John 7:37-39

John 7:37-39 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 4:10-14 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Believers make choices every day: we can overflow with living water or withhold the water of life until it stagnates. As God spoke through his prophet in the Old Testament:

My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. (Jeremiah2:13)

A spring refreshes with its constant fresh source of cold water from the depths of the earth: free-flowing water that never stagnates, never tastes stale. When I was young, I worked every summer on my grandfather's farm, the Seven Springs Dairy, named for the springs emanating from various locations on that land. The major ones never dried up, even during the hottest months of an Eastern Washington summer. They bubbled up from the depths of that dry and dusty sagebrush land with such a strong flow that we could irrigate acres of alfalfa that stood out in its deep green beauty in stark contrast with the barrenness around each enclave of lushness. This never-ending flow or extremely cold water offered a near miraculous sight to this young man as I came in after tossing bales of hay or riding a tractor all day in 100 degree weather. That water brought vitality and life to a dry and thirsty land: crops grew in the fields, birds of the air landed to drink from the water, little animals scurried to take a drink, and trout jumped in the streams and the ponds Grandpa built.

We are to be like those wonderfully cold and tremendously deep springs on Grandfather Hoffman's Ranch in Harrington, Washington. It wasn't a great ranch on the outside, but the water was awesome, really wonderful. No matter who you are today, no matter where you live, no matter how rich or how poor you are, no matter whether you have problems or your life is going pretty well just now: if you know Christ whom to know is life eternal, then you have something to offer that is worth more than anything this world has to give.

We do not just contain living water or store the "good news" as a cistern holds water; no, we are springs of living water: hope for those who are thirsty.

We can journey forth to the sparse desert places that surround us all and say to all who will listen: "I have come in the name of Jesus.

If anyone here is thirsty, come listen to me, and I will tell you about Jesus. He has living water for you to drink. The Bible says, whoever believes in Jesus as the Son of God, streams of living water will flow from within him."

As we allow God's Spirit to flow through us to a sick and dying world, we become conduits of God's living water not leaky buckets, constantly in need a refill or water towers full of old water that no one else would want to drink. Our lives should display the active presence of the Spirit of God for this generation, for such a time as this. We should have new songs in our hearts, fresh from the heart of God. God always works in the now, providing fresh water and new manna for today because the Spirit is moving. A rushing stream, teaming with life, should flow from the heart of God through us. The words God wants to say, should be said. Songs the Spirit is singing, must be sung. As voices rise in praise to the Lord, the river of life will flow across this world. So many of us put a cap on the spring of life, and we literally become cisterns, letting the water God gave us so long ago grow old and stagnant. We live on a past experience and talk about old manna, how it used to be. We listen to hundreds of songs, thousands of sermons, and many words of edification from our Christian friends, but the Spirit within us is not flowing outward to others. We are consumed by our own needs, our own wants, our own desires, and what little Word we read is for our own needs. We don't stop long enough to ask who else is hurting. Jesus promised us STREAMS of water to flow out from us to meet the needs of those He came to save. He did not tell us to drink up all the water and then sit down and rest. Today, may we dive back into the stream of life and take the water of life to the thirsty who are crying out for water in a dry and thirsty land. Thank you Jesus: let it be!