CHANNELS OF LIVING WATER
“On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within him.'” John 7:37-38 (NIV).
What an invitation! What a promise!
On the Great Day of the feast, the seventh of eight days, when the Water Ceremony was being carried out by the priest (water drawn from the pool of Siloam was poured into a basin as a drink offering to the Lord in thanksgiving for life-giving water and a prayer for rain to water their crops), Jesus shouted out, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. As Scripture has said, rivers of living water (mayim chayim) will flow from within him!’
The focus of the worshippers was on the water that was always scarce and was vital for life. Once more Jesus, with His attention on the hearts of men, was offering them a source of living water which would satisfy their unconscious inner thirst and connect them to the perennial Source of real life. What He offered was not only for them but through them to quench the thirst of others around them as well. They would become a conduit of life, not just a reservoir.
Imagine the reaction of the people! This roaming rabbi was at it again, trying to draw the people’s attention away from their physical lives and refocusing on their broken connection with their Source. Like all of us, the people of Jesus’ day were more interested in getting their own needs met than in doing what God wanted them to do — to be channels through whom He could meet the needs of others.
Whatever our needs are, God’s way to meet them is for us to look for someone else to bless. Jesus assured us that our Father knows our needs before we ask Him. Why does He allow us to have needs? It’s His way of creating a current of resources that will keep circulating instead of our becoming a reservoir that will, like the hoarded manna, become stale and polluted.
Jesus put it in a nutshell like this: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” Luke 6:38 (NIV).
It takes a powerful work of God, through the Holy Spirit to change us from self-centred, selfish people to people who care about the needs of others more than their own. What was Jesus offering His people?
“By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not yet been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.'” John 7:39 (NIV).
This is not about being baptized in the Spirit so that you can become a spiritual “giant”, wowing people with your power and “holiness”, drawing attention to yourself as some privileged super-saint with supernatural ability to do spectacular things.
How tragic that in many streams in the church today, the Holy Spirit has been reduced to magic and goose bumps. Jesus insisted that the greatest person is the one who can come down to the level of a child and treat him with respect and dignity because of his potential; the one who can go to the tap and give a drink of water to a thirsty beggar because he was also created in the image of God.
It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to remove a stony heart and replace it with a heart of flesh. Satan can counterfeit miracles, but he cannot counterfeit the character of Jesus.
If we are hungry to become a truly righteous person, one who is generous towards others, and thirsty for a new heart of mercy and compassion instead of selfishness and greed, Jesus is the bread of life and the living water. He will give you in abundance what you crave!