Living Water
A life in the Spirit is what I've been desiring more of lately. I admit that yielding to the Spirit has been a fearsome proposition for me. Why? Well, I guess it's a control issue and I'm afraid of what the Lord would have me do or say and to what circumstance he may lead me. It's a mark of faithlessness on my part and it's silly.
Today I am humbled by two things. One was by a hymn we sang in church. For some reason I cannot recall the name of it but I love hymns that remind me of my great sin and of Jesus' great salvation. The other was an analogy that came to me while doing a filthy chore in my back yard: cleaning out a rain barrel.
My wife and I thought capturing some rain water and with it watering our outdoor plants would be a nice, conservation-minded thing to do. But we rarely used it. It would fill up with only a few hours of rainfall but we never used it enough to empty it. The barrel sat full of water for months and over time it became very mucky with algae growth. We emptied it recently and today I opened the top to clean out the muck.
You've probably heard similar analogies that illustrates how we become if all we do is receive God's blessings through the Spirit, but never contribute to bless anyone else. Perhaps you recall your pastor explaining how the Dead Sea has no fish in it because not only is it incredibly salty, but because it has an inlet and yet no outlet. The water just evaporates. As opposed to the Sea of Galilee which is full of life because it has an inlet and an outlet.
Back to the rain barrel, the muck came out but only by opening it up and using a garden hose and nozzle spraying clean water on the inside. The water had to spray powerfully to peel the 16th of an inch thick mucky algae off the inside wall of the barrel. And then I had to turn it upside down to empty out the mucky water.
Perhaps I should be more afraid of the muck can build up inside me when I don't yield to the Spirit. Anyway what can we learn from this? Very likely what we need to have a life in the Spirit is:
Today I am humbled by two things. One was by a hymn we sang in church. For some reason I cannot recall the name of it but I love hymns that remind me of my great sin and of Jesus' great salvation. The other was an analogy that came to me while doing a filthy chore in my back yard: cleaning out a rain barrel.
My wife and I thought capturing some rain water and with it watering our outdoor plants would be a nice, conservation-minded thing to do. But we rarely used it. It would fill up with only a few hours of rainfall but we never used it enough to empty it. The barrel sat full of water for months and over time it became very mucky with algae growth. We emptied it recently and today I opened the top to clean out the muck.
You've probably heard similar analogies that illustrates how we become if all we do is receive God's blessings through the Spirit, but never contribute to bless anyone else. Perhaps you recall your pastor explaining how the Dead Sea has no fish in it because not only is it incredibly salty, but because it has an inlet and yet no outlet. The water just evaporates. As opposed to the Sea of Galilee which is full of life because it has an inlet and an outlet.
Back to the rain barrel, the muck came out but only by opening it up and using a garden hose and nozzle spraying clean water on the inside. The water had to spray powerfully to peel the 16th of an inch thick mucky algae off the inside wall of the barrel. And then I had to turn it upside down to empty out the mucky water.
Perhaps I should be more afraid of the muck can build up inside me when I don't yield to the Spirit. Anyway what can we learn from this? Very likely what we need to have a life in the Spirit is:
- A willingness to be opened up and turned upside down.
- A willingness to bless others when the Lord has blessed us.
- The power of the Spirit to cleans us from the inside.
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.
posted by Gary at 3:13 PM
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