October 4
Drinking from His Fire Hydrant
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. ––James 1:22-25, NKJV
The older I get the more I press into today’s verse. When I was a new believer it was all about the grace side of my faith—which is exactly where it needed to be. When we come to Christ, we enter into a new Kingdom that is radically different from the world’s. We embrace a new paradigm of living and thinking, where “conditions” for salvation are erased. In other words, upon accepting Jesus we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and the transforming of our minds begins; we now have His discernment to see the conditional world vs the unconditional Kingdom. We leave behind judgment and shame for mercy and forgiveness. We walk away from being judged to being accepted unconditionally. This grace walk takes time, of course.
Just as we don’t expect a newborn to up and walk, we should not expect a new believer in Jesus to instantly understand the principles of the Father’s grace-filled, unconditional love for us. For those of us who have been Christians for a while—a few years or perhaps several decades—the process is just that. However, at some point—for some it’s shortly after accepting Christ, while for others it can take some time—we make a faith shift. We realize that the grace and mercy we’ve been gifted is not just for us. Like the analogy of a lake with an inlet but no outlet, we are not meant to stagnate. These gifts we’ve been given by God are not meant to be hoarded, but to be dispersed. Jesus tells us, “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:38).
The living water, of course, is the Holy Spirit. God’s not a Genie stuck in a bottle—He’s the living God residing within you. Man of God, His water isn’t like an aquifer stuck beneath the ground; it’s a spring that wells up and flows out of us and onto a thirsty, hurting world. That’s why I believe the Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood and underutilized part of the Trinity: Without tapping into the Holy Spirit, we are stagnant waters. If all we have is a self-focused faith where we are simply hanging on and hunkering down until Jesus returns, we have a gross misunderstanding regarding the Person of the Holy Spirit. You are not meant to be a bunker, brother; you are meant to be a raging river where His waters flow outward, soaking everyone around you with an unlimited supply of Living Water.
Repeatedly in both the Old and New Testaments, the image of water is used to symbolize the unending supply of grace, mercy, and redemption available to us if we choose it. It’s really not that complicated—we make a conscious decision to allow the Holy Spirit to activate our gifts, and then use them to help a hurting world. You might say, “Kenny, that’s easier said than done. I have so much stress and pressure in my life, I barely have the energy to take care of myself and my family.”
Yeah, I get that. But brother, the answer for the burnout we all experience in this life is the same: We invite His Living Water to fill us and overflow us. And here’s the miracle that happens when we do: He gives us the supernatural “bandwidth” (e.g., energy, margin, time) we need to rise above our daily grind and minister to those He puts in our pathway. Don’t let Satan shut off the water of the Holy Spirit in your life, because that’s what he wants.
Start simply and small: Invite the Holy Spirit into your exhaustion, distraction, and frustration today. Ask Him to give you His mind for the solutions to your problems. Ask Him to lift you up so you can see above your circumstances and truly see the needs all around you. I need this process myself—every day. Let’s pray together:
Holy Spirit, in some ways You are a mystery to me and I don’t fully understand how You work in my life. But today, I am here to surrender my doubts and worries to You, and I ask You to transform my way of thinking. Give me energy I simply do not have; give me the margin in my life not only to minister to my family, but to be a waterway out of which flow streams of Living Water. I feel like a dry fire hydrant, Holy Spirit, so I ask You to take a wrench to what is keeping me stuck, so that I might literally be an open fire hydrant for the waters You want to flow out of me onto a hurting world. Thank You, Holy Spirit, for loving me and activating Your love for the world through me. In Your name I pray, Amen.