Over a lifetime I've done a lot of the driving. But this time, I was the passenger. It's a good thing I was the passenger. I glanced over at this little amusement area by the side of the road. We just zipped by it, but I saw a water slide, a miniature golf course, and then I was really startled by what I saw. There was a giant, plastic water faucet and it was hanging, suspended above the ground with water falling out of it. It wasn't attached to anything, or nothing you could see anyway. There was just a faucet hanging there.
Now, if I had been driving, my insurance company would have probably gotten a call that day. Here was this faucet, apparently connected to nothing, running a steady flow of water. I still don't understand how they did it, but I do understand how you and I can.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Hope When You're Running On Empty"
Jesus made a promise to His disciples that could not be fulfilled at the time He gave it. But He can now; that's the good news. And if you'll claim it, you can keep running even when there are no pipes. Our word for today from the Word of God, John 7, beginning at verse 37, "Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'If 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.' By this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given."
Jesus is saying here, "When my Holy Spirit comes, my followers will have a spiritual fountain in them that will never run dry." That Spirit came at Pentecost, and has come into people's lives on the day they open up to Jesus Christ. If you've done that, then the Holy Spirit is in you. And Jesus said that the supply of resource will come from within like that faucet I saw in mid air. It wasn't connected to any conventional water supplies, but it was pouring out water. There was an inner source that would keep it supplied, even when there were no outside sources helping it seemed.
That's a good picture of you right now. Maybe the conventional sources of support, the pipes in your life, just aren't there for you right now. Maybe your job just dried up, or key support people. Maybe you're just in a situation where you feel isolated or overwhelmed. Maybe you're dried up, and earth has nothing that can help you right now. People, even those who would like to help you, really can't do much. You're suspended in mid air with no visible means of support or supply right now. But the security of a follower of Christ is never around him anyway; it's in him Jesus said.
God will supply what man cannot supply, but He'll supply it from the inside. That's why Paul could be as confident and content in a prison as he was at the peak of his popularity. He reached in for His resource, not around him. You never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you've got. Maybe you've been coming up empty because you've never plugged into the resource that Jesus Christ brings into a life when you give your life to Him.
Jesus met a woman at a well one day who had come every day to get water from the well. And He said, "Are you tired of being thirsty again?" It turned out He was talking about all the relationships with guys that had never satisfied her soul thirst. He said, "I'll put inside of you a spring that will well up into everlasting life. When Jesus comes in, you've met the One you were made by; the One you were made for. And you can be His. You can belong to Him and have that endless stream from heaven in your life and in your soul. When everyone else has let you down, you'll have one love that will be unloseable.
He proved that when He died on the cross for you. If you've never begun a relationship with Him; if you've never known what it is to not be thirsty in your soul again, I'd ask you to join me at our website ANewStory.com and find out how that source of peace and satisfaction can be yours. From that day on, with Jesus in your life, the well will be in your heart.