1.5 Whosoever Will
And the one who thirsts, let him come; the one who desires, let him receive the water of life freely (Revelation 22:17), or, as the King James words it – And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
It is important to God that you and I understand the perimeters of life versus death, for He Himself has placed these two side by side through every part of the Bible. Yet God’s purpose is NOT that we would “fight against death” as if it were an in-part struggle of “good versus evil.” God’s purpose is that we would run freely and with all JOY into LIFE, into Jesus, into knowing God, the One who shares our life with us every moment.
The Topics of This Lesson. Revelation 22:17 and Romans 13:14 are identical in meaning. Receive the water of life freely. – Put the Lord Jesus Christ upon yourself. Or we could say it this way – Know Jesus Sent into you.
But the topics of this lesson are the meaning of God’s metaphor of “the water of life” and the meaning of “whosoever will.” Drinking of the water of life is the easiest thing in the world, something any and every human can do with all fervent joy, something available to every single person. This book is “Eat of the Tree of Life,” but “Drink of the Water of Life” is the same thing. God likes an abundance of metaphors. He likes us to know Him.
What Do You Want? Jesus asked a question frequently and of many. – “What do you want?” In fact, to blind Bartimaeus, He worded it this way, “What do you want Me to create inside of you?” Paul said that God was inside of Christ reconciling the world to Himself. That means that, just as Jesus respects us personally and individually, so also does God. God wants to know – What do you want? And He wants from you a long, deep, and honest look at your true desire.
Adam really WANTED to control his wife. Esau really WANTED a bowl of soup. Ananias and Saphira really WANTED to appear ‘righteous’ to their fellow Christians. Knowing God was just not important to them.
We Want Life for Real. The questions “Are you hungry” and “Are you thirsty” really are asking, “Do you want to KNOW God?” And the question “Do you want to KNOW God” is really asking, “Do you want to live?”
A negative response to God’s question, then, can be only, “No thanks, I like death a whole lot more.” Sadly, such a one is actually choosing their own carefully crafted self-story, a self-story that is missing the key parts, having filled in those key parts with nonsense. But you and I want to live; therefore we hunger for the knowledge of God and we thirst for springs of living water always arising inside of us. Our own life is a disaster; we want Life for real.
My Soul Thirsts for God. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for just innocence, for they shall be filled (Matthew 5:6).
“Everyone drinking of this water will thirst again. Whoever drinks out from the water that I will give him, however, will never thirst in this age, but the water that I will give him will become inside of him a spring of water bubbling up into age-unfolding life” (John 4:13-14). – “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37).
As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God (Psalm 42:1-2). – This is age-unfolding Life, to know You, the One True God.
The Problem. We must then ask the critical questions. First, what, exactly, do we drink? And second, how do we drink? Or we could say it this way. What, exactly, is knowing God? And how do we know God?
Here is the problem. – The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. … He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this’ (Matthew 13:24-28). – The parable is this: The seed is the word of God (Luke 8:11).
Tares and Wheat. Christianity has given us a knowledge of the Bible that is filled with tares, as Jesus said. Tares and wheat look identical until it is time to bear fruit. The extraordinary thing is that the same verse can be tare or wheat depending on the one receiving that verse.
Refer back to the chart in Lesson 1.3, “Placing Bible Verses.” The same verse can be found in the knowledge of good and evil OR we could know that verse inside the Tree of Life. What changes is the meaning of the words and how we make use of those words. Thankfully, what never changes is Jesus, our Savior. He alone saves us, and He is very good at His job.
A Desperate Choice. One thing that does change dramatically when we remove it out from the tree of death and know it only inside the Tree of Life is the word saved/salvation. Nowhere in the Bible is salvation ever presented as “going to” heaven after you die, yet that false meaning is forced onto every verse in the Bible. Salvation is something quite different.
But this lesson is about drinking of Life and “whosoever will.” It is a desperate thing to choose “knowing God,” for we are resisted by Christianity in this world and by preachers and theologians every step of the way. Thirst is a dangerous thing. Many are caught in excitement only to end crashed upon the rocks.
Tantalus and Sisyphus. What is our safety? And how do we know the way?
