Admitting Our Thirst

Jennie, why are you holding back?”

My closest friends always ask intrusive questions. Wedged into the backseat on our road trip to Houston right before Christmas, I gave my sound-bite answers, not wanting to take up too much of the oxygen in the car and knowing that my life, in comparison to so many, is just not as hard as it sometimes feels.

They didn’t buy it. Bekah pressed in again. “I see it, Jennie. I see it on you and in you. You feel so much pressure. Where is the pressure coming from?”

I looked out the car window. Tears burned in my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. I couldn’t decide if I actually wanted to go there and feel it all. As much as I tried to mean it when I declared, “I’m good,” a steady, silent grief had been growing in recent months. It seemed my chest was always tight, and many nights I lay awake half afraid and half trying to trust God with things like…

…the nagging insecurities I carry, wondering if any of the ways I am spending my life even matter.

…the growing challenges we were facing with one of our kids and his special needs.

…the grief I feel for my baby sister, who is suffering through unthinkable tragedy.

…the inescapable pressures I feel as I lead a growing organization that has taken on a life of its own.

…the weariness that all of these pressures and more bring.

…the sin that is coming out of me toward people I love because of the stress of all of it.

Ugh. Do I go there? What good will it accomplish?

Wanting to keep my composure, I held back as we drove the few hours to Houston. I wanted to hide behind the familiar posturing that would shift everyone’s attention onto the next topic.

I was silent, deciding.

But they weren’t going to stop.

Subject change. “Let’s stop and eat. Aren’t you all hungry?”

They agreed to let me eat if I would open up and tell them how I was really doing. Held hostage by these crazy-good friends, I would have to risk being vulnerable.

Somehow in the posh suburbs of Houston, we found this little shack of a burger joint with a dirt floor and no central heat. We were the only ones there. We huddled around the outdoor heater and ate some of the best burgers we’d ever tasted.

To the constant concern of our darling waiter, who continually brought me napkins, I fell apart and with a lot of tears gave my friends access to all of me: the constant inadequacy I feel, the fears of letting down those I lead or, even worse, my kids, the constant pressure I try to ignore but never seem to escape, the grief for my sister, the doubt that I often feel toward God even though I preach and write books about Him, the way I had snapped earlier on a poor intern at the office, the constant feeling that no matter how hard I try, I cannot be enough. All the things I didn’t want to say, didn’t even want to admit to myself, I said them.

For two solid hours my friends gifted me all the oxygen. They sacrificially and without judgment handed it over and forced me to breathe it in, to lovingly receive it without fear. For the first time in a long time, I laughed hard and free. The deep, happy, make-fun-of-your-life-and-yourself kind of laughter.

For those two hours I let myself be a complete fool who didn’t have an iota of her junk together. I was free of the expectations, the roles I play, the pressures of real life. Nothing about my circumstances changed in that moment. But everything on the inside shifted. I didn’t realize until then that, accidentally, I’d let my life subtly turn into a performance. On that dirt floor, I forgot all of my lines, abandoned all of my roles, dropped all of the costumes…

I had nothing to prove.

I drank in grace. I hadn’t known that was what I’d been so thirsty for. Grace. I didn’t know until I confessed my thirst on a dirt floor over burgers. My friends had that grace stored up from the contagious grace of Jesus that they all know well. Like a cold stream, Jesus’s grace poured out of them into my dry, weary, thirsty soul.

Maybe you’ve known that thirst, that deep-within-your-bones craving for relief? Maybe you feel it right now? I’m convinced every one of us is fighting some pressure, some suffering, some sin, some burden—perhaps all of those at the same time. Yet what do we all say when we’re asked the question, “How are you?”

We say, “Okay. Fine. Great.”

I have a secret for you: Nobody is okay, fine, great.

But, goodness, we are all tired of trying to pretend we are.

Are you tired? You are not alone.

The truth I found that day on the dirt floor outside Houston is available and true every day for every one of us. We need a new way to live.

Do you want off the stage? Guess what? A cheeseburger and a dirt-floor shack full of grace are waiting for you.

But I should warn you, there is a full-on war to keep you from finding it. If heaven and God and angels and demons are all real, then a real enemy is out to claim all that is good and free and peaceful and joyful in us.

So we start here. We start by realizing we are not alone. We start by recognizing that, indeed, all hell will be out to get us if we decide to live free and enjoy grace.

Ben Rector, one of my favorite musicians, often puts words to music in a way that expresses truth. He wrote, “Sometimes the devil sounds a lot like Jesus.”¹

We’ve been deceived by the lies of an enemy who knows exactly how to twist our thirst to his purposes. And we desperately need to open our eyes to his perverse tactics.

IF I WERE YOUR ENEMY…

If I were your enemy, this is what I would do:

Make you believe you need permission to lead.

Make you believe you are helpless.

Make you believe you are insignificant.

Make you believe that God wants your decorum and behavior.

And for years these lies have been sufficient to shut down much of the church.

But now many of you are awake. You are in the Word and on your knees. God is moving through you, and you are getting dangerous. You are starting to get free and leading other people to freedom. The old lies are no longer adequate.

So if I were your enemy, I would make you numb and distract you from God’s story.

Technology, social media, Netflix, travel, food and wine, comfort. I would not tempt you with notably bad things, or you would get suspicious. I would distract you with everyday comforts that slowly feed you a different story and make you forget God.

Then you would dismiss the Spirit leading you, loving you, and comforting you. Then you would start to love comfort more than surrender and obedience and souls.

If that didn’t work, I would attack your identity. I would make you believe you had to prove yourself.

Then you would focus on yourself instead of God.

Friends would become enemies.

Teammates would become competition.

You would isolate yourself and think you are not enough.

You would get depressed and be ungrateful for your story.

Or,

You would compare and believe you are better than others.

You would judge people who need God.

You would condemn them rather than love and invite them in.

You would gossip and destroy and tear down other works of God.

Either way you would lose your joy, because your eyes would be fixed on yourself and people instead of on Jesus.

And if that didn’t work, I would intoxicate you with the mission of God rather than God Himself.

Then you would worship a cause instead of Jesus.

You would fight each other to have the most important roles.

You would burn out from striving.

You would think that success is measured by the results you see.

You would build platforms for applause rather than to display God.

Then all your time and effort would be spent on becoming important rather than on knowing Jesus and loving people. The goals would be to gather followers, earn fancy job titles, publish books, build big ministries rather than to seek the souls of men and the glory of God.

And if that didn’t work, I would make you suffer.

Then maybe you would think God is evil rather than good.

Your faith would shrink.

You would get bitter and weary and tired rather than flourish and grow and become more like Christ.

You would try to control your life rather than step into the plans He has for you.

The enemy is telling you that freedom is only found in finally proving to yourself and to the world that…

you are important.

you are in control.

you are liked.

you are happy.

you are enough.

EXPOSING THE LIE

Here is the thing. The enemy promises water, but every time we go to his wells, they are empty. He gives us a sip of water, enough that we keep believing him. We have believed the lie that our cravings will be satisfied if we are enough and if we have enough. So we chase image, answers, things, people—and we wonder all the while, Why am I still thirsty?

God is clear in the book of Jeremiah about what is happening:

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.²

Water. No human can survive three days without it. No other resource is more essential to sustain life. None.

When you look at maps of some of the most arid places in the world, you find the cities all along rivers and streams of water. Where there is water, there is life. Vegetation, animals, industry, human flourishing. And in the absence of water, there is death.

I don’t think you would have picked up this book if you didn’t feel thirsty. I believe you are here because you are so thirsty you can’t stand it anymore and you pray that maybe this time you will find living, lasting water for life. I am here because I want to fight for you to live, no longer thirsty but filled. I found water. I found rest. And I will show you where it lives.

There is water for you. Not just enough to quench your thirst but an unlimited supply that will fill you and then come pouring out of you into a thirsty world. But the water you need is found in only one Source.

I’ll tell you right up front, there is no secret here. Just one answer to your thirst:

Jesus.

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink,” He says in the gospel of John. “Whoever believes in me…streams of living water will flow from within him.”³

He alone is the Source from which flows all the things we crave and hope to become.

I love that I can begin here, making no empty promises. Because my single goal is to lead your thirsty soul to streams of living water, to Jesus. He always delivers.

Why go here?

Practically speaking, nothing I am facing in my life changed that day on the dirt floor in Houston. And yet everything changed.

I didn’t feel so alone.

I felt relief.

I felt loved.

I felt like I could take a deep breath.

I felt known.

I believed Jesus more. That He forgives and is in this all with me.

I felt the groundswell of freedom that comes from living with Nothing. To. Prove.

I should warn you that finding our way out of the desert of striving and pressure will not be easy. But I hope you’ll come with me anyway. I’ll show you how I found my way out.

Let’s start at the beginning, when I learned to chase mirages of water in the desert…