Receiving Living Water

We are told several places in the Bible that if we ask, we will receive.

Matthew 7:8 "For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."
Matthew 21:22 "If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
Mark 11:24 "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
Luke 11:10 "For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."
John 16:24 "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."

Of course, we know that doesn't mean God is a magic genie who grants us everything we ask for. He is a good father, who knows how to give us good gifts. We get a hint of what is meant in Luke 11:13...

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

It is the Holy Spirit that God gives to those who ask Him. Getting "stuff" or favorable circumstances is different than receiving from God. Too often, we seek to fill the God-shaped hole in our souls with stuff or favorable circumstances when what we truly need for our joy to be complete is God Himself and the Holy Spirit living in us. Indeed, we need to empty ourselves of the stuff we have shoveled into the God shaped hole so that we can position ourselves to receive the Holy Spirit.

I think we seek to fill the whole with stuff because we want to be done. We want the hole to be filled, end of story. That's how we view being satisfied. We don't ever want to be empty again or have to do the work to be filled again. When offered living water by Jesus, the woman at the well summed it up perfectly...

The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." John 4:15

Living water fills but it doesn't stay once for always. It's a continual process of receiving but that requires letting go of what we just got in order to receive what we are continually being given. Like a river, the water in one place is never the same. It isn't stagnant. It flows so that it can bring life, changing you, nourishing you to grow and bear fruit. Death is what happens when we fill the hole once for all, trying to hold onto what we are given at one time and place. It is getting but not growing and therefore ultimately not living.

Perhaps one of the truest miracles about God is that He is both constant but ever flowing. His promise of abundant life is life that flows without end. There is no once for all getting, which always leads to death, just continual receiving that brings life and growth and joy.

Of course the trick is to let go of the desire for the tangibleness of the security that comes from getting and holding to embracing the flow and trusting the constancy of the source. That is why we ask for living water and His promise is that we will receive it through the gift of the Holy Spirit.