Living Water

I have been doing a Bible study by Beth Moore with a blogger group. We are going through her workbook "Breaking Free" and I wanted to share what I posted earlier to the group:

I haven't posted in a while (my husband is still laid off and has been a total computer hog! :), and the last couple of weeks have been incredibly significant for me, so I have a lot to say. This covers a lot of topics so I may even break this up into a couple of posts if it gets too long!

Let me start from the beginning: A couple of week's ago I went to a women's conference at my church. While I was there they gave out door prizes, and I won one of them. No two prizes were alike, and my door prize was a Joyce Meyer book and dark chocolate with mint filling (yum!) During worship, God impressed upon me to share with everyone what had just happened. This is what I shared: "Yesterday I was talking with God about my spiritual walk. I feel like spiritually I've been going in circles. The stuff that God is telling me today is the same stuff that He's been telling me for years, since I was in high school. For 12 years He's been telling me this stuff! I was telling God, I don't know what else to do. I'm doing everything that I know to do, and I'm in the same place now that I was 12 years ago! I don't know what to do. I'm obviously not getting it. I just...I give up."

Then I showed everyone my door prize. The book that I had won by Joyce Meyer was called "Never Give Up."

Receiving that book meant so much to me because it meant two things: 1) God cared enough for me to make it so that whoever was in charge of buying the door prizes would buy that particular book AND He made it so that whenever that book came in line as a door prize MY name was pulled out of the hat. 2) It also meant, in a very real way, that although I had given up on myself, GOD hadn't given up on me! I had faith in God, but I had lost faith in myself. But it was ok, because He carried me. While I had faith in God, HE had faith in ME! How awesome is that?!! He's not disappointed in me--He still has HOPE that I can and will move forward, which means that I can have hope too.

OK, next thing. (FYI: I'm still about a week behind in the study, so this stuff may have been a while ago for you guys.) I really liked what Beth had to say in the audio for week 5. What she said about Living Water filling up every empty place made a lot of sense. Then when she talked about water finding it's way through the keyhole and underneath closed doors, I visualized God filling me with Living Water in every empty place, and filling in my closed rooms by going through the keyholes of my locked doors. Background story: Recently Jesus told me that He comes in from the inside and not the outside. He basically said that, frankly He didn't really care what my spiritual life looked like on the outside! He doesn't come from the outside, but what He saw on the inside was that I had "dark rooms" where I didn't allow Him access. These weren't rooms of sin, necessarily, just dark because they were hidden. To be completely honest, I didn't even know what they were! These were the rooms that I visualized being filled with Living Water. I guess it was my way of allowing Him access. Ironically, they were still closed to me, as I still had no clue what they were, but I did get to see (in my mind) the room flooded with a radiant light that shone through the cracks of the door and the keyhole, which is pretty amazing! My doors might still be closed, but they are no longer dark, because they have been flooded with Jesus' light!

(Living) Water has been a theme that has been coming back to me over and over. God showed me back in September of last year that instead of being empty/full, empty/full, empty/full (which is what I was doing), He wants us to be not only full, but overflowing all the time! This is why he referred to those who drink Living Water as having "a well of water" (John 4:14), and how we can be "like a spring of water whose waters do not fail" (Isaiah 5:11). He told me that He wants us to have "waters to swim in" (Ezekial 47:5). He desires to truly dwell within us, to set up His abode in us! At the same time, we are to abide in Him! (1 John 2:28). I think that this is what was meant by being in "constant communiion with Christ." I don't think it means being 'spiritual' all the time or constantly trying to commune with Him. It means walking in the Spirit, "for in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). We are to live a life so surrendered to Christ, where we have so allowed Him to fill every empty place with His Living Water, that His glory will overflow, wether we are consciously communicating with Christ or not! If we truly allow Christ to abide in us, then when we are going about our daily tasks, making dinner and doing the dishes, Christ will radiate from our very beings! How awesome is that?!!

I have more to share, but it will have to wait for another day; hopefully soon.

"But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life." --John 4:14

"And you will be like a watered garden/And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail." --Isaiah 5:11b

"Again he had measured a thousand; and it was a river that I could not ford, for the water had risen, enough water to swim in, a river that could not be forded." --Ezekial 47:5

"And now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming." --1 John 2:28

"And the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And we know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us." --1 John 3:24