Written by Melinda Johnson
Brackish water … not quite fresh, not quite salt. Alligators, angler fish, crabs and crocodiles inhabit brackish waters. There is danger, isolation, fear and hurts of many kinds. Brackish water is not the kind of water for kinder things, but it’s so easy to unwittingly find yourself engulfed and choking on this murky, salty, stale water.
There is so much to unpack throughout the much larger passage of Proverbs 4, but nestled in the midst of a great wealth of parental advice is verse 23. This small, but priceless gem states, “Above everything else, guard your heart, because from it flows the springs of life.” This is an admonition that I’ve grown to understand at a deeper level over the years. When I was younger, I saw it as a warning to keep myself pure and abstain from things that would pull me away from Christ. A warning of things to passively avoid. However, as I’ve gotten older, I see it as so much more: It is an urgent call to arms.
You see, pain by many names – disappointment, disillusionment, hurt, shame, anger, fear, grief, rejection – has caused trickles, waves and sinister, potentially deadly, slow seeps of brackish doubt to enter my heart. When I’ve not stayed alert and actively guarded my heart, this brackish water has stolen joy, done its best to quench the Holy Spirit and caused my heart to start feeling numb and callous. I’ve felt like the proverbial “frog in a pot,” almost to the point of being unable to jump out of the water slowly killing me.
Can you relate? Unfortunately, this fallen world leaves none of us unscathed. Satan knows that if he can cause our hearts to become callous enough, our ears will not hear God’s promises and our eyes will not behold God’s beauty that is all around us; we will not be able to understand and rest in his goodness. Each drop of brackish doubt in our heart causes us to become less effective, or even ineffective, in our Christian walk and an unwitting carrier of this malevolence, splashing it into the lives of others (James 3:9-11).
How, might you ask, does one defend against one’s spring turning brackish? Well, I wish I could say I was an expert on this, but I’m still “in process” and learning. However, Jesus tells us to come to him for living water. What I have learned is that flooding, flushing and steadily filling my heart with the truth found in God’s word helps dilute the doubts to where they are ineffective in causing catastrophic mayhem in my soul. Seeking to know Christ through prayer, his word, his creation and his church – our brothers and sisters — allows his living water to flood our souls, fill us to the brim and then overflow into the lives of others. The more living water of truth that’s poured in, the more doubt is washed away and the more satisfied my soul is in the promises I know will be fulfilled, even if it’s not in the timeframe I want.
Friends, this is not a “one and done” task. It is an ongoing, lifelong process, but the doubts will become more and more diluted and the spring in our hearts will become cleaner, clearer, and stronger as we continue to move toward Christ.
