Isaiah 55:1 pictures God standing with arms wide open, calling the thirsty to real refreshment and the empty-handed to a table they could never afford. It’s a summons that cuts through our pride and our exhaustion: stop pretending you can supply your own soul, and come to the One who can.

Come With Your Real Thirst

God doesn’t invite the put-together; He invites the thirsty. That means you don’t have to clean up your cravings before you come—you bring them into the light. The Lord exposes how flimsy our substitutes are: “They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns—broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13). When you’re worn thin, it’s not proof that God has failed you; it may be proof your “cistern” can’t hold what only He can give.

Jesus makes Isaiah’s invitation personal and immediate: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37). Not “let him improve,” not “let him prove,” but come. And He doesn’t offer a quick sip—He promises a new inner reality: “Streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:38). The Lord isn’t trying to manage your thirst; He’s answering it.

Receive What You Cannot Purchase

Isaiah says it plainly: “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost!” (Isaiah 55:1). That sounds almost offensive to our instincts, because we’re trained to earn, to deserve, to negotiate. But grace refuses to be a transaction. “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith… not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).

“Without cost” doesn’t mean “without price.” It means you aren’t the payer. The gift is free to you because Another paid in full: “It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed… but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18–19). The table is set because “He was pierced for our transgressions… and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). You don’t bring currency; you bring need—and you trust the Savior who already covered it.

Drink Deeply, Then Call Others

God’s invitation is meant to be tasted, not just admired. “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (Psalm 34:8). Many of us live near the feast but nibble at the edges—small sips of Sunday and scraps of comfort—while our hearts stay hungry. The Lord is not stingy; we are often hesitant.

And once you’ve come, you get to echo Heaven’s welcome: “Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who desires the water of life drink freely” (Revelation 22:17). This is what weary friends are aching to hear: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). The water Christ gives doesn’t just relieve you; it changes you: “the water I give him will become in him a fount of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Drink, and then invite—because the door is still open.

Lord, thank You for Your generous grace and the living water You give in Christ. Help me come to You honestly today, drink deeply, and boldly invite someone else to come too. Amen.

I believe in the communion of saints.-Apostles' Creed

THESE WORDS WERE WRITTEN into the creed about the middle of the fifth century.

It would be difficult if not altogether impossible for us at this late date to know exactly what was in the minds of the Church Fathers who introduced the words into the creed, but in the Book of Acts we have a description of the first Christian communion: Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

Here is the original apostolic fellowship, the pattern after which every true Christian communion must be modelled.

The word fellowship, in spite of its abuses, is still a beautiful and meaningful word. When rightly understood it means the same as the word communion, that is, the act and condition of sharing together in some common blessing by numbers of persons. The communion of saints, then, means an intimate and loving sharing together of certain spiritual blessings by persons who are on an equal footing before the blessing in which they share. This fellowship must include every member of the Church of God from Pentecost to this present moment and on to the end of the age.

Now, before there can be communion there must be union. The sharers are one in a sense altogether above organization, nationality, race or denomination. That oneness is a divine thing, achieved by the Holy Spirit in the act of regeneration. Whoever is born of God is one with everyone else who is born of God. Just as gold is always gold, wherever and in whatever shape it is found, and every detached scrap of gold belongs to the true family and is composed of the same element, so every regenerate soul belongs to the universal Christian community and to the fellowship of the saints.

Every redeemed soul is born out of the same spiritual life as every other redeemed soul and partakes of the divine nature in exactly the same manner. Each one is thus made a member of the Christian community and a sharer in everything which that community enjoys. This is the true communion of saints. But to know this is not enough. If we would enter into the power of it we must exercise ourselves in this truth; we must practice thinking and praying with the thought that we are members of the Body of Christ and brothers to all the ransomed saints living and dead who have believed on Christ and acknowledged Him as Lord.

We have said that the communion of saints is a fellowship, a sharing in certain divinely given things by divinely called persons. Now, what are those things?

The first and most important is life-the life of God in the soul of man, to borrow a phrase from Henry Scougal. This life is the basis of everything else which is given and shared. And that life is nothing else than God Himself. It should be evident that there can be no true Christian sharing unless there is first an impartation of life. An organization and a name do not make a church. One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.

