Filling Up On Christ
Hello and Happy Thanksgiving 2018! We hope you enjoyed some loving fellowship, delicious food, and plenty of lasting memories with friends and family.
Mid-Week Prayer & Discipleship
We here at HBC love the holiday season. We have events to celebrate this time of year from conferences, to our Christmas Choir Special. In fact we actually moved our weekly Wed night service to Tuesday evening so we could give our members the evening off to prep and/or travel for their Thanksgiving Day schedules. HBC believes that our corporate time on Wednesday evenings are deeply important in our discipleship as Christians. We know that our Mid-Week Prayer and Discipleship every Wednesday Evening @ 6:30pm for the family cannot be something taken for granted or neglected. Still, we also know that Thanksgiving and other holidays alike will not change their schedule for the Church. So we don’t compromise, we just work to meet one another’s needs as best as we can in this fast and busy culture, so the priority of discipleship is not ignored or disregarded.
With all of that taken into consideration, we are very aware the world is telling us to fill-up on many things to find our happiness and meaning in this fallen state. It tells us to fill-up on food, fill-up on gifts, and fill-up on traditions and events, but we know the only thing we can actually fill-up on that will not leave us empty and looking for more later is Christ.
Everyone Is Filling Up on Something
The Gospel of John has one of the clearest pictures of this truth being taught, it takes place when Christ encounters a Samaritan women at the well of Jacob outside of the town called Sychar. Here at this watering hole Jesus tells this women, who has clearly been looking to be filled-up by the world in her relationships with men that just like the water she is getting from the well, they’ve all failed her thus far. The account reads, “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. (John 4:13-14).
Simply put, what she has been looking for will not lead to her being full, all the world has offered her has been temporary at best. And just like everyone else, before and after, who had come and went to this well for water. From generation to generation. They too had found only temporary reprieve to their thirst. Instead, they would return, time and time again. But with Christ, the one true and ‘Living Water’ (John 4:10), we can experience a filling up that never runs out and the thirst of our life can be quenched forever, and instead of running out, it will instead run-over all around us!
One of the most beautiful things about this story is this women and her outward predicament. She had been going to this well at mid-day, the hottest and therefore the most miserable time of day, because she was an outcast in her community. She would have been well-known in this small town as a promiscuous women, and she had accepted this label as her identity in this world. But the God Man, Jesus Christ, declares that this Living Water was both here, and now, being offered to her and all others who were willing to drink of Him as their new lifeblood and hope.
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.”
At HBC, we want everyone to know they are welcomed to join us during our Mid-Week Prayer and Discipleship time each Wednesday @ 6:30pm. There are discipleship courses offered for all ages, prayer time in our sanctuary with the adults along with a time of Bible study and worship. We are seeking to find anyone (outcast included) interested in the Living Water of Jesus Christ. We want you, our children, our families and our community to fill-up on Christ! So, consider this your invitation to “Come Grow In Christ With Us” at Hillview Baptist Church!
