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I bought a fountain to put on my desk. It was cheap and plastic, but it came with real rocks! I’ve told everyone it was my “stream of living water…” But there’s an unanticipated problem: the batteries wear out, and the never-ending stream stops flowing. Of course the issue is the power source – double “A”batteries are only temporary, they get weaker and weaker, and eventually they die.
And the truth is, the same thing happens to me and my “stream of living water” if I’m only drawing from a fleshly, temporal power source. If I “feed the stream,” it will only last for a little while. If it’s fed by “Christ in me,” it will be an unending source of living, and life-giving, water.
Jesus said if we drank that water, we would never be thirsty again. Well, I still get thirsty, and it’s not Jesus’ fault. I let that well run dry when I disconnect from the power source and live in my own strength. How long will I just use the Bible for sermon material? How often will I have the crashing realization during a “Pastoral Prayer” in a Sunday service that this is the first time I’ve prayed in days? How many times will I tell thirsty people where to find water, while speaking through a parched throat and cracked, dry lips?
The apostle Paul had the right idea, when he said in Ephesians 5:18 that we should put ourselves in the place where we can continuously be filled with the Holy Spirit. My prayer today is to be constantly full of the Holy Spirit, and for my flesh to die to the point where I can say with Paul, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
