Wells of Salvation

Day 13 - A time to sing and shout for joy

“In that day you will say…‘Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my song, he has become my salvation.’ With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

In that day you will say: “Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world. Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.” -Isaiah 12:2-6

Water is essential for life. We all understand that we cannot survive long without access to water and when our bodies are in need of water they let us know in a very compelling way: thirst. The metaphor of water is used in the Scripture to describe an essential dependence on the Lord, not only for existence, but for fullness of life. We have been made for more than merely surviving; God has created us to experience His goodness in the land of the living (Ps. 27:13).

In our passage today, Isaiah describes a time when God’s people will ‘draw water from the wells of salvation’, and when they drink of those wells, the results are substantial: they will sing and praise God, they will give testimony of what God has done because they are experiencing the saving grace of God in their lives.

“Sometimes we think of salvation only as that moment when we come to faith in Christ and he saves us once and for all from our sin. It's not wrong to think about it this way, but that is not all it is. Salvation is a present work of God in our lives. It is going on now, not just in the past.” -John Piper

This passage is similar to what Jesus declared in Jn 7:37-38 when he said, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

When we choose not to drink from the wells of salvation, we look to other places to satisfy our inner longings and desires. God described this reality to the prophet Jeremiah when He said: “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jer. 2:13)

As we continue our Advent journey of ‘embracing hope’, we need to ask the Lord to show us the ‘broken cisterns’ in our lives, those activities, habits, places where we seek to satisfy our thirst but end up dry and unsatisfied. Jesus expressed it best when He said ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink’. We are invited to drink daily from the ‘wells of salvation’ and this season of Advent is a perfect time for us to be intentional about spending time with God and allow him to truly be our strength and our song.