Rivers of Living Water

Rivers (even those known to be mighty) begin with more of a burble than a bang. What begins with spurts and drizzles at its source, however, becomes a torrent downstream.

Take the mighty Columbia, for example. It starts as a trickle somewhere high in the mountains of Canada. Rain and meltwater toboggan down nearby slopes to join it along the way. Other rivers meet up, then merge, expanding the acreage of its watershed.

After leaving Canada, the Columbia dives south through the state of Washington. Just as it’s about to touch the northern edge of Oregon, it slams into the Snake River and takes a hard turn west. Finally, it reaches the Pacific Ocean and opens its mouth into the sea.

The Columbia didn’t always run so free, however. During the last ice age, expanses of glacial ice in Canada formed a dam, piling its waters into great mountain lakes. For years, the dam held. The frustrated river, under growing water pressure, probed its fingers through tiny holes and melted its way through widening cracks.

At last the ice could no longer contain it and the dam breached—repeatedly and explosively. Cataclysmic floods roared down the river’s bed, sending walls of water several hundred feet high clawing and scraping at the Columbia’s banks until they sculpted the riverbed between Washington and Oregon into a gorge.

When they reached the ocean, the floodwaters didn’t stop. They smashed into the mouth of the Willamette, leapt upon her back and barreled south, down her valley as well. Only miles later did the Columbia finally give up in exhaustion and drain back into its own banks.

Rivers or trickles?

This is what I thought about while reading John 7:38. Jesus said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” I’ve always thought of rivers in full flow when I’ve read this verse—like the Columbia at its mightiest or the Mississippi where it’s wide and deep.

Yet, as I considered what flowed out of my own life, It certainly bore no resemblance to a river. Good things, at best, only trickled and bubbled and dripped from me. But here’s what Oswald Chambers said. “A river touches places of which its source knows nothing, and Jesus says if we have received of His fulness, however small the visible measure of our lives, out of us will flow the rivers that will bless to the uttermost parts of the earth.”[1]

It occurred to me I don’t see the might of my own river because I can only observe from its headwaters—where it first comes out of me. It’s downstream where my influence is really measured, after other people have had an opportunity to add their streams and tributaries to my own.

The “uttermost parts of the earth” Jesus speaks of are all downstream—where I can’t see. Somehow, Jesus sees me like the Columbia, sending my waters to places I’d never imagine. And like the Columbia, when I feel frustrated, He keeps pouring His goodness into me until the pressure of it breaks through any “dams” that hold me back. He will send rivers through me and, when they come crashing out, they won’t be as trickles, but as landscape-changing floods.

[1] My Utmost for His Highest