Never Thirst Again

October 14th, 2024

"God honored my heartbroken plea for help and overabundantly blessed me, gave me work to do, and restored much that I had lost." In today's blog, Brian Miller, a guest writer for Reasons for Hope, recounts his personal journey of finally realizing what drinking of the Living Water means and why He'll never thirst again.

This is a story of “a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways,” (James 1:8) who couldn’t begin to fathom just how “deceitful and desperately wicked” his heart was (Jeremiah 17:9), a man enslaved by sin and condemned by the law written in his heart, who avoided the light of the Cross, and was vain in his imaginations and thus had a darkened, foolish heart.

This son of a preacher, knew of God, of Jesus Christ, knew of His attributes and promises, and was taught zealously by his parents the truth of God’s Word, but he didn’t truly know the Son and became religious as a teenager and found no power in himself to measure up to the external standards he thought he had to maintain to be acceptable. So he turned to the seeming freedom offered by the Enemy and became a prodigal son, a runaway rebel as a young adult until that life cost him his wife and nearly his life at 30.

This man was me.

The bottle became my best friend to cope with the grievous wounds I had suffered, the victimhood I assigned myself, the self-loathing yet prideful despair “where the floods overflowed me,” and I became “weary with my crying.” Then, at 35, out of sheer desperate self-preservation, “this poor man cried and the Lord heard him and delivered him from all his troubles” (Psalm 34:6) for “He brought me up out of a horrible pit … And set my feet upon a rock and established my steps” (Psalm 40:2).

God honored my heartbroken plea for help and overabundantly blessed me, gave me work to do, and restored much of what I had lost. I once again became religious in an attempt to please and honor God for rescuing me.

I thought just a little more knowledge would straighten out the picture for me, but it never could.

Whereas I ran from God in my lawbreaking and licentious living before, now I ran from Him in my law-keeping and legalism, mostly unaware of my immense pride and rationalizing my secret sins through the lens of this lost world’s bankrupt moral relativity.

The late Dr. J. Vernon McGee noted this in a study on Ezekiel 2–3:

The hardest people in the world to reach today with the Gospel are church members. … Those that are in the church that are actually in rebellion against God. They have rejected the Gospel. They’ve actually rejected the Word of God. … They play at church. It’s a nice game. They want to be nice and sweet and keep their nose clean, and they want to live their life on the surface that is a very sedate and comfortable life. And they don’t want someone coming in and telling them that they’re lost sinners, and they need to be saved and become obedient unto God. They’re a hard people to reach.

That was who I was―a people-pleasing church-goer who didn’t realize my lost condition and sought mainly my own comfort. I kept trying to straighten my own crooked picture of Christianity―which, intellectually and logically, I knew to be the truth. I listened to messages and read books from Bible teachers and apologists like McGee, A.W. Tozer, Ravi Zacharias, and Chuck Missler, amongst others. I thought just a little more knowledge would straighten out the picture for me, but it never could. God blessed me with a loving Christian wife and financial security, but those things can never bring lasting peace, joy, or surety.

When Missler declared, like he often did in his messages, the “most terrifying verses in the Bible”―Matthew 7:21–23: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name … and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”―my conscience would cry out, “Is that me? That can’t be me!”

Finally, in the past year, the “Hound of Heaven”¹ really began to nip at my heels. He allowed secrets to be revealed to me, things which greatly savaged my heart and ripped open old scars. He showed me things in my heart that revolted me: the stress of money, the lack of peace in any plan I could come up with to honor Him, and the inability to communicate effectively with my wife anymore―I didn’t think she understood how badly I was hurt –caused me to slip into some old habits that I thought I had moved past. Death, my greatest enemy, again began to cause me great trepidation.

I wondered about other people’s supposed relationships with Jesus and why, despite all the facts I knew, I didn’t seem to have a personal one. Jesus was the most beautiful historical figure I knew of—by far—and He promised a personal relationship to be my best friend. But I did not have that, so I told myself that that was just the way it must be for everybody. I was too scared and prideful to ask questions.

