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Water in the Desert: Our Role in Making History

We live in Southern California, a region that is home to over 20 million people—the largest metro area in the United States. Nighttime satellite photos show the region as a series of large white dots—a massive blend of street lights, building lights, automobile lights—a picture of the massive number of people who call Southern California home.

What many people fail to realize is that Southern California is in fact a desert.

How do some five thousand square miles of desert transform into a place where millions of people want to live?

Water. Water that is clean and pure enough to drink. Without water, life is not sustainable. 

Deserts are deserts due to a lack of water. The land is, well, deserted. But with water—clean, pure water—deserts become a center of life.

Jesus obviously is well aware of the transformational potential in water. That is why He described Himself as “living water” in John 4:10. He can take a life that is a virtual desert and by infusing it with that “living water” turn it into an eternal, abundant life.

The human condition can be compared to a desert. On its own, without the “living water,” it is a barren existence that is doomed to dry up, wither up, and blow away with the wind.

Surveys tell us that this condition is becoming more prevalent in our country. An alarmingly growing number of Americans identify themselves as having no religious affiliation. These people have had little to no exposure to Jesus Christ, little to no exposure to His church, little to no exposure to issues of a spiritual nature.

What is just as alarming is that these people not only have such little exposure to the things of God, they don’t care. They aren’t exactly hostile to the things of God; in their minds, those things simply add no value to their lives today.

Why should that matter to us?

These people have access to more information than any other generation in history. What’s more—thanks to the smartphone—they can access all of this information immediately. 

Yet with all of this information available at their fingertips, they have no standards, no baseline, by which to evaluate the information they access. All of that knowledge...but with no wisdom by which to discern good information from bad.

They are unable to see their condition as a desert. They don’t see their need for water—particular the living water that is Jesus.

What would happen if we, as just one little local church that belongs to Jesus, went and took that living water to our society using a strategy that would multiply the wells of living water—lives changed by the power of Jesus Christ? What would happen to our community?

What would happen to us?

Let's explore that some more. Join us on Sunday at 10:30 and let's do it together!