Living

Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water!

 - From John 7

My version here does not have the exclamation point. But I think it should be there. It says at the start of the passage, that Jesus cried out, to be heard above the noise of a very large crowd. It was the climax to His statement. Surely he called out these words with ardor and force!

Now, there seems to be something missing from our present expression of evangelism.

Where are the "rivers"? Where is the non-stop Good News . . . the constant flow of life-giving words?

Where is the "living"? What is there about modern evangelism that stands in stark contrast to the death and decay all around us?

Where's the "water"? Where's the message that is exactly what a hungering, thirsting world is yearning for?

I read a little flyer about fifteen years ago. I believe I was at a youth retreat at the Aurora Advent Christian Church, in Illinois. It was an insert in a program, and was entitled "The Waiting World." Or maybe it was "The Watching World." Both titles are good. But it stuck me at the time, that the world needs something desperately. It doesn't really know what . . . but when someone gets it right, the world will rush in to have it.

We have got to be careful. So many people are turned off by our gossip and snark. If that's Christ, then I don't want any part of it. 

They hear our pronouncements about sexual morality and immorality, but then observe our ruined marriages and rather tawdry lack of purity.

Our generation has confused the practice of unconditional love and the life of self-discipline. They see judgment without joy, and purity without prudence.

But Jesus asserted that some really wonderful, and good things would come out of the hearts of believers. It would be the equivalent of the River of Life . . . like the one in the Garden of Eden, or the New Jerusalem. That's a high calling, and if we're not getting the right result, we had better undergo a little self-examination.