The apostolic fellowship is also a fellowship of truth. The inclusiveness of the fellowship must always be held along with the exclusiveness of it. Truth brings into its gracious circle all who admit and accept the Bible as the source of all truth and the Son of God as the Saviour of men. But there dare be no weak compromise with the facts, no sentimental mouthing of the old phrases: We are all headed for the same place .... Each one is seeking in his own way to please the Father and make heaven his home. The truth makes men free, and the truth will bind and loose, will open and shut, will include and exclude at its high will without respect to persons. To reject or deny the truth of the Word is to exclude ourselves from the apostolic communion.

Now, someone may ask, What is the truth of which you speak? Is my fate to depend upon Baptist truth or Presbyterian truth or Anglican truth, or all of these or none of these? To know the communion of saints must I believe in Calvinism or Armimanism? In the Congregational or the Episcopal form of church government? Must I interpret prophecy in accord with the pre-millenarians or the post-millenarians? Must I believe in immersion or sprinkling or pouring? The answer to all this is easy. The confusion is only apparent, not actual.

The early Christians, under the fire of persecution, driven from place to place, sometimes deprived of the opportunity for careful instruction in the faith, wanted a rule which would sum up all that they must believe to assure their everlasting welfare. Out of this critical need arose the creeds. Of the many, the Apostles' Creed is the best known and best loved, and has been reverently repeated by the largest number of believers through the centuries. And for millions of good men that creed contains the essentials of truth. Not all truths, to be sure, but the heart of all truth. It served in trying days as a kind of secret password that instantly united men to each other when passed from lip to lip by the followers of the Lamb. It is fair to say, then, that the truth shared by saints in the apostolic fellowship is the same truth which is outlined for convenience in the Apostles' Creed.

In this day when the truth of Christianity is under serious fire from so many directions it is most important that we know what we believe and that we guard it carefully. But in our effort to interpret and expound the Holy Scriptures in accord with the ancient faith of all Christians, we should remember that a seeking soul may find salvation through the blood of Christ while yet knowing little of the fuller teachings of Christian theology. We must, therefore, admit to our fellowship every sheep who has heard the voice of the Shepherd and has tried to follow Him.

The beginner in Christ who has not yet had time to learn much Christian truth and the underprivileged believer who has had the misfortune to be brought up in a church where the Word has been neglected from the pulpit, are very much in the same situation. Their faith grasps only a small portion of truth, and their sharing is necessarily limited to the small portion they grasp. The important thing, however, is that the little bit they do enjoy is real truth. It may be no more than this, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; but if they walk in the light of that much truth, no more is required to bring them into the circle of the blessed and to constitute them true members of the apostolic fellowship.

Then, true Christian communion consists in the sharing of a Presence. This is not poetry merely, but a fact taught in bold letters in the New Testament.

God has given us Himself in the Person of His Son. Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. The immanence of God in His universe makes possible the enjoyment of the real Presence by the saints of God in heaven and on earth simultaneously. Wherever they may be, He is present to them in the fullness of His Godhead.

I do not believe that the Bible teaches the possibility of communication between the saints on earth and those in heaven. But while there cannot be communication, there most surely can be communion. Death does not tear the individual believer from his place in the Body of Christ. As in our human bodies each member is nourished by the same blood which at once gives life and unity to the entire organism, so in the Body of Christ the quickening Spirit flowing through every part gives life and unity to the whole. Our Christian brethren who have gone from our sight retain still their place in the universal fellowship. The Church is one, whether waking or sleeping, by a unity of life forevermore.

The most important thing about the doctrine of the communion of saints is its practical effects on the lives of Christians. We know very little about the saints above, but about the saints on earth we know, or can know, a great deal. We Protestants do not believe (since the Bible does not teach) that the saints who have gone into heaven before us are in any way affected by the prayers or labors of saints who remain on earth. Our particular care is not for those whom God has already honored with the vision beatific, but for the hard-pressed and struggling pilgrims who are still traveling toward the City of God. We all belong to each other; the spiritual welfare of each one is or should be the loving concern of all the rest.

We should pray for an enlargement of soul to receive into our hearts all of God's people, whatever their race, color or church affiliation. Then we should practice thinking of ourselves as members of the blessed family of God and should strive in prayer to love and appreciate everyone who is born of the Father.

