BOTTLED WATER

Bottled water has practically taken over the world these days. You didn't even see it coming, but yeah - here it is. Every home has a well-guarded stash.

So when I recently read this about the myths of bottled water and found it so eye-opening and grocery-bill-reducing, I thought I'd share it in case you also wanted to take a big black marker and cross out one of YOUR regular Woodman's list items ...

MYTH #1: BOTTLED WATER IS BETTER THAN TAP.

No. While labels gush about bottled water that "begins as snowflakes" or flows from "deep inside lush green volcanoes," between 25-40% of bottled water comes from - guess where? - U.S. municipal water supplies. Sorry. That's not even a particularly BAD thing - but it's not originating from the exotic lush places you're imagining when you pour it down your throat.

MYTH #2: BOTTLED WATER TASTES BETTER.

Negative. The purest water - distilled with all minerals and salts removed - tastes flat; it's the sodium, calcium, magnesium, and chlorides that give water its flavor. The "off" taste of tap water is the chlorine; if you refrigerate it in a container with a loose-fitting lid, the chlorine taste will be gone overnight.

MYTH #3: BOTTLED WATER WITH VITAMINS, MINERALS, OR PROTEIN IS MORE HEALTHY THAN REGULAR WATER.

Not exactly. Vitamins, herbs, protein, and all the other additives to water — are a marketing ploy. They are a scant serving of what you need in a day. AND ... enhanced water usually contains sugars and artificial flavorings to sweeten the deal and can pack more calories than diet soda.

Water is vital for life. There is no more fundamental drive than the drive that extreme thirst produces. Some of you may have fasted food for a week – maybe longer - but three to four days is the absolute extreme limit of human endurance without water.

So when the Bible says, "As a deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God," you understand how at-the-very-basic-core-of-the-human-heart thirst is. For a few, the cry is conscious. “I am AWARE that my deepest need and longing is for You, God - and so I vocalize this prayer OUT LOUD ... "GOD, MY SOUL IS THIRSTY FOR YOU." I consciously recognize this is my need.

But for MUCH of the world, this is an unconscious prayer. Their hearts are praying it, but their minds are only dimly aware of the real thirst underneath all the other thirsts they have. I believe people are thirsty for help that goes beyond themselves. I believe their SPIRITS, all the time, with virtually every beat of their hearts, are crying out Psalm 42 … “As a deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for YOU, O God."

There is no substitute that quenches thirst. We sample them, but none work. Psalm 42 is the main cog of Christ-follower worship. It is our intense agony, our desperation, our utter desert dryness that prompts us to cry out and draw near to God ... where, in C.S. Lewis' words, you ‘stop being satisfied playing in mud puddles and start believing that a beach with an ocean actually exists for you.'

Many of us have been taught that the Christian faith consists of little more than accepting Christ, getting your ticket stamped, and making it to heaven. But Christ came for more than just you getting to HEAVEN. There are so many Christ-followers in America who are satisfied with so little of God. If you go through the lives of all the great saints of the past, you will see this one common characteristic in each of them … EVERY ONE of them was discontented with their present experience of God and wanted MORE.

You hear it in the various psalms -- #27 ... #63 ... #84 ...

Thirst-quencing worship … REAL worship … springs from a desperation for more of God. John Piper says, 'The problem in our lives is not that we want too much out of life. It's that we are satisfied with so little. Regularly we try to quench our thirst with stuff that only increases our sense of emptiness. Worship is God's invitation to you and me to drink.

And you can't get that in a bottle.

And be blessed.