Last week I was talking about getting filled so we can pour back out. I had been thinking of myself more like a pitcher that gets filled with water, emptied and then filled back up. Then I was reading one of my favorite devotional books, Oswald Chambers’, “My Utmost For His Highest,” and he had a slightly different take on the idea. He was describing us more as having rivers flowing out of us coming from our belief in God. Quoting John 7:38 he said, “He that believes in Me out of him shall flow rivers of living water.”
I love this picture, because it speaks of a continual filling and a continual pouring out. The river also sounds refreshing, especially this time of year when the hot weather seems to drag on. Another thing that Oswald Chambers points out is that we cannot spiritually measure the success of this kind of pouring out. The river that flows from our belief or service may impact someone much farther down, that we never even learn about. In fact he goes so far as to say, “hundreds of other lives will be continually refreshed.” What an exciting way to live!
Sometimes we can get bogged down in the day to day of our lives and think we are not making much of a difference to anyone, but if we are believing God and being faithful to the thing He has put in front of us to do, we could be impacting untold numbers of people. That is so encouraging.
So the next time I am doing a mundane chore, for the millionth time, I am going to try to believe this truth and receive the sweet spiritual filling that God offers.
“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.” John 7:37-39
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