I suggest also that we try to acquaint ourselves as far as possible with the good and saintly souls who lived before our times and now belong to the company of the redeemed in heaven. How sad to limit our sympathies to those of our own day, when God in His providence has made it possible for us to enjoy the rich treasures of the minds and hearts of so many holy and gifted saints of other days. To confine our reading to the works of a few favorite authors of today or last week is to restrict our horizons and to pinch our souls dangerously.

I have no doubt that the prayerful reading of some of the great spiritual classics of the centuries would destroy in us forever that constriction of soul which seems to he the earmark of modern evangelicalism.

For many of us the wells of the past wait to be reopened. Augustine, for instance, would bring to us a sense of the overwhelming majesty of God that would go far to cure the flippancy of spirit found so widely among modern Christians. Bernard of Cluny would sing to us of Jerusalem the Golden and the peace of an eternal sabbath day until the miserable pleasures of this world become intolerable; Richard Rolle would show us how to escape from the abundance of riches, the flattering of women and the fairness of

youth, that we may go on to know God with an intimacy that will become in our hearts heat, fragrance and song; Tersteegen would whisper to us of the hidden love of God and the awful Presence until our hearts would become still before Him and prostrate inwardly adore Him; before our eyes the sweet St. Francis would throw his arms of love around sun and moon, trees and rain, bird and beast, and thank God for them all in a pure rapture of spiritual devotion.

But who is able to complete the roster of the saints? To them we owe a debt of gratitude too great to comprehend: prophet and apostle, martyr and reformer, scholar and translator, hymnist and composer, teacher and evangelist, not to mention ten thousand times ten thousand simplehearted and anonymous souls who kept the flame of pure religion alive even in those times when the faith of our fathers was burning but dimly all over the world.

They belong to us, all of them, and we belong to them. They and we and all redeemed men and women of whatever age or clime are included in the universal fellowship of Christ, and together compose a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, who enjoy a common but blessed communion of saints.

And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do? -- Genesis 18:17

"I CALL you not servants, but friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I declare unto you." So much for God’s frankness. What about Abraham’s frankness with God? Remember how he remonstrated with Him; how he complained to Him of His dealings; how he persisted with importunity, which would have been presumptuous but for the friendship which underlay it, and which is expressed in words. And let us take the simple lesson that if we are friends and lovers of God, we shall delight in His company. Ah! it is a strange kind of religion that does not care to be with God, that would rather think about anything else than about Him, that is all unused to quiet, solitary conversation and communion with Him, but it is the religion of I wonder how many of us? He would be a strange friend that never crossed your threshold if he could help it; that was evidently uncomfortable in your presence, and ill at ease till he got away from you; and that when he came was struck dumb, and had not a word to say for himself, and did not know or feel that he and you had any interests or subjects in common. Is that not a good deal like the religion of hosts of professing Christians?

If we are friends of God we shall have no secrets from Him. There are very few of those that are dearest to us to whom we could venture to lay bare all the depths of our hearts. There are black things down in the cellars that we do not like to take our friends down into. We keep them upstairs, in the rooms for company. But you can take God all through the house. And if there is the trust and the love that I have been speaking about, we shall not be afraid to spread all our foulness and our meanness and our unworthy thoughts of, and acts towards, Him before His "pure eyes and perfect judgment."

Tell God all, if you mean to be a friend of His. And do not be afraid to tell Him your harsh thoughts of Him, and your complaints of Him. He never resents anything that a man that loves Him says about Him, if he says it to Him. What He resents - if I might use the word - is our huddling up grudges and murmurings and questionings in our own hearts, and saying never a word to the Friend against whom they offend. Out with it all. Complaints, regrets, questionings, petitions, hot wishes- take them all to Him; and be sure that, instead of breaking, they will, if spoken, cement the friendship, which is disturbed by secrecy on our parts.

If we are God’s lovers He will have no secrets from us. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show them His Covenant." There is a strange wisdom and insight, sometimes amounting even to prophetic anticipation, which creeps into a simple heart that is knit closely to God. But whether the result of our friendship with Him be such communication of such kinds of insight or no, we may be sure of this, that if we trust Him, and love Him, and are frank with Him, He will in so far be frank with us, that He will impart unto us Himself, and in the knowledge of His love we shall find all the knowledge that we need.