There’s something irresistible – almost magical – about fountains.  Young and old alike can hardly pass by without dipping a finger into the shimmering wetness.  Take a minute sometime and watch people as they pass by a fountain in a busy mall or park.  What you see will probably make you smile.

It’s as if there is an enormous magnet drawing fascinated children to come and splash.  Stressed-out parents are pulled along behind them only to pause and peacefully watch their sons and daughters at play.  From time to time they search their pockets for “wishing pennies” to give their kids, and when no one is looking, toss one in the water for themselves.

Irrestible

There’s a fountain in front of a church in the town where we live.  This fountain was a joy to see and hear as its iridescent pillars of water constantly shot skyward – for the briefest of moments defying gravity – and then showered crystals down in a rainbow freefall.  All year round, the steps surrounding it were not only a refuge for quiet prayers and silent meditation, but also a picturesque backdrop for generations of wedding photos, proud parents holding newly christened infants, and throngs of gap-toothed Sunday-schoolers receiving perfect attendance awards.

And at night, when no one else was about, probably more than a few couples held each other tight and whispered hushed words of love with that fountain’s persistent song.

Poetic, huh?

It’s really too bad that where it once stood so full of sparkling life, that wonderful fountain is now silent, dry, and empty except for a few seasons’ worth of shaggy, dead vines coiling around the broken center column.

There’s something profoundly unsettling about a dried-up fountain, isn’t there?  While flowing fountains speak of the richness of life, joy, and even romance; a dry fountain is a stark picture of death, sadness, and an emptiness you intuitively know does not belong there.

Fountains are meant to be full and constantly overflowing.  It’s what there’s for.  Anything else is just wrong!

YOUR LIFE AS A FOUNTAIN

What if your life was like a fountain?

What if love, joy, hope, peace, grace – what if all of that flowed as freely in your life as sparkling water flows in a fountain?  Overflowing.  Abundant.  Refreshing.  Captivating.

It certainly sounds poetic, but could it possibly be true?

It is.  It’s a promise made to every person willing to accept it.

“I [Paul] ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit – not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength – that Christ will live in you as you open the door to invite him in.  And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.  Reach out and experience the breadth!  Test its length!  Plumb the depths!  Rise to the heights!  Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

“God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!  He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his spirit deeply and gently within us” (Ephesians 3:16-20, The Message, emphasis added).

When you become a friend of Jesus – when you believe so fully in his love – you’re able to experience life to the fullest.  Life as it was meant to be: full of relationship, love, purpose, adventure, and fulfillment.

It’s hard to imagine a world where all our needs for acceptance, friendship, achievement, and love aren’t merely met, but continually overflowing. . . and in turn, pouring into the lives of those around us.  But this intriguing offer is repeated several times throughout the Bible—you’ll recognize it here in this encounter between Jesus and a weary woman at the town well.

Put yourself in that poor woman’s dusty sandals for a moment and try to consider what must have been going through her head as Jesus pointed down to the bottom of the deep well she was standing next to and said:

“Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again.  Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever.  The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life” (John 4:13-14, The Message).

Your first reaction probably goes something like this: “Uh oh! This guy must be nuts!  I’ve seen lots of crazy people who talk to themselves and say outrageous things to passersby, and this is definitely more than a little weird.”

And yet, there’s something disturbingly sane about the look in this stranger’s eyes and the earnestness in his voice.  He doesn’t look particularly scary; so you decide to play along.  What have you got to lose anyway?  After all, you’re tired of the sweaty routine of lugging heavy water jars across town in the blistering, noonday heat, and the idea of his magical “living water” sounds pretty appealing right about now.

With just a tiny edge of sarcasm in your voice, you say, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t ever get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again!” (John 4:15, The Message).

You’re startled when, moments later, this man reveals prophetic talents, telling you things about yourself that he couldn’t possibly know.  For a moment you consider the possibility that he actually is a prophet. . . but only for a moment, because now he is telling you that he is the Messiah.  The Messiah!  The long-awaited person sent from God, the hero you’ve been told about since childhood.  Could it be true?  You drop your jar and run into the village to share this shocking news with anyone you can find…

Nearly 2,000 years have passed since this encounter at Sychar’s village well, and people who say they believe in Jesus are nearly everywhere these days.  Maybe you know some and maybe you are one, either way the question we have for you is the same: Are you experiencing this endless life, this gushing fountain within you that Jesus promised?

Is your life richly flowing with peace?  power? passionate purpose? romance?

Or are you more like that dried-up fountain, living with a growing sense of inner dryness, apathy, and dissatisfaction?

Four Levels of Your Spiritual Fountain

So go ahead and imagine your life is a fountain.  Specifically, the old-fashioned, four-tiered kind of fountain, with a tall column in the center carrying the water upward before it cascades down into four  bowls below. 

These four bowls represent different types of relationships in your life—relationships implied in Christ’s last words here on earth: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NIV, emphasis added).

