John 7:38 - Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’”
When we contemplate our faith and our lives as believers, I think it is common to expect that when we are obedient, God will bless us. Although I believe that this is true, I think we may be a bit surprised as to what constitutes that blessing. Chambers’ opening to today’s devotional is truly thought-provoking:
Our Lord’s teaching is always anti-self-realization. His purpose is not the development of a man; His purpose is to make a man exactly like Himself, and the characteristic of the Son of God is self-expenditure. If we believe in Jesus, it is not what we gain, but what He pours through us that counts. It is not that God makes us beautifully rounded grapes, but that he squeezes the sweetness out of us. Spiritually we cannot measure our life by success, but only by what God pours through us, and we cannot measure that at all.
This tends to fly in the face of what some of us expect as Christians, doesn’t it? Surrender to the will of the Father is not necessarily the opening act to a life of ease and outward success. For us to understand anything about the will of God we must first recognize that His plan rarely has anything to do with our personal earthly agenda. When things become difficult, when we face challenges and personal struggles and we seek God in the midst of those, His solution may not be immediate deliverance from the pain of those trials. It doesn’t mean He isn’t listening or that He doesn’t care, but rather that His purpose for us lies in what He is able to pour through us in the midst of chaos.
I can’t help but think of the tragedy that is the “prosperity gospel” movement. People preaching the gospel for personal gain, their “disciples” coming to Christ because they think that is their “ticket” to material wealth and ease. When we view our lives in light of the eternal, our material possessions on this earth are beyond irrelevant. When I consider that my life here on earth is but a tiny dot on a line millions of miles long, does it really matter whether I’m driving a Mazda or a Mercedes? Is the size of my home even relevant? To think that people come to Jesus because they want a better car and a big screen TV tells me that they’ve completely missed why Christ died for us. He didn’t go to Calvary so Creflo Dollar could drive a Rolls Royce. He went to Calvary so that we could be saved from the pit of hell. When we consider THAT, why do we even care about anything in this world other than honoring Christ with our lives? Why do we even care to waste our lives chasing after that which is completely irrelevant in light of eternity? It is tragic to me that we can become so consumed with the temporal things of this world that we completely miss those things that are eternal.
Christ’s life was a life of servitude. He gave of himself until His path led to the cross where He gave His very life and spilled His blood that we might be saved. As believers, our lives have nothing to do with what we get from God and everything to do with what we give through the outflow of God’s grace working in us.
Christ promises that when we come to Him and drink from His cup that we become a source of refreshment for those around us. He equips us for self-expenditure – He gives to us, not so that we can hoard that which we receive, but so that we can continue giving out of that gift. Chambers closes by saying:
It is time now to break the life, to cease craving for satisfaction, and to spill the thing out. Our Lord is asking who of us will do it for Him?
Oh, Catharine, this is one of my faves -- Oz talks in a few of his entries about being broken bread and poured-out wine. And about how grapes don't become wine unless they are CRUSHED. Not exactly a popular message for the prosperity gospel bunch!
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