Granite Gushing

Words of Life for Thirsty Souls from your Creator’s Own Mouth

Jesus said, "whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." John 4:14 NKJV

Are you thirsty to know the truth?

Do you want to know who you are, where you came from, and where you are going? Is there any lasting truth on which we may lay hold?  Most people today are unsure where to turn.  After all, there are so many options.  Some have sampled many different faiths and philosophies.  Can anyone have a monopoly on the truth? Others have given up on truth entirely. They no longer believe that truth exists.  Yet there is an inner thirst for meaning which cannot be quenched.  If there were no meaning to life, why would we be yearning to know what it is? It seems that we are preprogrammed to find the overarching meaning to life. So no matter how long it eludes us, we thirst for it.

This inner thirst must have been put there by the One who created all human beings; otherwise we would not feel this thirst to know the truth.  In fact, it is a thirst for our Creator himself, which he put there when he made us, just like a software engineer writes requirements into a computer program. Our Creator made us to thirst after him. Where else could this thirst for knowledge have come from, but from the One who created us?

Yet how are we to know this Creator?

 

Certainly the One who created the entire universe that we behold is so far above us!  He is so much greater than anything we can actually imagine.  The vast universe itself, with all its shining stars, multicolor planets, and their pocked moons is bigger than we can even comprehend. And if that is the case, what about the One who made the whole thing? How are we to learn anything about such a great Being?  There is only one way that we can know the Being who created everything that exists.  And that is not by our own striving and imagining, for our brains are too small to even conceptualize so big a God. 

It would be like if an ant tried to understand whether he lived in Africa or North America. And like that ant, we can hardly understand the universe we live in, let alone the One who is big and powerful enough to create all of it by himself!  No, the only way that we humans may know our Creator is if he will reveal himself to us.  We cannot reach up to him, grasping in the air like a dog trying to jump up and lick a cloud in the sky.  The distance is too great.  He is too far above us in so many ways.  Our only hope of knowing him is if he will come down to us. 

The good news is that God has come down to us.

No one has known God, but he sent his own Son to reveal himself to us.  The world is full of religions where people attempt in vain to reach up to God.  But only Jesus has revealed that God to us by coming down from God to reveal him to us.  In fact, more than that, Jesus is God come down to us. He is that same Creator who made us and everything that we see around us, from granite boulders to buzzing dragonflies.  He is the one who created the earth and sky. Many detractors and skeptics over the years have sought to disprove that Jesus was who he said he was, but none has succeeded in disproving anything he said.[1]

Jesus gave the ultimate proof of his claim to be God when he rose from the dead, getting up and walking out of a cold stone tomb. He left his burial cloth lying there. Jesus then appeared to over 500 witnesses, who confirmed that he had in fact risen from the dead. He talked and ate flatbread and grilled fish with many of them.  The resurrection of Jesus has been public information ever since it took place, and no one has been able to disprove it. The indisputable truth of Jesus' rising from the dead separates him from every other religious or moral teacher who has ever lived. Confucius, Buddha, Muhammed, and Ghandi all gave people many wise and helpful instructions for living, but only Jesus claimed to be God; and then he proved it by rising from the dead. This distinguishes Jesus from all other religious leaders in history. And since only Jesus rose again from the dead, shouldn't we be willing to listen to what he has to say to us?

Jesus gives life.

Many years ago the good news of Jesus the Son of God was truly taught and believed in almost every corner of our beautiful state of New Hampshire. Today, many hearts have become cold and rocky toward him. Many have become skeptical.  But he is able to make streams of living water flow out of the hardest rock, just like he once made water to flow out of a rock in a dry desert.

At a place called Meribah[2] in the Sinai Penninsula of the Middle East, God once made water gush out of a rock to give water to the thirsty Israelites,

who were travelling on a long, hard journey by foot from Egypt to Israel. They had just been freed from cruel slavery in Egypt, and were now travelling across the desert to the land that God had promised to give them. They praised God for providing clean, fresh, life-giving water for them to drink, for sustaining their lives by making pure water gush out of a dry rock in the sandy desert.

Many people today in New Hampshire have grown hard and cold toward their Creator, but like with that rock in the desert, Jesus is able to make them alive, to make them new people, giving them that life which lasts forever. Like an everlasting spring of water, the life that Jesus gives them will never run out.

Will the real Jesus please stand up?

Still, there are many competing views about Jesus.  How can we be sure who he really was?  Why did he come?  And why does it matter to us?  Did he really say the things that people say he said?  Join our weekly video series answering the question: who was Jesus?—based on his own words.  We will be doing a simple study of the firsthand account of Jesus written down by Matthew, one of Jesus’ closest students.  Who better to address our questions about Jesus, than Jesus himself?  Starting in September, 2010.

Who are we?

Granite Gushing is a Christian ministry started by Riley Fraas in 2010 to bring the pure words of life flowing from the Creator to the rocky soil of the Granite State.  We are Protestant Christians in the heritage of the pilgrim fathers who first settled New England.  The word "Protestant" means that we stand in protest against any human authority that would claim to be above God's own word, the Bible.  We believe that the Bible has just as much to say to us today as it did to our forefathers.  The world changes continuously, but God’s word never changes.  And it never grows outdated.  Our hope and prayer is that New Hampshire’s God, that is, our Creator, will once again make water gush out of the rock, like a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life in the hearts of our neighbors.  We wish for all of them to know the joy of everlasting life and peace with God in this life and after death.

Riley is a resident of New Hampshire, with old family roots in the area.  He is an active part of the First Congregational Church of Merrimack, where he attends with his wife, Priscilla and their children.  He serves on the church committee for World Missions.  Riley is also a graduate student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Send us your tough questions!

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