Broken, empty, or feeling like you’ve been thrown in a pit?

“For my people have done two evil things: They have abandoned me— the fountain of living water. And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all!
Jeremiah 2:13 NLT

What is a cistern?

A cistern was a pit cut in limestone rock, lined with plaster to prevent collected rainwater from seeping out.

Broken cisterns that cannot hold water, describe what the Israelites have created apart from God.

We can be like the Israelites in this story.
When we try to do things on our own merit and our own strength we are doing things apart from God. When we do things apart from God, we are making other things idols. In doing this our cistern becomes dry because we are no longer seeking the Living water (him!). The longer it remains dry, the easier it will become cracked, when it rains, the water seeps out of the cracks. The living water doesn’t remain in a cracked and broken cistern. We need to ask the Lord to mend and heal our broken hearts (cisterns) so that the living water (Jesus) can overflow from our hearts. Fill us with your living water Lord. We want more of you and your presence.

The beauty in this analogy is that a cistern is easily accessed to drink out of with a cup or your hands cupped.

You can drink from it anytime, with drinking the Living Water daily it never dries out It keeps filling up as long as you keep drinking from it.

We will remain thirsty as long as we don’t take a fresh sip of Jesus daily. We can’t live off of yesterday’s drink. Everyday we need water, everyday we need the living water (Jesus).

Thirst no more. Drink from the overflowing living water, drink up, he is the only one that will satisfy your thirst.

Our cisterns should run deep, don’t let it go dry.

If our cisterns are dried up and cracked, it won’t refill properly and instead will just become muddy and unclear.

In Jeremiah 38 he talks about how Jeremiah had a word from the Lord, it was to surrender to their enemies because the Lord was going to deliver them, but the officials thought he was a trader so they threw him in an empty cistern. Basically they threw him in a pit. This cistern was empty so the ground was muddy.

So the officials took Jeremiah from his cell and lowered him by ropes into an empty cistern in the prison yard. It belonged to Malkijah, a member of the royal family. There was no water in the cistern, but there was a thick layer of mud at the bottom, and Jeremiah sank down into it.
Jeremiah 38:6 NLT

Did you catch that? There was a thick layer of mud on the bottom and Jeremiah sank down into it.

So the king told Ebed-melech, “Take thirty of my men with you, and pull Jeremiah out of the cistern before he dies.”
Jeremiah 38:10 NLT

You need to let the Lord pull you out of this place of disparity before you keep sinking deeper into the mud. Don’t die in the empty muddy cistern. Don’t die in the wallowing of disparity. Allow him to pull you out, and then fill yourself up with his word and worship him! When you do this your cistern will fill up and you can start drinking again from it daily. However to fill it up again once you’ve allowed it to become so empty, you need to submerge yourself into the things of God, into all His glory and His presence. The quickest way to get full again is total submergtion. Then you can drink easily from his living water, you can drink off the top of it. You can enjoy each day going from his Glory to his Glory.