{"id":3153,"date":"2023-11-13T07:23:13","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T12:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3153"},"modified":"2023-11-13T07:24:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-13T12:24:32","slug":"the-spirit-flows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/13\/the-spirit-flows\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spirit Flows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here<\/a>

During the month of November we\u2019re taking a look at 21 essential activities of the Holy Spirit, who represents God\u2019s presence in and through every follower of Jesus.<\/em>
 
More than a decade ago, I was one of several thousand travelers who were stranded for much of a whole day in Houston\u2019s largest airport. 
 
A tropical depression had dumped five inches of rain on the city, and flights were being rerouted, delayed, and canceled every few minutes. 
 
By early evening I found myself longing to get a seat on one of the last flights to Indianapolis.  Twenty-seven of us were on stand-by hoping to squeeze into nine available spots.  I was the sixth person called.
 
I took my seat on the plane, which turned out to be next to an older lady in Row 14.  She glanced over at the book I was reading.  It was called Real Life Evangelism.  <\/em>I smiled at her and said, \u201cI am your worst nightmare for the next two and a half hours.\u201d 
 
She laughed.  It turned out she was a lay leader at a Methodist church.  About the time our jet took off and started bouncing violently through the remnants of the storm, I told her I was a pastor.  \u201cYou know,\u201d she said, \u201cthat is such a reassuring thing for me to hear right now.\u201d  For a second I considered telling her that I had been embezzling from my church for the past ten years, and that I suspected God was about to punish me at any moment. 
 
But I decided it was best not to test her sense of humor in a tropical depression. 
 
It seemed better just to listen.  I learned some things about her church and about her family.  Shortly before we landed I asked, \u201cIs there anything I can be praying for you?\u201d  With that she told me that her son\u2019s marriage was breaking up, and that soon she would be caring for a grandchild who would be moving in with her.  She asked for strength and wisdom for the days ahead. 
 
On the surface it may not have seemed as if anything of great importance had happened there on Row 14.  But by a divine appointment that was effected by a storm, two people who a few hours earlier had been strangers to each other sought God\u2019s help concerning a storm of a more personal nature.
 
The Holy Spirit is a master arranger of such appointments. 
 
Here we begin to grasp that the reason God has gifted us with the indwelling presence of the Spirit is not for our sakes alone.  We are not to be \u201cend users\u201d of the grace of God.  We have been blessed with the Spirit so that<\/em> we can be a blessing to others. 
 
That truth becomes apparent in John chapter seven, where Jesus addresses a crowd of worshipers at a Jewish festival called the Feast.
 
What the Bible here calls \u201cthe Feast\u201d was the actually the happiest of all the annual Jewish holidays \u2013 the Feast of Tabernacles, which came early in the fall as harvest season was wrapping up. Its closest American equivalent would be Thanksgiving Day. 
 
The Feast, however, lasted seven full days.  Imagine turkey sandwiches and turkey soup for a week.  Every Jewish male who lived within 15 miles of Jerusalem was required to journey to the city and spend seven days thanking and praising God at the temple.  
 
Every day of the Feast, the high priest did something symbolic.  He walked down the hill to the lowest point in Jerusalem, which was the pool of Siloam, and filled a golden pitcher with water.  Then he walked back up to the temple area and poured the water into a special container by the altar. 
 
What was he doing?  He was helping the people remember a prophecy from the Old Testament: \u201cOn that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem\u201d (Zechariah 14:8).  The people knew that \u201cthat day\u201d meant the day the Messiah had finally come to rule in Jerusalem.  On that day the Messiah would set the whole world right.
 
Therefore what Jesus does is stunning.  On the seventh and final day of the Feast, when the high priest is once again calling the people\u2019s attention to God\u2019s future gift of living water, Jesus declares that \u201cthat day\u201d has finally come.  Check out John 7:37-38:
 
\u201cOn the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, \u2018If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.\u2019  By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.\u201d<\/em>
 
Jesus is claiming that he<\/em> is the source of God\u2019s living water.  And people can have it right now if they trust in him. 
 
The biggest surprise is that the water won\u2019t flow just in the vicinity of Jerusalem.  It will flow out from all of his followers.  In the King James translation Jesus says, \u201cout of his belly will flow rivers of living water.\u201d  The Greek word for belly is koilia<\/u><\/em>.  It refers to the gut \u2013 to that deep and impossible-to-describe place in me where I hunger and thirst for peace and love and security and purpose and ultimately for the One who alone can provide such gifts.
 
Jesus is saying that his gift of real life, which is granted to us through the Holy Spirit, doesn\u2019t just pour into<\/em> us.  It must also flow out<\/em> of us. 
 
We are not to become reservoirs or holding tanks of God\u2019s life and God\u2019s love.  The Spirit is better described as a spring or a river that is always flowing out of our hearts for the sake of others<\/em>. 
 
Rivers are mentioned 150 times in the Bible.  In the arid Middle East, a river was a place where things could grow and thrive.  Jesus is reminding us that our task is stay in the flow of God\u2019s river of living water every day \u2013 by relying on the indwelling presence of his Spirit. 
 
How do we do that?
 
We begin by trusting that with God, we go no place by accident. 
 
Delays and inconveniences may seem to be messing up our plans.  But the Spirit apparently has other plans \u2013 divine appointments<\/em> \u2013 if only we have eyes to see. 
 
It\u2019s a wonderful thing that God\u2019s gifts and God\u2019s grace have come to us.  But they have come to us because they are on their way to someone else. 
 
So, rejoice that you are a temple of God\u2019s Holy Spirit. 
 
Then let the Spirit flow<\/em>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here During the month of November we\u2019re taking a look at 21 essential activities of the Holy Spirit, who represents God\u2019s presence in and through every follower of Jesus. More than a decade ago, I was one of several thousand travelers who were stranded for much of a whole day in Houston\u2019s largest… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[352],"class_list":["post-3153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-holy-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3153"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3156,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions\/3156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}