Splash…A tiny drop of rain fell from Heaven as Theresa’s dented Toyota idled roughly in the Taco Bell drive-through.  A single mom, she depended on a government welfare check to feed her 8-year-old son.  It was 10 days till the next check would arrive and she was already broke.  Here’s how she described what happened:

After looking under the sofa cushions, all the car seats, and through the glove box, we came up with a grand total of. . .$4.58!  It had been a hard week and my thinking was, “Hey, any way you look at it we aren’t going to have enough money to make it through to the next check.  So let’s go out with style.”  So we headed for Taco Bell.

As we got to the drive-thru window to pay, I was never so shocked in all of my life.  The guy standing in the window had a big grin on his face and said, “This is your lucky day—the people in front of you paid for your entire meal.  They said to give you this card.”

The card read, “We hope this small act of service shows you God’s love in a practical way,” but I’ve got to tell you something, for me and my 8-year old son, Donny, this was no small act of love.  It was huge.  We were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to receive this touch from God when we needed it most! 

The next day, Theresa and Donny came to church for the very first time.  That tiny drop of generosity they’d experienced in God’s name made them hopeful that perhaps God really did care about them and what they were going through.

 A PROMISE FROM GOD

Maybe, like Theresa, you’ve wondered about God.  Does God exist?  Does he really care about me? Are God and religion even relevant anymore?  My life is filled with technology, busyness, and modern problems—what, honestly, does an old-fashioned God have to do with my life?

Or maybe you already know God.  Maybe you’re asking different questions. . .questions like: How can I have a deeper relationship with God? How can I have a more authentic faith—one that’s reflected in every part of my life?  How can I trust God for my health, finances, and future?  How can I share my hope in God with the people around me?

It doesn’t matter where we are in our faith—on which part of the belief spectrum we’re standing—we all have questions.  We have deeply rooted and deeply critical questions.  Questions whose answers will ultimately define the way we life.

For the next few weeks, this Outflow blog is dedicated to exploring some of these difficult questions and God’s biblical promises.  Promises that answer our questions.  Promises whose essential messages boil down to this:

Your life is meant to overflow with

unimaginable joy and power

As you read the sentence above, you might have been thinking, “No way!  Maybe that’s possible for extraordinarily holy people like Mother Theresa or Billy Graham, but not for everyday people like me!”  And if these promises came from anywhere south of heaven, you would be right.  They would seem completely ridiculous.  But the fact is they come directly from the mouth of the Lord, and they permeate the very fabric of both the Old and New Testaments: 

“The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.  You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” (Isaiah 58:11, NIV)

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14, NIV) 

If that doesn’t add a little credibility, our advice is to give Outflow a try for the next few weeks and, as the Bible says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)

Here’s a story of how our friend, Lynne, first tasted the joy of this over-flowing life we’re talking about:

I met Gail many years ago at our husbands’ office Christmas party.  After doing the small-talk thing, we realized we were both stay-at-home moms with young children.  I tried hard not to cringe visibly as Gail wearily described her life to me.  She’d just moved to town recently and was housebound most of the time taking care of her three children—all of them less than 3 years old!

I was stressed-out just taking care of my 4-year old.  I couldn’t even imagine how hard it would be to care for three little ones, and without the help and support of local friends or family.  I was getting worn out just thinking about it.

Which might explain why I stopped thinking about it, because, to be honest, I’d completely forgotten about Gail and her struggles until a few days later.

At that point I’d just started getting serious about Jesus in my life so I was new at the whole prayer thing.  But after I’d asked God to bless me and my family and a few of my friends, Gail came back to mind.  So I asked God to please send her someone to give her a day off from her parenting duties.  When I was finished, I was feeling pretty good about what a sensitive Christian I’d become.  But God wasn’t quite done yet.  As I stood up and went about my business, I got the sense that God wanted me to be part of his answer to my prayer for Gail.

I needed a little prompting, but after thinking about it for a bit, I got her number and gave her a call.  “Gail,” I said, “You may not remember me, but we met at the Christmas party last week.  Yes, I enjoyed meeting you, too.  Today I’m calling because I’m convinced your heavenly Father loves you so much he wants to give you a full day off.”

As you might imagine, Gail wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that.  After her silence had stretched for several long seconds, I jumped in.

“I’m serious.  You pick a day and I’ll come over and take care of your kids from 9:00 in the morning until you’re ready to come home that evening.  You can go anywhere you want and do whatever you want.”  After another pause, Gail said it was nice of me to offer and she would think about it.

Sensing that she wasn’t quite sure, I pressed on.  “Just pick a day and I’ll come over.  And if you don’t pick a day, I’m going to show up anyway.”  And, in the end, that’s how it happened.  I showed up at her house one morning.  After she decided I wasn’t crazy or a criminal, she gave in and agreed to let me watch her kids.  That’s when I told her I’d reserved a hotel room in her name if she wanted to have a nice place to take a nap—and that I wouldn’t be upset if she didn’t use it.

Gail left the house and didn’t return again until 9:30 that evening.  When she walked in the kids were all tucked in bed, her husband was watching TV, and I had dinner waiting for her.  A smile on her face, Gail asked, “Why did you say you were doing this?”

Once again, I said simply, “Because your heavenly Father wants you to know he loves you!”

Something in Gail changed that day.  The long hours away from her house and children caused her to recognize that she’d been suffocating emotionally, all the while never asking her husband or anyone else for help.  After that day she finally had the courage to ask.  And when she did ask, Gail was amazed at how willing he and others were to help lighten her load.

I thought all this was a great answer to my prayer, but God wasn’t done yet.  There was something even more exciting to come.  A couple of weeks later, Gail called me up on the phone.  “Tell me again, why did you decided to help me?” she asked.

And for the third time, I repeated, ‘Because your heavenly Father wants you to know he loves you!”

I could hear her quietly crying in the background for several seconds before she whispered, “I want to know him.”

Gail talked to Jesus for the first time that day.  She recognized she needed a savior and began a friendship with him.

Again, you might think this would be a good end to the story, but no.  A few months after that phone call, Gail began a ministry in her church—one specifically designed to give practical help to mothers of young children!

It’s a life overflowing.  A life that looks a lot like what Jesus describes:

“Whoever believes in me…streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:38, NIV)