Living Water

"We are created for a divine life.

"When we open the writings of the New Testament, we discover that we are called to live in the awareness of another world, to join in 'the kingdom of the heavens' and to 'participate in the divine nature.'

"The amazing promises given to those who devote themselves to this new world leap out at us from the page. We read Jesus' words that those who give their lives to him will receive 'living water,' the Spirit of God himself. This water will keep them from ever being thirsty again -- from being driven and ruled by unsatisfied desires. This water will become a fountain 'gushing up to eternal life' (John 4:14 PAR). Indeed, it will even become 'rivers of living water' flowing from the center of the believer's life to a thirsty world. (John 7:38 NRSV)

"Or we read the apostle Paul's prayer that believers will 'know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that they may be filled with all the fullness of God . . . by the power at work within us, that is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.' (Ephesians 3:19-20 PAR) . . .

"What an astonishing vision! The water of heaven flows through our being until we are fully changed people. We wake each morning breathing the air of this new world; we experience a new consciousness, and our character is transformed. We drop our deceitful practices, our insincerity, our defensiveness, our envy and our slander, and we move outward toward others in genuine love."

- Dallas Willard and Don Simpson, Revolution of Character

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" Sharing your life makes it part of collective memory. I have given things to you that you might drink deeply of Me and then offer that same drink to a thirsty world. Did you think I had given it only to you? I would have, even if you were the only person on earth who needed Me and wanted Me, for I love you so. But I have many others who are like you once were -- hungry and thirsty, lonely, hoping beyond hope that more is possible, waiting for some breath, some whisper of encouragement about the invisible, the radiant, the eternal delight that is waiting for them. You job is to illuminate and make clear the path to knowing God so that all the rest of life is pale beside it. "

- from my prayer journal, March 2009

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"May none of God's wonderful works

keep silence, night or morning.

Bright stars, high mountains, the depths of the seas,

sources of rushing rivers:

may all these break into song as we sing

to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

May all the angels in the heavens reply:

Amen! Amen! Amen!

Power, praise, honour, eternal glory

to God, the only Giver of grace.

Amen! Amen! Amen! "

- Egyptian prayer found on papyri from the third or fourth century,

quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell