Rock of Horeb by Mariano David Otero ©2010-2014 MarianoDavidOtero

Today has been a different sort of day for me, so today’s post is more of me sharing in a blog what has been rolling around in my head for the past week or so.

Drink water

Are you and avid water drinker? If you aren’t part of the “get fit” crowd, chances are you go through your day without so much as a single glass of water. We have lots of sports drinks, sodas, milk, tea, coffee, fruit juices and even very tasty vegetable juices, not to mention beer and liquor. Our bodies need water for their functions.  If I may, I thought I’d grab a quick list from a fun site (though we could turn to medical journals for a more scholarly approach)

source: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/why-your-body-needs-water.html

Your body is mostly (50 to 70 percent) water. Exactly how much water depends on how old you are and how much muscle and fat you have. Muscle tissue has more water than fat tissue. Because the average male body has proportionately more muscle than the average female body, it also has more water. For the same reason — more muscle — a young body has more water than an older one.

You definitely won’t enjoy the experience, but if you have to, you can live without food for weeks at a time, getting subsistence levels of nutrients by digesting your own muscle and fat. But water is different. Without it, you’ll die in a matter of days — more quickly in a place warm enough to make you perspire and lose water more quickly.

You need water to

• Digest food, dissolving nutrients so that they can pass through the intestinal cell walls into your bloodstream, and move food along through your intestinal tract.
  Carry waste products out of your body.
• Provide a medium in which biochemical reactions such as metabolism (digesting food, producing energy, and building tissue) occur.
• Send electrical messages between cells so that your muscles can move, your eyes can see, your brain can think, and so on.
• Regulate body temperature — cooling your body with moisture (perspiration) that evaporates on your skin.
• Lubricate your moving parts.

As much as three-quarters of the water in your body is in intracellular fluid, the liquid inside body cells. The rest is in extracellular fluid, which is all the other body liquids, such as

• Interstitial fluid (the fluid between cells)
• Blood plasma (the clear liquid in blood)
• Lymph (a clear, slightly yellow fluid collected from body tissues that flows through your lymph nodes and eventually into your blood vessels)
• Bodily secretions such as sweat, seminal fluid, and vaginal fluids
• Urine

Personal confession: while growing up, I did not enjoy drinking water directly unless it was during a break in Wrestling or Football practice. After serving in the Army, I learned the value of good drinking water, even from a plastic canteen that has been sitting in the 90ºF sun for several hours. However, whenever I am comfortably in my home enjoying time with friends and family and not breaking a sweat… I don’t turn to water, I go for some of those empty calorie drinks. Why? Because they taste goooood. Sure, in every consumable liquid there is some measure of water; however, the body has to work a lot harder to use what little water is available and some of it has to be then used to cleanse the system of impurities (pointing mainly at the sugary sodas, coffee, tea, and alcoholic drinks). When a doctor prescribes “more fluids”, we should understand “water” (you should get your electrolytes from eating good foods, it doesn’t have to be in drink form).

Drink Water

John 4:1-15 (ESV) | Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

This passage is often heavily spiritualized (particularly within the continuationist view) pointing to God the Holy Spirit. This passage isn’t just about God the Holy Spirit, but about the Word of God, the Word made Flesh in Jesus Christ and in the Written Word that was Breathed Out by God. Without the Holy Spirit we cannot hope to see God in the Scriptures; however, we who have received faith by hearing the Word of God and have accepted the Law and Gospel of Jesus and been baptized have been sealed in Christ by the Holy Spirit, who teaches us as we read the Written Word of God.

During any given week, I read through some 20 or so discernment articles or blogs, and listen to a good 15 hours of exegetical teaching, discernment ministries, commentaries, and (regrettably) some really bad sermons. The answer I jump to in almost all cases is “read your Bibles”. Last week, while I was listening to one of the bad sermons, I heard the false teacher implore the listeners to “read their Bibles”.  That’s when it struck me… they don’t know how to read their Bibles, and the false-teacher knows it. The false teacher presents himself (or herself) as the keeper of the well. They are the only ones who know how to draw the water, because the well is so deep. So they’ll say in one breath “read your Bibles” and with the next they’ll twist a passage completely out of context to woo the crowd and impress them with their sugary drink theology. The question that is left in the mind of the listener is, “why is it when I draw my own water (Read the Bible) it never comes out tasting so sweetly?” There is no way to read the Bible yourself and come up with the wild allegories and “life applications” that these false teachers peddle, and they know it. But they are counting on you to defer to their teaching for your next “sugar rush” more than they are on you clearing your palate.

A child who has grown up on a steady diet of fruit juices and milk will find water unpleasant to drink. It tastes bland without all of that sugar. There aren’t any bubbles. There’s no buzz.  Even as an adult, have you ever tried to eliminate extra sugar from your diet? It makes everything taste… well… blah. The truth is, you’ve grown accustomed to high-fructose sugary everything. Your palate has been overloaded for so long, you have no idea just how much sugar you ingest without noticing (incidentally, we also tend to do this with salt). Most people can’t handle going from a normal-high sugar diet to a balanced diet and hold steadily. I find that I need to reset my palate first by eliminating as many sources of added sugar as possible, so that I can once-again detect when my food/drink has been sweetened.

Learn to Read Your Bible and Drink Pure Water

What we try to focus on here is pointing out to our readers what it takes to read the Bible for what it says, without additives. Please, take a break from all of the NY Times Best Sellers advertised in your Christian bookstore, and learn to read your Bible. I recommend getting a good coach. I’ve learned a lot from listening to Chris Rosebrough at Fighting for the Faith, Jonathan Fisk at Worldview Everlasting, Alistair Begg on Truth for Life, and Todd Friel at WretchedRadio. For those keeping track of denominations, that’s 2 Lutheran, 1 Nondenominational, and 1 Reformed. From time to time, if we get side-tracked and you feel we’ve not made clear where we draw our connections in the text, please challenge us here. Let us know when we’ve skipped a step or erred entirely. Hold us accountable, so that we might be Faithful Stewards of God’s Word.

Colossians 3:16-17 (ESV) 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Amen.
In Christ Jesus,
Jorge