There’s a taste I get in my mouth sometimes. Especially when I wake up having had a nap or been asleep.
It’s not a pleasant taste in the mouth. So I’ve really appreciated the freshness of my breath when I brush my teeth and gargle it with water. I would even recommend some decent mouthwashes if I bothered to pay attention to the packages, but I don’t. What I do pay attention to is how much better my mouth feels after gargling.
If you’re smell conscious, people with bad breath can be particularly off-putting as they carry on with their chat oblivious to discomfort they’re causing you. Sometimes, however, it’s not the breath that’s stale.
Sometimes its what coming out of the heart that’s like bad breath. Hearing the contents can sometimes really be particularly nauseous and toxic. In a less harsh sense, it can just be that because the thoughts have been allowed to just go around and around without any sense of challenge it can begin to feel a bit stale.
I love the image of someone who has been parched and experience the cool refreshing nature of the water to their lips. Gone is the stale, in comes the fresh. There are stories of different ways in which the stale can be removed from people’s thinking by the refreshing living water flowing from the heart of God.
For example, there’s something refreshing about hearing someone young in the faith talk about what it was to encounter Jesus for the first time. For those who have been following for a while, this experience can rekindle that desire to return to that first phase of bursting enthusiasm and fervour for all things relating to Jesus. You listen carefully enough and it’s not you that is the veteran in the faith, you are hearing true devotion to Christ afresh and it does wonders.
God is not limited to refreshing the soul via those means. He is so generous He provides plenty of streams for us to get rid of the stale and be refreshed from the inward part.
I am grateful for the streams that refresh.
Photo by Josefa Holland-Merten on Unsplash
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 