What we allow to fill our lives is what we dispense to others. What’s in your cistern?
Purified drinking water can be expensive. Instead of buying bottles or filters, you could purchase a rain barrel and capture the water that flows off your roof and through your guttering. Then you would would have a large supply of water that cost you nothing. Unless you count the cost to your health from microorganisms, Giardia, or other nasty contaminants from the air.
Water that remain still is much more likely to become contaminated than moving water. By the month of October, people on ancient Israel had been drinking from stagnant cisterns for six or more months. They longed for the rains to come to refill their cisterns with water that was less contaminated. When Jesus taught people at the festival of Sukkot, He gave an invitation to drink “living water.” His water is pure and refreshing. Yet, this water would benefit people beyond the original recipient.
“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit,whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given,because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (John 7:37-39)
Spiritually speaking, God pours into us daily. Yet, what He puts into us must flow out to others. When we walk with the Holy Spirit as our guide, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control flow freely from our lives. Our lives become a refreshment to others. Remember: What we allow to fill our lives is what we dispense to others.
I saw this overflow of joy in a remarkable way in 2003. I experienced the adventure of a lifetime on a mission trip to Southern Sudan. Imagine being a desert where the daytime heat soars to 130 degrees. The people are barely hanging on for survival. Yet, in the middle of the village, Samaritan’s Purse had dug a well several years before. The well was the center of the village. It was a place of joy. Men and women would serve one another, and there was no contention or hoarding, for the well was deep and abundant. We often heard singing and laughter around the well. This source of clean water in the dry and dusty land was a place of hope and renewal for a people who were suffering from disease, extreme poverty, and thirty years of civil war.
As followers of Christ our cisterns can and should be filled with the Holy Spirit. This concept is the essence of the Apostle Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5:18, “…be filled with the Spirit.” The command does not imply that the Holy Spirit is absent from our lives. This filling involves His work not the absence of His presence. When we allow Him to fill our lives rather than the influences of the world around us, we then dispense to others a blessing from God. The Holy Spirit works through us to encourage and strengthen others in their faith.
In reality, our cisterns, that is our lives, are going to be filled with something. We can fill our thoughts and our heart with things that gratify our self-centered desires, the ideas that the world and the media want us to believe, or dreams of things that are “bigger and better.” The Holy Spirit, however, fills us with the love of Christ and a hearts desire to follow Him with all that we are.
Instead of a “New Year’s Resolution,” consider the challenge to allow God to fill your life:
-Fill your life through prayer and the study of His Word.
-Fill your life by trusting and abiding in Christ, submitting to Christ’s Lordship and walking in His Spirit every moment of each day.
-Fill your life with generosity that is the overflow of grace toward others and opportunities to make disciples of Jesus with those He places in your life (your family, coworkers, neighbors, strangers, anyone He brings onto your path).
-Fill your Life with a Transformational Community where your life is intertangled with other believers. In this community you could be challenged by people who love you enough to be transparent about their fears and struggles and hold you accountable for yours. Also, you would be blessed with opportunities to serve joyfully alongside others, and equipped for making disciples of Jesus who will make disciples of others.
If you are not connected to a local church that proclaims the Gospel of Christ faithfully and is equipping you for disciple-making opportunities, email me at jeremy.amick@yahoo.com and I will gladly help you find a transformational community near you.
If you missed the previous posts, below are the links:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Link to the Sermon I preached (12/27/15) on this topic.
Shepherding Well 