The Wells of Joy

UV 492/10,000 Isaiah 12 v 3 Wells of Joy Isa 12:3 Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation. Each verse in scripture is a veritable well of salvation. Even a single verse has the power to convict a person about his sin and God’s salvation. I have come across people who have been convicted by a phrase in a single verse. The Lord will guide us to springs of water. The Word of God contained in each verse is compared to living water that cleanses us and quenches our thirst. It quenches our thirst for the truth that gives eternal life. It is not just a one-time quenching or cleansing but repeatedly on a regular and daily if not hourly basis. We will be able to live out the meaning of the song, “ Every cell in my body is happy..” The word “ draw” implies that we need to make an effort to appropriate the blessing in each verse. We must draw out the meaning and implications of each verse with a sense of joy and expectation. We need to constantly recount the verse so that it becomes a wellspring of health, blessing and salvation in our lives. It will be “ a well of water springing up to everlasting life.” Just like one would keep re-visiting a well to draw water to meet our needs, we must often revisit a specific verse and claim the promise it holds or obey the command in it. We must run the verse in our minds again and again, meditating on each word and phrase. This uni-verse underlines the fact that meditation need not be such an intense or painful process of breaking our heads over interpretation of doctrines but it can be as easy and joyful as drawing water from a well. To carry the metaphor further, the pulley we use must be our current need or situation, the bucket is our intellect and understanding, the rope is the ability to connect the single verse with the context and with the rest of scripture. In my walk with God, I must have recollected and claimed key promises or rhema verses (like Ephesians 3 v 20 or Mathew 7 v 7 or John 16 v 24) thousands of times in a variety of situations. When the promise is fulfilled, it produces joy and even more faith unto salvation in our lives. Our testimony or our lives would not then be a sob story but one full of a sense of hope, triumph and victory. We will realize that life is neither miserable nor “short, nasty and brutish” as Hobbes described it. Prateep V Philip