Are You Drinking in the World?

Teaching people about health and wellness has been a part of my job for four years now. I talk to people about the importance of drinking water. It is always interesting to me to watch people’s reactions. I remember my own! I hated water. I would go months drinking everything else but never letting my lips touch water. I was dehydrated and was on an uphill climb of obesity. I have learned the biggest reason people do not want to drink water is that they drink too much pop, aka soda. Pop is changing our taste buds and what we consider “sweet”. Our pop consumption increases every year. Research shows we drink an average of 50 gallons of pop per person, per year. We have tripled the size of a normal pop bottle since the first coke glass bottle came of the scene in the 1950’s. Today, the average young teenager consumes 23-26 teaspoons of sugar per day directly from pop. Also, pop is now our biggest source of calories which is adding to our growing obesity epidemic. Those that drink pop regularly have a 31% greater risk of becoming overweight. The studies show that it does not make a difference whether it is regular soda or diet soda. Considering the calories we consume drinking what some call ‘liquid candy’, it is horrible that there is no nutritional value to it. We call it empty calories. Drinking pop does not satisfy our real thirst, it actually leaves us more thirsty, but it does take away our desire for water. Even diet soda makes us fatter because the artificial sweeteners induce a response of “hunger” from the brain, leading to over eating. As if this is not bad enough, pop takes away our smile because it ruins our teeth. Pop is ruining our health and yet we continue to spend $68.1 billion on this carbonated drink a year.
It seems so incredible that we consume something that leaves us empty and thirsty; something that robs us of our health. We accept feeling miserable for a drink that is worthless. Yet, the pure water that can give us health and healing, we resist! Basically there are two things wrong with drinking pop. One, it keeps us from drinking pure water and two, it offers us nothing to sustain life; it is of no value to us.
Again, the situation is the same from a spiritual perspective. We become spiritually dehydrated when we do not drink in the Living Water because we drink in too much of the world, our spiritual pop. It is something that steals our spiritual health. It leaves us empty. It robs us of our happiness, our smile for life. The world never satisfies us, it leaves us more thirsty. It is nothing but empty calories and we can find no sustenance in it. In the end it makes us fat and lazy Christians. We can get so busy doing the things of the world that we do not find time for God. Worse, we don’t even have a desire to spend time with Him because the world changes our desires.
When we forsake the Living Water for things that are worthless, scripture calls it ‘evil’. That is a hard word to swallow. However, we must not forsake God for the things of this world. It is easy to let the world consume us to the point of abandoning God. We spend time growing our careers, watching TV, reading, cleaning, shopping, eating out, etc. We do pretty much what we want and then say we do not have time for God. I have admitted to you that this has been a problem in my life. My time with God has been squeezed out for the things I wanted to do.
When was the last time you gave up something you wanted to do in order to spend time with God? In the end, what gives you nourishment, health, and healing? Doesn’t the world leave you empty and still thirsty? Quench your thirst with Living Water which is the only thing that can satisfy!

“For my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living water and they have hewn for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns which cannot hold water.”
Jeremiah 2:13