There are two “Greek” myths, one ancient and one modern, that speak of our experience in the Christianity we have known, the myth of Tantalus and the myth of Sisyphus. The gods wanted to punish Tantalus, and so they chained him to a rock and left him without food or water. Every little while, a lovely platter of luscious food and drink came close to Tantalus. He reached for it with great hunger and thirst, but then it pulled back just a bit, remaining always beyond his reach. Sisyphus was given the task of pushing a heavy stone up a hill. Every time he got the stone to the top, after much labor, it rolled back down to the bottom, and he had to start again, over and over.
Thirty-Seven Years of Heartache. I hungered and thirsted to know the living God from age nineteen to age fifty six, yes, for 37 years, and through all those years of longing and heartache, my experience was made the same as Tantalus and Sisyphus, not by God, but by Christianity in this world. I would draw near, drawn by the word being preached, drawn to enter into the knowledge of God, but, just as we would have stepped through the wide-open veil, the vision was withdrawn from us and we were pointed, once again, to a “Jesus” far away and a “salvation” someday. I was told that if I wanted to know Jesus, I had to “get up out of myself” first, a labor in which I never, ever succeeded, but my THIRST made me try again and again and again.
They Lied to Me. I wrote these words when I was fifty-seven years old. “They lied to me. They lied to me. When they told me that You were far away from me in my distress, when they told me that my mistakes meant I was in trouble with You, they lied to me. And all those years of heartache came from something NOT TRUE. You are so close; You are my life and my breath. You are bound to me in perfect Covenant Bond forever. We walk together in all ways as one. Oh Father, I am so sorry for believing them, I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to.”
When I say, “They lied to me,” I am talking about wonderful Christian people whom I love and whom I carry inside my heart in the presence of God.
We Are Going a Different Way. We love our brothers and sisters in Christ. We love the same Jesus whom they love and the Jesus who carries us also carries them. We are not against them, but if we want to KNOW the living God, then we are going a different way.
But who am I, that I would imagine I could connect you in some small way with KNOWING God your Father? I make only one claim concerning myself. That claim is that I have found ALL I ever wanted. I live daily in the knowing of God my Father sharing every moment of my life with me. And I know God my Father through knowing Jesus Sent into me as every Word God speaks, connecting me always with God through His Blood.
The Answer to Our Question. Let me give a partial answer to our question. – What do we drink and how do we drink? The answer to that question comes out from one verse in the Bible and it always takes us into one other verse in the Bible.
The answer always comes out from John 6:63 and it takes us always into John 14:20. – The Spirit is giving life; the flesh benefits nothing. The words that I speak into you are Spirit, and they are life. I cannot cause you to know the meaning of these words, but there is One who can – and you must deal straight with Him. – In that day you will know that I am inside of My Father, and you inside of Me and I inside of you.
The answer to our question always comes out from “The words that I speak into you are Spirit and they are Life” and it always takes us into the Father, inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of us.
Two More Thoughts. Yet other verses add their meaning to this equation. Here are two more critical verses to our question – What is this living water we would drink?
– The Word of God is living and energeoing and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating through… [everything we are] (Hebrews 4:12). – It is fully made visible that you ARE a letter of Christ… having already been written… with the Spirit of the living God …inside tablets of hearts of flesh (2 Corinthians 3:3 – reduced to the positive).
Personal Living Spirit Word. What is the water of life? The water of life is Personal Living Spirit Word entering into you to be written all through the pathways of your heart. Personal – Jesus; Living – God-Life; Spirit – by My Spirit, says the Lord; Word – every Word God speaks, every verse of the Bible, the All-Speaking of God, the One who carries me.
Then, how do we drink? – I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them (Mark 11:24). – Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). This is the work of God, that you should believe into Him whom He sent (John 6:29). Ask God – and then believe you have already received ALL!
The Only Thing You Want. Whosoever will. – What do you want? The decision is entirely yours.
But if you will walk with me through the chapters of this book, I will take you into the vast breadth and depth of the ten ruling verses of the Bible, and I will show you wonders. In every instance, with every word, you and I together will ask God to fulfill His word in our lives – Let it be to me. And then we will believe that He has done exactly that, already, in full. You will KNOW God your Father through knowing Jesus Sent into you, and you will live LIFE shared with God.
I know already it’s the only thing you want.