“It is well with my soul” is written on a plaque that is hanging on a wall in my kitchen. I see it every morning, but this morning it read differently to me. Is there a well IN my soul? On the old family farm, there stands a well. This particular well was used to pump fresh water into twenty-two concrete vats and eighteen ponds that held fish on the farm. My family owned and operated their own family fish business. They ran routes to bait and tackle shops and pet stores along rivers and lakes in nearby counties providing local fishermen with live bait and their best hope for a fresh catch of the day. The well on the farm supplied water from an underground spring that I couldn’t see, but I knew it was there. Priming the pump brought the gurgling sound of fresh ground water to the surface, longevity to the fish, and hope to my hardworking family.
Today the well is forgotten, unused and seems to be dried up. The bustling productive days on the farm are a faint memory. The well has no water, no oxygen, no life to help nourish living things, just sediment and rock. No one is priming the pump to bring the underground spring water to the surface anymore. It’s just a dried up well in the depths of our land.
There is God-sized well in every soul that only He can fill. When we fill it up with other things, we can’t tap into the holy water. If we aren’t protective of this God-sized well dug inside of us, distraction begins to grow along the inside walls like algae, and a slippery trap awaits. Sediment of selfishness and bitter roots twist and curve their way into the depths of our soul. Hope dissipates, and we become parched from the circumstances of this life. Our soul becomes dried up and unusable for the Kingdom.
We can’t give away what we do not have. We can’t pump out encouragement or be a vessel of hope to others if the well in the depths of our own soul is dry. How can we fill this God-sized well in our souls? We must prime the pump of our hearts with prayer! Prayer will push hard against the dry rocky ground, and it will slice through the roots of bitterness! Prayer will gush forth from our muddy lives and defy gravity to reach the face of God!
Streams of Living Water will fill up every crack and crevice of the well in your soul and mine! It will spill over into the fields of our lives, and it will refresh our usefulness in the Kingdom of God! We must find the strength through our weaknesses to humble ourselves and carry the weight that so easily besets us to the well. Jesus is already there. (John 4:6) He already knows the weight we carry on our shoulders, so nothing surprises Him.
He doesn’t require us to clean up before allowing him to fill us up. He just wants us to allow Him to nourish our parched hearts so we can take in all the nutrients from the deep rich soil of the Savior.
When the well in our soul is primed and pumping, no drought can stop us from saying “It is well with my soul.”
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