Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Be overflowing

Hey people,

Well aware that there haven't been any posts in a while, humblest apologies.

This one is going to be a quick one, it's just something that came to me while doing the dishes yesterday.

Most of the washing up had already been done, and I had just begun to tackle a large baking dish. I placed it in the water that was already in the sink, but the water didn't reach the rim of the dish, so to get some water in the dish I turned on the faucet. The water I turned on was hot water, while the water in the sink was cold. And boom, revelation time.

Do you see it yet?

Look at it this way:

Faucet - God
Hot water - the Holy Spirit, God's blessings, giftings, etc.
Baking dish - You (God's vessel)
Cold water - your current situation, people around you, etc.

The hot water wouldn't change the cold water, it wouldn't make it warmer, until the dish overflowed.

You can't/won't change the current situation you're in or the people around you, until you overflow all that God has poured into you.

Having done science in Secondary school, I know that if the dish full of hot water had been left sitting in the cold water, eventually (due to energy transfer if I'm not mistaken), the water in the sink and the water in the dish would eventually become the same temperature.

The problem with that is, what's inside the vessel has become indistinguishable from what's outside of it.

I think this is a kind of 'Be in the world, not of the world,' kind of situation. As Christians, there should be something different about us. Philippians 1:27 talks about letting your manner be worthy of the Gospel of Christ - people should know by how we live our lives that we're Christians - and Romans 12:2, talks about not conforming to the pattern of the world - again, regardless of how long we are in the world, we should not become like the world.

As I'm typing this up another point comes to mind, and that is that the water only stays hot as long as there's a constant source of hot water. If the tap were to be turned off, after a while, the water would become warm > lukewarm > cold.

Outpouring of the Holy Spirit, spiritual renewal, God blessing you, these are not one-off things. You should be constantly spending time with God being refreshed and restored.

And that's it for now. May add a bit more to this as I have a chance to turn it over in my head, but this is the basic thought that came to me at the time. Be overflowing - a simple revelation, but hopefully it gets you thinking.

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad I got a chance to read this Marla-Joy. Thanks for allowing the Holy Spirit to overflow these thoughts into words and for sharing them with me.

    God bless you

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