“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:13-14 (ESV)
Another thread that I find woven through my experiences in my Pops’ Workshop is water. Those experiences culminated in a vast lake that lies beneath my Pops’ Workshop and which became the scene of a powerful vision.
Water, Water, Everywhere
I am not surprised that water was an important element of my time in my Pops’ Workshop; it is a common motif in the Bible. Begining with Genesis, where river flows out of Eden to water the garden,1 water is woven through Israel’s history: Moses is drawn up out of the waters of the Nile;2 the Red Sea is parted to allow Israel’s escape from Egyptian bondage, and it rushes back to crush Pharaoh’s pursuing Army;3 God provides a miracle of water from a rock in the wilderness;4 and the Jordan river is miraculously parted to allow Israel to cross.5
The psalmist tells us that a man who delights in the Lord’s instruction is like a tree planted by streams of water,6 and Ezekiel’s exilic vision of the new temple describes a miraculous flow of water from the temple that brings life and abundance wherever it flows.7
The image of water continues in the New Testament. Jesus’s messianic destiny is revealed as the Spirit descends on him at his baptism in the waters of the Jordan River.8 Jesus describes the water he gives as a spring of water welling up to eternal life,9 and he promises that if we believe in him, rivers of living water will flow out of our hearts.10 The final chapter of the bible describes a river of life that flows out of the throne of God.11
The Water motif has already been central to my time in the workshop and the healing and renewing that my Pops was unfolding in my life. When I was warned, in the vision of venomous snakes, that the enemy would strike me, I was also shown a stream of healing water.12 Water was a central image of the inner healing I didn’t even know I needed. The stream below the workshop, which should have been a torrent of God’s love, was barely a trickle until Jesus guided me to bring my real self and my whole self to him for healing.13 That stream was also the home of my nemesis, “Pride Rock.”14 And, finally, the stream running through the meadow behind the workshop.15
Even with all those water images and references, there was one more yet to come.
The Lake
I was in a season of learning that seeking the workshop, or any other particular expression of God, is usually not productive; seeking the Lord is. When we chase after a particular expression of God, we are looking for something to scratch our spiritual itch. God is not generally in the business of scratching our itches. He wants us, and I find that usually means that when we approach God for what we can get from him, materially, emotionally, or spiritually, we are likely to be disappointed. It is when we approach him empty-handed and offer ourselves to his care that we are most likely to experience his presence, often in surprising ways!
In that season, after futilely seeking an experience of the workshop, I instead simply waited on the Lord, surrendering myself to his presence. Unexpectedly, I found myself back in the well — that is, down the hole at the back of the workshop, where I had experienced so much healing.
The stream there was now flowing, no longer obstructed and fouled. I had never thought about it before, but now it occurred to me to follow it to see where it went. I don’t know how long I followed it, but eventually I came to the mouth of the stream. It emptied into a sea or vast lake. Due to darkness or the size of the lake, I could not see the far shore. The shore where I stood was rocky, and the “beach” was smooth stones. I could not see the sky, and I had the impression that I was still underground, in a vast cave. The water was calm and sparkled beautifully with reflected light. I had the impression of moonlight, but couldn’t reconcile that with the feeling that I was in a cave.
The lake had no immediate meaning for me, except to underscore that I couldn’t expect that everything in the Workshop made sense as it would in a physical world. That was not the purpose of the visions I was experiencing in prayer. It made no sense that a stream running through a cave under an old workshop deep in the woods would empty out into a vast sea, perpetually bathed in moonlight. The purpose of this vision was to catch my curiosity, to make me wonder about this vast body of water that was somehow connected to God’s stream of live giving water.
Part of the answer came to me in the writing of C. S. Lewis, where he talked about going to the sea, but only dabbling in the shallows, being careful to stay anchored to the land.
This is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea…and there neither dive nor swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my things temporal…Our temptation [in Christian discipleship] is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle… We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope — we very ardently hope — that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on…There is no parallel [in our life with God] to paying taxes and living on the remainder. For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves…He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls .16
God does not intend for us to give only so much of ourselves; the way of life is to give him all.
Months later, the imagery of the lake was still very much with me when I found myself praying about swimming and diving down deeper and deeper in the water, so deep that return to the surface would be impossible. This was not suicidal ideation; it was praying about what it could be like to join God in total surrender, reserving nothing for myself.17 In that time of prayer, my thoughts turned to the lake in the cave under Pop’s Workshop.
I realized that swimming out, away from shore, would have the same effect as swimming down. If you swam out, away from shore, not stopping until you were utterly exhausted, you would have reached a point of no return. You would have nothing left to give.
So, in that time of imaginative prayer, I swam out, under the starlit sky in the dark, cool water lake. As I reached that point, where I really couldn’t go any further, I saw a “hole” in the water. Like so many things in the workshop it defied the rules of logic and nature. It was not a whirlpool. It was more like swimming up to the edge of a waterfall, except the edge was circular. From every point water flowed down into the hole. I realized that I could swim “down” the waterfall, which I did. Soon I realized that I didn’t need to swim anymore. The force of the water carried me down. I did need my own strength. I stopped swimming and could be carried to where God wanted me to be.
I have since learned that is how it is with God. He does his best work when we surrender, when we cut the lifeline that holds us to all the things that would pull us away from him.
We like to say that we are “all in,” but we aren’t. We hedge our bets:
- “Certainly God doesn’t care about consumerism; I tithe, that is good enough.”
- Or, “Jesus could not have had my neighbor in mind when he said, ‘love your neighbor.’”
- Or, “Sure, I lose my temper and say somethings I shouldn’t, but I never hurt anyone, so that’s okay.”
- Or, “God doesn’t expect me to be perfect,18 that isn’t realistic.”
We exhaust ourselves trying to make sure we are “good enough,” and realize the folly of trying to simultaneously be who we want to be and who we think God wants us to be. When we stop rationalizing and finally let go and let God have his way with us the real transformation happens. God’s indwelling Spirit can do his truly miraculous work. He can remold us from the inside so that we care about consumerism, we love even the vilest neighbor, are filled with God’s peace, and, yes, he loves us enough to perfect us.
The lake was a picture of the refreshing vastness of God, and it became an invitation to let go of my old life so that God could give me my real life.
- Genesis 2:10 ↩︎
- Exodus 2:4-10 ↩︎
- Exodus 14:21-29 ↩︎
- Numbers 20:11 ↩︎
- Joshua 3:14-17 ↩︎
- Psalm 1:1-3 ↩︎
- Ezekial 47:1-12 ↩︎
- Matthew 3:13-17 ↩︎
- John 4:14 ↩︎
- John 7:37-38 ↩︎
- Revelation 22:1-2 ↩︎
- The Promise of Peace. ↩︎
- Down a Hole ↩︎
- Pride ↩︎
- A Place of Rest ↩︎
- Lewis, C. S.. “A Slip of the Tongue” in Weight of Glory (Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis) (pp. 188-190). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
- This thought of swimming in water being a metaphor for union with God was also explored in my post, “Swimming.” ↩︎
- Matthew 4:48 ↩︎
From Pops' Workshop 
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