern in place of isolation, then I put a system in place like a small group that will pull me into needed and healthy relationships. If I am famished because of a pattern of self centeredness, then I systematically serve so that I will get an others focus that will produce provision in my life.
Too many of us are like the woman at the well. We continue to repeat the same pattern year after year all the while it is producing famine and we do nothing about it. We just keep traipsing back to the same well hoping it will satisfy. Hoping it will sustain. Hoping it will make us whole and all that is really happening is we are becoming drier, more diminished and more trapped by the pattern!
I am asking you to do some of the hardest work you have ever done. I am asking you to examine your own life and actually look for patterns that parch.
Today's complacency is tomorrow's captivity!
Jesus is at your well today. He is asking you to go back and own up to the pattern so that you can break it. How do you break it? You put systems in place to resolve it. Jesus will show you what it will take to break that pattern in your life. If you say, I can't hear Jesus about that, then ask a trusted brother/sister. Share your pattern that parches and see if maybe Jesus will speak through them. I bet He will.
Without this step we will have to go back to the well over and over and we will discover that that well will only leave us in famine!
