I’d like to continue one more post on the theme of “fulfillment” in life. How does God intend for us to be filled and sustained in life?
A number of years ago, a friend of mine and I began climbing Pike’s Peak in Colorado each year, up the Barr Trail. It’s a 26-mile round trip trek. We didn’t set any records! On one of those day-long hikes, it was one of the more toasty days that we had made the hike over the years. At the halfway point (Barr Camp) there is a water station where you can refill your water. Unfortunately, well before the water station, as I drank from my Camelbak water tube, I heard that sickening sound … only air … the water was gone. Bummer.
It wasn’t that much further, so it wasn’t life threatening. Nevertheless, I was definitely parched when we made it to the water station.
Two thousand years earlier, Jesus addressed a crowd of people standing out in the sun on a day during a Jewish festival in Jerusalem. That particular event happened to incorporate a spring of water during one of the days of the feast. Jesus reordered that audiences’ thinking about where their thirst would really be quenched.
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. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37-39 NIV)
Read through John 14-16 and you’ll get a clear picture of what the Holy Spirit is meant to be to followers of Jesus. Do you realize that the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, dwells within us?
As we walk through life, there will be many times that we find ourselves parched. The places we thought we would find thirst-quenching water have dried up. Jesus tells us that not only do we find our thirst quenched through our relationship with Him, but, in fact, through the work of the Holy Spirit believers become a conduit of the life-giving water of God.
Lately, has your life felt as though you have living water flowing from within you?
What steps can you take to get reconnected to the Source of living water?
Pray a prayer right now, asking God to help you to experience more of what He has provided in the Holy Spirit.