So let’s break it down.  First things first: The disciples had to be filled with the Spirit of God.  It’s a mysterious thing, but we’ve been promised the same power: Everyone who has a relationship with Jesus is given power, wisdom, and insight when God sends his Spirit to them as a

counselor and guide.  The central column of the fountain is the Holy Spirit in your life.  Just as the central column fills the fountain, so, too, the Holy Spirit wants to fill every one of your relationships with God’s love, joy, and wonder.

The first bowl that catches and distributes the power of the Spirit is your relationship with God.  Following the pattern from Acts 1:8, it represents your personal “Jerusalem”—where you go to connect with God.  Back when Jesus and the disciples were alive, Jerusalem was where Jews went to be close to God.  From the time every Jew was knee-high to their local rabbi, they learned that if you wanted to hear the voice of God, worship him, talk to him, or serve him, you had to go to Jerusalem—to the temple.  But Jesus changed all that.  Now that Jesus has come, there’s no longer any need to travel to a temple built with human hands.  Because of his death, Jesus made it possible for every single person on earth to have a more direct, personal, and intimate relationship with God—no matter what city you’re in (we’ll dig into this more in the following weeks).  So that first bowl—your Jerusalem, your friendship with God—is the key bowl.  It has to be filled up and overflowing first, before any of the other bowls can get any water.

Once you have a relationship with God, the first and most natural place his Spirit will overflow is going to be your home.  So the second bowl of the fountain is your relationship with family and friends.  For the disciples, Judea was home base.  They knew it the way your great-grandparens knew their hometown.  They understood the personalities and idiosyncrasies of the locals and knew all the inside jokes.  Of course, on the flip side, the people of Judea knew the disciples just as well . . . and they were carefully (and even critically) watching the disciples to see if being with Jesus had really changed them.  We’ll explore this area in more detail later.

The third tier of the fountain represents how the Spirit flows into your relationship with the community—especially the people with whom you have little or no natural connection.  For the disciples, Samaria was a nearby region they hated traveling through.  They’d grown up thinking of folks who lived there as “not our kind of people.” So they had generally ignored or shunned the Samaritans until Jesus taught them better (that woman at the well—she was a Samaritan).  During our later weeks, we’ll zero in on how to love and connect with the people in your community (even those who aren’t like you).

The last and largest bowl the Spirit wants to fill with love and life is your relationship with the world.  When the disciples heard the words “the ends of the earth,” they were probably thinking of far away Roman provinces like Gaul or Britannia—places where rumors described savage barbarians wearing uncured animal skins and wielding fierce weapons, weapons they were more than willing to use at the slightest offense.  So, in their minds, not exactly the most pleasant place to visit.  The very idea of sharing God’s love with such scary, non-Jewish people must have been more than a little upsetting.  But God’s love is meant for all people, and in following weeks we’ll help you identify and overcome any apprehensions you may have about bringing God’s love to the ends of the earth.

Whoever You Are . . .

Maybe it’s hard for you to imagine your life as a fountain in which each of these key areas is overflowing with richness.  The truth is that it’s hard for most people to believe that.  The world around us—from magazines, to movies, to the Jones’ next door—works hard to convince us that the true way to happiness is accumulating stuff, gaining advantages, and climbing ladders.  The idea of being generous instead of stingy, of being outward-focused instead of self-focused, of trusting God instead of taking control . . .well, it seems counterintuitive.  How can you be satisfied and fulfilled if you’re constantly giving instead of taking?

But that water—the water of stuff, advantages, and ladders—never seems to satisfy for long. It’s not long before we’re thirsty again. . . before we want more stuff. . . before we need the next raise. . . before we’re hunting for the next good deal.  How different from the water that Jesus promises—water that when we drink of it, we’ll never be thirsty again. . . we’ll have more than we need. . . we’ll overflow.

So whoever you are and whatever your struggles, whether you think of yourself as a friend of Christ or if—like the woman at the well—you’re just hoping what he said might possibly be true, a most refreshing experience is right around the corner.  Your life and the lives of those around you are about to change for the better.  In the words of Saint Augustine, “God is more anxious to bestow his blessings on us that we are to receive them.”  God thirsts for you to experience your life as the overflowing fountain he created it to be.  God longs to see the delight in your eyes as he gives you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4).

“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” (John 7:37-38, NIV, emphasis added).

Getting Your Feet Wet

Overflowing life as we’ve described it may sound nice, but what does it mean to you?  Personalize it—make it more specific and concrete—by finishing the thoughts below.  Let each of these openings spark your imagination and help you envision what abundant, overflowing life could look like in your relationships.  (Feel free to comment on any of the statements or questions below.)

• I would know my relationship with God was overflowing with life if. . .
• I would know my relationships with family and friends were overflowing with life if. . .
• I would know my relationship with my community was overflowing with life if. . .
• I would know my relationship with the world was overflowing with life if. . .

The Reflection Pool – Questions for comments.

• Are you an overflowing fountain? A clogged-up fountain? A barely-trickling fountain? A totally dried-up fountain? Describe your life in the context of fountain imagery.
• What circumstances and emotions have led to the state of your fountain? 
• Do you believe that God can make your life and your relationships like an overflowing fountain?  Why or why not? If not, what would make you believe?


A Reading from "Outflow" by Sjogren & Ping