Coke Machines vs. the Holy Spirit

[HKHaugan]

Coke Machines vs. the Holy Spirit

       Mountain Day was one of the climbs that had become a tradition in the prep school I taught at in New Hampshire.  Every new student had to make the climb.  Mt. Chocorua seemed to be the favorite choice of one of the teachers who led the trip.  It’s a relatively gentle climb to 3500 ft.above sea level.  I liked the climb and went on the trips with them.  Thinking it would be easy, very few had a water bottle even though they were told to bring one.  The teacher leading the trip would always say several times along the way, “Don’t worry boys, there’s a coke machine at the top.”  Those of us who knew would simply smile.  After reaching the top, the views were wonderful but fortunately in the Fall it’s cool, so thirst was there but not severe.  I doubt those new students will ever forget to take their water bottles with them, beautiful views or not.  But they made the climb anyway.

       If there had been a coke machine at the top, they would have found that their thirst was quenched but only for a few minutes.  Soft drinks are deceptive.  So are a lot of things we use to quench our thirst.  The point of this little picture is you need to trust what an experienced leader says and the spirit behind what he says.  It could mean life or death in a more strenuous circumstance.  Nothing can replace water.

       Spiritually, which is how we make our choices and decisions, only the Holy Spirit can quench the spiritual thirst to be right in all we think and do and nothing can replace the other ‘thirsts’ and ‘hungers’ we have.  Acceptance, self-worth, dignity, identity, relational fulfillment, ambition, inner peace, security and happiness.  These are spiritual thirsts.

       Anything less than a relationship with Jesus will never be able to fill spiritual thirst, spiritual hunger or spiritual emptiness.  Religion, philosophy, economic and social success plus whatever else people devise to fill the void, dry up.  They are the soft drinks, the deceptions with their empty promises.  It’s not that they are bad.  It is that they are not lasting.  As Jesus said about Jacob’s well that even if you drink from that well you get thirsty again, but He is the only one who can give “living water.”  John records the Samaritan woman asking, “Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a fount of water springing up to eternal life (Jn.4:13-14).”  The water of life is the Holy Spirit, the person of God that brings energy, push, effort and wisdom into who and what our mind analyzes, our heart trusts and our spirit feeds; the image of God fulfilled.