You Can Lead A Horse To Living Waters...
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. I Corinthians 3:6-7 (NKJV)
Have you ever been around Christians that are perfectly willing to live life in the shallow waters of Christianity? They are born-again and believe in Jesus for their salvation, but that’s as far as they go. They may go to church, but their personal relationship with God and in His Word is sorely lacking. You can tell it by how they talk and how they live. They try to fit God into their existing lives instead of centering their entire lives around Him.
These same people are typically the ones who are unhappy about how their lives are going or how things are going in the world. Because they refuse to apply themselves to the deeper things of God, they reap few of the blessings of being a child of God beyond salvation itself.
Maybe you’ve tried to tell them and even show them the benefits of going deeper with God. Perhaps you’ve shared with them about the infilling of the Holy Spirit, about the blessings to those who tithe and give, and about how the supernatural capabilities of God are still in action today. Possibly, you’ve spoken to them about the joys of digging out the mysteries in God’s Word, about the authority we have as believers to change our world with our words, or about healing and prosperity being a part of the atonement. For some people, the more you try to turn them on to the things of God, the more they resist. As the saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” I’d like to change that to “You can lead a horse to living waters, but you can’t make him drink.”
Consider the verses above from I Corinthians. Paul had planted seeds of the Word with the Corinthians and Apollos had come behind him and watered those seeds. Then, it was God who actually gave the increase. All we can do is plant the seeds and water them. The person’s soil, or their heart condition, may be good soil and the seeds may grow, or the seeds may have fallen on ground that is highly traveled, on stony, shallow ground or on thorny ground, and they did not grow to maturity (Matthew 13). The condition of their ground is not up to us.
On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. John 7:37-39 (NKJV)
Living waters refers to the infilling of the Holy Spirit where the overflow of the Holy Spirit’s power flows out of us, impacting others. Yes, it refers to speaking in tongues, but it also refers to operating in the flow of Holy Spirit power. Once we are saved, how far we go with God is up to us. How much we partake of the living waters is our choice. We cannot force someone to desire to go deeper in God. We cannot make someone plunge into the depths of His Word or exercise the authority they’ve been given to trample on the enemy. To try to do so would create frustration for ourselves and cause them to resent us and the concepts we are trying to promote.
However, we can plant the seeds by telling them about what we’ve discovered in God’s Word, about our experiences with His supernatural power, and how our lives have been changed through the promises of God. At some point, if they don’t take any interest in maturing in the Lord, the Holy Spirit will lead you to back off and just live it before them. Then, you’ll have to pray and trust God that someone else will come along and water the seeds you’ve planted.
You can pray that their hearts will become more and more receptive and that they will eventually choose to get more serious with God. And you can pray that they would experience a visitation from God and that they would be radically transformed by it.
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. I Corinthians 3:1-3 (NKJV)
The bottom line is that everyone has a free will and they may or may not choose to go any deeper than they are. And we have to honor their desire to stay in the shallow waters and likely experience a life of a lower quality than what God has for them. Paul went through some of this with the Corinthians. We cannot allow it to frustrate us or discourage us. If we’ve done what we can to lead them to living waters, we must let them decide whether or not to drink.