To cut to the chase, God was merciful, tender, and so very personal those final few weeks as, in agony, I grasped desperately for peace. There’s a whole lot more to the story, grace upon grace. But, on the third morning after Easter, after a night spent working, I found myself by our bedside watching my wife sleep, deeply grieved by my inability to communicate with her anymore.

Jesus said in John 12:32, “And I, if I be lifted up… I will draw all men to Myself,” and I was inextricably being drawn by God’s hesed, His steadfast love, eternal mercy, lovingkindness, and everything else that beautiful Hebrew word entails. The red letters of Jesus' words―his parables which cut to the heart of all matters―resonated when suddenly I sank to my knees by the bedside to repent.

I began to pray: “Oh God, I am so sorry for (my lack of grace) toward my wife. I know she was a gift from you. I promise…”

As those words escaped my heart, I suddenly stopped in abject horror as the light of the Cross shone, and I realized the condemning error of my ways. “I’m Cain, I’m Cain,” my conscience screamed, “I’m bringing my best to God and expecting His blessing for my goodness.” I could now see myself clothed in filthiness at the Cross. It was me driving in the nails, spitting, mocking, cursing the Perfect Lamb. Yet Jesus was gazing at me with eyes of such love and tenderness, and in that moment, I finally understood the Gospel. I finally knew my wretched condition. I finally knew Christ’s unrelenting love in pursuit of me, a stubborn, proud, miserable, hopeless fool.

I went to my face on the floor and moaned, “No, no, no! It’s not me. It’s not me. It’s You! It’s Jesus!” And in that moment, the crooked picture went straight, and I knew that Jesus was there with me, for He absolutely flooded my heart with love, joy, peace, and understanding. I finally knew I was forgiven, accepted, redeemed, beloved, chosen, an heir, and all those precious promises of Ephesians 1–3 that I always assumed I had before but never had any assurance of, and as I wept great tears of joy and poured out my heart to my newfound Savior, I finally could say, “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). I was finally free!

In 2012, I came across Jeremiah 29:13: “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” It became one of my favorite verses. It only took a dozen years, for I clung to my darkness until that April morning when, well, Charles Wesley’s fourth verse of “And Can It Be” best describes it:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth and followed Thee.

My wife’s favorite verse is this:
“You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore” Psalm 16:11 [NASB].

I finally can genuinely attest to that fact. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is “a friend that sticks closer than a brother” and is “with me always.” He took my heavy burdens, both the sins and things about myself I couldn’t change, and all my self-righteousness and pride in my own abilities and accomplishments. Since that day, He has impressed on me the importance of the Gospel, not just for justification but also for sanctification.

It’s great folly to think that because we know all the facts in our heads, we also have them in our hearts. It’s spiritual rebirth. He gives us a new heart; it is not just a change of mind, for even “the demons also believe, and shudder” (James 2:19). As Jesus told Nicodemus, “You must be born again” (John 3:7).

Jesus didn’t come to make bad men good; He came to raise dead men to life.

I hope and pray that if you are struggling with assurance, with an inner voice that condemns you, or whatever it may be that you cannot deal with on your own, turn to the Cross of Christ. Call out to Him for mercy, for His grace to lay your burdens down, claim His glorious victory, and forever find His acceptance and unfathomable affection.

Don’t let your heart deceive you that you can bring anything of your own―good or bad―with you through the Door. What are you trusting in? That you know all the right answers? Or that you know the One who has all the answers? It’s Jesus! Once you have tasted the Living Water, you’ll never thirst again (John 4:14)!

¹"The Hound of Heaven" is one of the most beautiful and insightful poems ever written of a deviant, depraved man running from God, personified as the Hound of heaven. Thompson wrote this poem with a skillful and brilliant use of language. The Hound in the poem is the Lord who continually seeks the writer even though the writer keeps running from Him.

Author Bio:
Brian Miller is a longtime newspaper columnist and freelance writer. He and his wife Bethany, a fellow “preacher’s kid,” are currently residing on South Padre Island, TX. Brian seeks to use lessons learned in his life of God’s unchanging love, grace, mercy, and faithfulness to bring hope to others who may be struggling. You may write to him at bd1976@pm.me.

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