{"id":4329,"date":"2009-04-23T18:07:57","date_gmt":"2009-04-23T22:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/april2009\/?p=99"},"modified":"2009-04-23T18:07:57","modified_gmt":"2009-04-23T22:07:57","slug":"impoverished-ministry-of-jesus-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/2009\/04\/23\/impoverished-ministry-of-jesus-2\/","title":{"rendered":"IMPOVERISHED MINISTRY OF JESUS"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>From whence then hast Thou that living water?<\/p>\n<p>     &#8212; John 4:11<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;The well is deep&#8221; &#8211; and a great deal deeper than the Samaritan woman<br \/>\nknew! Think of the depths of human nature, of human life, think of<br \/>\nthe depths of the &#8220;wells&#8221; in you. Have you been impoverishing the<br \/>\nministry of Jesus so that He can not do anything? Suppose there is a<br \/>\nwell of fathomless trouble inside your heart, and Jesus comes and<br \/>\nsays &#8211; &#8220;Let not your heart be troubled&#8221;; and you shrug your shoulders<br \/>\nand say, &#8220;But, Lord, the well is deep; You cannot draw up quietness<br \/>\nand comfort out of it.&#8221; No, He will bring them down from above. Jesus<br \/>\ndoes not bring anything up from the wells of human nature. We limit<br \/>\nthe Holy One of Israel by remembering what we have allowed Him to do<br \/>\nfor us in the past, and by saying, &#8220;Of course I cannot expect God to<br \/>\ndo this thing.&#8221; The thing that taxes almightiness is the very thing<br \/>\nwhich we as disciples of Jesus ought to believe He will do. We<br \/>\nimpoverish His ministry the moment we forget He is Almighty; the<br \/>\nimpoverishment is in us, not in Him. We will come to Jesus as<br \/>\nComforter or as Sympathizer, but we will not come to Him as Almighty.<\/p>\n<p>The reason some of us are such poor specimens of Christianity is<br \/>\nbecause we have no Almighty Christ. We have Christian attributes and<br \/>\nexperiences, but there is no abandonment to Jesus Christ. When we get<br \/>\ninto difficult circumstances, we impoverish His ministry by saying &#8211;<br \/>\n&#8220;Of course He cannot do any thing,&#8221; and we struggle down to the deeps<br \/>\nand try to get the water for ourselves. Beware of the satisfaction of<br \/>\nsinking back and saying &#8211; &#8220;It can&#8217;t be done&#8221;; you know it can be done<br \/>\nif you look to Jesus. The well of your incompleteness is deep, but<br \/>\nmake the effort and look away to Him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From whence then hast Thou that living water? &#8212; John 4:11 &#8220;The well is deep&#8221; &#8211; and a great deal deeper than the Samaritan woman knew! Think of the depths of human nature, of human life, think of the depths of the &#8220;wells&#8221; in you. Have you been impoverishing the ministry of Jesus so that&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}