Rivers of water

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Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water

Jane was a typical student at a huge state university—but one who had an extraordinary impact.  As an undergraduate she felt called by God to start a prayer group in her dormitory.  She put up fliers in her dorm announcing a weekly time that was sure not to conflict with classes—6am.  For a year she held a prayer meeting for two people person—herself and one senior.  For the next year and a half, she did the group alone.  She was, at that time, praying through something like a Christmas list:  “God I want this; I need that, please give me this and such…”  Then she read a biography of a great revival preacher that opened her to the power of God's Spirit.

God began to pour into her what was planning to give to others through her.  And then He moved forcefully to show her the reality of his power.    

Spring semester of her junior year, thirty-seven people showed up on one particular morning.  Week after week they came back.  Miracles happened.  People came to a saving belief in Jesus.  Calls to serve the Lord were heard.  Jane was given the vision to start prayer groups in every dormitory on campus.  Without an office, income, or human supervision, she started prayer meetings in twenty-four dorms.  Each group had its own leader:  young men or women who had been blessed by the refreshing life-giving water of God’s Spirit became wells for others to be refreshed.  Twenty-four different leaders—twenty-four different wells—twenty-four different strategies--all going deep in prayer; all praying for people to come to know Jesus.  And Jesus, who is the fount of every blessing, after making Jane a well, turned these twenty-four into wells and they refreshed others who have gone to bless still more people.

Jesus promised this kind of multiplying power and blessing as he cried out:

          “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the 
           Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’"(John 7:37-38)

St John comments on this promise by saying that the water he was speaking of referred to the Holy Spirit

          Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive

The Holy Spirit is life for a Christian.  He is as necessary to a Christian as water is to a person.  A Christian's power in witness is bound up with the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Coming to Jesus with our spiritual thirst we are met at the point of our hearts--the center of will, imagination and self.  Our parched soul is refreshed and satisfied as our Heavenly Father lavishes his own spirit over us and in us.  To stay connected to Jesus is not only to drink but to be transformed from the inside out.  Once the connection is made, the very Spirit of God wells up inside us as a spring pours forth in the wilderness.  As we are changed, the people surrounding us have the possibility of life. 

Evangelism is more than one thirsty soul pointing out a well to another.  It is the power of God to transform a human life into an oasis for others.   When the Holy spirit takes up residence and flows through a person, the one who shares the message is not only a sign pointing to the living water, but becomes a well him or herself. 

Jesus said that we would be like him because he gives us new life, a new power, and in fact a new identity.  Jesus was the Son--He makes us sons.  Jesus was the Well--he makes us into wells.  So evangelism is not by the power of the person, as if he or she had anything to give, but by the power of God’s Spirit, living in the person and giving him a new identity, that others are refreshed.

Whoever drinks from 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 for eternal life (John  4:14)  

Jane heard this invitation from Jesus.  She went to the Lord for the water.  He broke through the stony soil of her heart.  She met with the Lord, drank deeply the living water, and in time became a source of living water for many around her.  Her connection to the Lord was strong, consistent and life-giving.  He blessed her to bless others.   

One can’t give what one doesn’t have.  And in God’s economy, He gives to us so that we will give to others.  In fact, it is as necessary to give his gifts away as it is for a river to give away its water.  Jesus promises that those who drink deeply from him will have more than enough of him to share.  If we lack power to evangelize, as most of us do, we can hear his voice and ask for this deep opening to his life.  As we cry out to him who first cried out to us, we can be sure that he will answer.

Lord, help me hear your voice calling me to drink.  Break through the rocky ground of my will that I may be refreshed by your Holy Spirit and have your pure, life-giving power at the center of who I am.  Make the connection so deep and clear that your water overflows and others find your healing and life through me. Make me a well in the desert, a spring in the wilderness, an outpost of your Kingdom.  Take my heart Lord Jesus and use it as a door to bless others, just as yours has blessed me.  

another prayer from the ancient church:
 
“Merciful God, good Lord, unite us to that fountain from which we may drink of the living spring of the water of life with those others who thirst after you. There in that heavenly region may we ever dwell, delighted with abundant sweetness, and say, ‘How sweet is the fountain of living water which never fails, the water welling up to eternal life.’ O God, you are yourself that fountain ever and again to be desired and ever and again to be consumed. Lord Christ, always give us this water to be for us the ‘source of the living water which wells up to eternal life.’” - Columbanus