The Way to the Rivers

 John 7:38 is a powerful promise: “He who believes in Me, as the Scriptures said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water”.

Not: “I’ve got a river of life” as the old Sunday school song went. Not singular.

Plural. Multiple. Rivers.

Do you feel like many rivers of living water are flowing out of your heart?

I don’t suppose so. If you’re like me, so many other things vie for prominence in your heart.

“What did they think of me?” “How come that person had to say that thing?” “I hope lunch is something better than grilled cheese.”

How do we transfer from the mundane to the miraculous? From the routines to the rivers?

I have a key for you.

This is what has filled my heart. I felt burdened to tell you this. I’ve written about it before, but I realized there was more I needed to say about it.

We experience the miraculous when we are looking for it.

God is so limitless that He cares about the amount of air you put in your tires, to care about the way you do dishes, to care about how many fries you eat, the very hairs of your head, to quote Matthew 10:30.

Someone told me recently about a rather bizarre instance where they had separated some animals in a trailer, only to find later the animals had gotten back into each other’s sections, without any explainable solution on how. “God was wanting to help us overcome our usual way of processing our circumstances!” they testified.

Then I remembered something similar happened recently. An animal in my care had been doing poorly, not putting on weight. Put in a pen by itself, water and food was provided for the animal to monitor it that night.

The next morning, the animal vanished and reappeared in the main pen. I scratched my head, trying to understand how an animal of her stature could’ve managed to get out of a locked pen.

But then I noticed the animal seemed healed and started putting on weight again.

Could God have healed that animal miraculously, even as He could’ve relocated that animal out of that pen miraculously?

What’s more, could I have missed God’s moving entirely in that instance? Or did I just chalk it up to: “well, that was insane, but I guess it all worked out!”

I wasn’t looking for God’s miraculous in that situation. That’s why I missed it.

One of my favorite movie quotes is:

“My father says almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody, you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement”.

The true story, “Miracles from Heaven”, describes how a little girl, dying from a rare, incurable disease, fell headlong into the center of a tree and got healed.

How did THAT happen?! Who falls in the middle of a tree? And how did she get healed after all that?!

The woman I’m dating described having significant physical issues, including a life-long battle with a dysfunctional thyroid.

As I sought God on how to find healing for her, God brought a faith healer into her life that caused her to get miraculously healed!

What I’m saying in all of this, about the animals bizarrely remixing in the trailer, or the animal Houdini who had a made a miraculous recovery after vanishing out of her pen, or the little girl who fell into a tree and got healed, or even the woman I’m dating being miraculously healed is this:

God doesn’t move as we expect Him to. He isn’t limited to our finite understanding.

He is moving far more in our lives than we could ever expect.

But we are SO caught up in our patterns, our routines, so heavily invested into what we expect, we don’t even look for the unexpected.

Someone said:

“If you don’t look for God in the little miracles, you’ll never see the big ones”.

A woman, “Peggy”, died and went to Heaven.

Afterwards, she described coming back into her body.

Everything was alive with the presence of God when she came back. The colors were SO vibrant.

The world was aglow with the presence of God.

A friend of mine had a miraculous encounter with God as well. Afterwards, he described the same thing–how the colors suddenly were so much brighter.

Everything was so much more vivid. He suddenly felt he was on holy ground.

I’ve had that as well–when I get touched by the Lord, it changes everything. My thoughts, my attitudes, my perspective is made completely new.

Peggy, after returning from Heaven to earth, started to see the glory fade after awhile. She asked God: “why did You leave me? Why don’t I feel Your Presence like I did before?”

“I never left you,” God told her. “You left Me.”

And that’s the key. Ordinary things swallowed her attention again, and she stopped looking for Him. I do the same thing.

Ordinary, mundane, earthly things fill up my heart so quickly, that even when people testify of seeing God move, I just shrug.

“Big whoop. Life moves on.”

The way to the rivers of living water is continuing to spotlight what God is doing in our lives.

My friends challenge me at times. We’ll come up to a conflict, and they’ll pray about it. Then God will provide, and they’ll be rejoicing about it, telling everyone.

I always end up kicking myself. I hadn’t even THOUGHT about asking God for it!

Now they had this whole testimony of seeing God move, and I just got: “oh yeah, I guess that worked out after all”.

It’s why giving, communicating, and being “spiritually minded” is the way to those rivers of living water.

A whole church was asking God for more signs and miracles in their lives.

It was good they were seeking for that. After all, as 1 Corinthians 14:1 says: “...desire spiritual gifts…”

But none of these things were coming. Why?

God gave a word to a traveling prophet/teacher who was ministering there:

“The way you’ll see more signs and miracles in your lives is you’ll give to people more.”

The purpose of these signs and miracles was mostly to help others believe in God and inspire them to faith.

The more that church encountered the needs in others, the more opportunities they gave God to move.

Therefore, the key to these miracles was giving more.

Reader, this is only the beginning of what God desires for us in our lives.

Only the beginning of “tasting and seeing” how good God is, to paraphrase Psalm 34:8.

Only the beginning of God moving in our lives.

Reach out to God. Taste of that “living water”, past the familiar patterns and regularity of the day.

Let His presence transform your moments into the miraculous. Seek for that river of life to flow out of you.

But don’t stop there.

Go to the rivers.