Sanctification III: Recognize your Thirst

I, Brian Jenkins, have Type II Diabetes. In a nutshell, my pancreas is having difficulty managing the insulin in my body to keep the sugars from destroying it. Let me explain.

When a person eats too many carbs and sugars, the body produces insulin from the pancreas to bind with the sugars. As it binds, the body excretes it through urination. Three things can happen at any given time. You can suffer from low blood sugar, your sugars can remain stable at a normal level or you can suffer from high blood sugar. Low blood sugar happens when the body has produced too much insulin and/or there is not enough sugar. Usually, the first thing that hits when it comes to low blood sugar is the nauseous feeling.

The effect of too much insulin and/or low blood sugar will exploit the need to eat. Vice versa too much sugar and carbs will cause high blood sugar and cause the need to drink. Once my vision became blurry, I realized I needed to go to the hospital. Yet out of the many symptoms I was facing, it was the dehydration that was the roughest on me.

When the blood sugar is high, the body begins a cycle of urination to flush out the sugar. However without insulin to bind with the sugar, the sugar won’t exit. Therefore the body picks up the frequency of urination in hopes of getting rid of it. What’s worse, due to the high volume of urination, the body experiences a continual state of dehydration. Just like that, the amount of water consumed rises yet it’s not fulfilling the thirst because what’s killing the body is the sugar.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:13-14

At the beginning of the sanctification process, we have an issue with thinking the world’s way. Having ingested and saturated our minds and bodies with rebelliousness, we fail to recognize just how dangerous it truly is for us. Jesus said he has a living water that will cause us to never thirst again. As such, a couple questions should be floating around in our heads. What is this thing called living water? Why is it important to be filled with it?

Living Water

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

John 7:37-39

Living water is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is the free gift we get for believing that Jesus is exactly who he says he is. Jesus is the only one who can give us this gift. It flows from the throne of God and of the lamb and then flows to and through us.

The Filling

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Romans 15:13

God wants to establish a line with his children to allow the Holy Spirit to flow through our lives. The Holy Spirit flows through a conduit, a channel, of faith. In our faith, we are filled with joy and peace. When the conduit is filled with joy and peace, the power of the Holy Spirit flows like a river from the throne room, given by Jesus, to our spirits, into our souls (our mind, will, and emotions), manifesting into our physical lives (experienced with our five senses).

This is why we praise and worship our God. We do this to align with the way he does things. He is a loving God. He loves us with a love deeper than we can comprehend. Zephaniah 3:17 says that not only is he in our midst, but that he sings and rejoices over us. He is a warrior who saves. If God is our number one cheerleader and savior, then we are aligning with him when we do the same.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!
Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Psalm 100:1-5

When we praise God with Joy, he connects us with his joy. When we choose peace, we connect with his peace. When we abide in love we connect with him because God is love. We do this, according to Romans 15:13, through our conduit of faith. In other words, your actions prove that you fear God believing his thoughts and words to be the truth.

High Spiritual Sugar

Now remember, with diabetes, when you have too much sugar in your system, it becomes a dangerous situation. The high sugar can affect nerves, kidneys, and even your eyes. When your pancreas is out of wack, it doesn’t produce enough insulin to bind with the sugar. Sin, rebellion, is that sugar, and it always starts off great.

Think about it. Logging in 426 hours of video games and movies drinking nothing but soda, chips, and energy drinks seems delicious at first. Anger and rage always seem the right thing to do when allowed to stand up for yourself. According to the world, how else do we solve our problems? If we’re anxious and depressed, we’re taught to solve them through drugs & alcohol. To cure loneliness, we’re taught to find that special someone who wants to be loved just as much as you do or fantasize through porn. Once we get with a person, we have free reign and the right to do something strange for a little piece of change. Essentially, it feels good to be able to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it. It’s our body, therefore it’s our right! Right?

If you find honey, eat just enough— too much of it, and you will vomit.

Proverbs 25:16

People fail to realize that over time as we give into rebellion or sin, against God and what he has decreed as righteous, we in turn choose to live with chains of oppression. In other words, the sugar of this world slowly destroys our nerves (our ability to feel), kidneys (our filter), and vision which is a sign that we are dehydrated. It’s hard to recognize the hardness of our hearts when we keep pouring sugar into our bodies.

The Sugar

Let God speak for himself…

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Mark 7:21-23

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21

The sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

1 Timothy 1:10-11

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

James 4:1-4

Spiritual Insulin

Our sinful nature continually wants to pump rebellion throughout our bodies. Just like we saw earlier in Mark 7, evil comes from within. Part of the satanic agenda of this world is to pander to our flesh so that we continue to rebel against God. This is why we don’t idolize anything or anyone. Idolizing God’s creation incites our sinful nature which in turn makes us naturally rebel against God.

We need God’s Word to know what God says and feels about everything because it binds our sinful nature. When we can see & believe God’s way of living & thinking, it forces that sugar out of our system. All at the same time it frees up our conduit of joy and peace so that the power of the Holy Spirit can flow through us more strongly.

This process is the transformation of the mind that Paul talks about. We must renew our minds daily with God’s Word. Otherwise, we will eventually feel the effect of high spiritual sugar. This is why some Christians have a hard time with God. They are unwilling to face themselves to let go of old thinking.

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
    and you will delight in the richest of fare.

Isaiah 55:1-2

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,

Romans 14:17

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

John 4:31-34

Low Spiritual Sugar

I know what you’re thinking. If sin is the sugar, and God’s Word is the insulin. How can having too much of God and not enough sin in your life be dangerous? Have you ever met a person who feels too holy to mingle with the common folk? As if they can follow all of God’s rules and everyone else sucks because everyone else fails. Did you know that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day thought that because they attempted to follow each and every law to the letter it was sufficient enough to please God? How can you be so in tune with God but miss the point of a relationship with him and with others? How can you be so far set apart spiritually yet can’t grasp the need and importance of interacting with people, with love? Being around people who think they are so high and mighty but treat people with some kind of guilt, shame, and contempt is just flat-out nauseating!

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 

Matthew 23:1-3

If you are hearing/reading this today, know that this journey is a shared journey. No one person has everything all figured out. Some of us have been walking this walk longer than others. Some of us are more mature than others. And all of us are still sinful in some way shape or form. Just know you are not alone. Sanctification takes time. We have to learn to live and abide in love, and we must learn to let go of the sugar of this world to experience the power of the Holy Spirit working through us.