Ever been so thirsty you think you’re going to die. And then – then you have a deep drink of fresh, cool, clear, living water. Awesome. In fact Jesus talked a lot about water.

I remember when I was training to be an officer in the Australian Army. We used to go out on exercises for weeks at a time, war games and we'd be fighting this imaginary army and learning, I guess, how to fight a war. Back in those days the army was heavily into water rationing. Two water bottles per man per day perhaps.

And that was for shaving, washing, cleaning your teeth, cooking and drinking. So those hot summer months with all the physically heavy work that the battle entails, it was never enough. Many a time we'd finish an attack up a steep hill in the middle of the noon days sun or be digging a trench and all I wanted to do was to guzzle down a whole bottle of water.

Of course you couldn't do that and I'd close my eyes and I'd imagine that I was swimming in a nice cool river with stacks and stacks of water. When you're that thirsty what you really want is water in abundance. You want to be filled to overflowing.

This week on the program we're looking at what it means to be filled by God to overflowing. Not just half full, not just three quarters full, not just full to the brim but filled so that we overflow all His goodness and all His blessings and his Spirit. When we're really thirsty we have a deep longing to drink. It is such a satisfying thing when we drink.

I mean our need for water is one of the most basic of all needs. 70% of the human body is water and after oxygen water is our most important physical need. You can't go for very long without water. The body starts closing down some of it's functions and depending on your condition you can be dead in just a couple of days. Or if you're stuck in a hot car without water you can be dead in a few minutes in extreme heat.

It's interesting that when Jesus was talking about His plan for our lives He uses thirst and water to explain what He means. I think it's because it's something we can really relate to. He meets a woman, a Samaritan woman, at a well and He says to her:

Everyone who drinks out of this water will be thirsty again but those who drink the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give them will become in them a spring of water gushing up into eternal life.

See life gets thirsty and this week on the program we've been looking at what it means to be filled to overflowing 'cause that's Jesus plan. No ifs, no buts. "Oh well, that’s not my experience'". Maybe not but its Jesus promise.

Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water I will give them will become in them a spring of water gushing up into eternal life.

I wonder sometimes whether in life we don't make things just a bit too complicated. For me, faith is a simple thing. I read what Jesus says. I hear what God has to say to me and then you say, "Well okay, if that's from God that's what I'm going to believe even if my circumstances are screaming at me saying that's never going to be possible. You're never going to have a fountain of spring water gushing up in you."

And every time my feelings or the things that are going on around me scream at me, "God’s a liar, God’s a liar, God’s a liar". I'm just going to pick up that Book and go to that passage again and read what Jesus had to say again. I'm just going to believe in Him and not all these other things.

Now you might say to me, 'But Berni that’s unrealistic. I've been trying to have a life of peace and joy and abundance. It seems like forever and it's just not happening for me'. Look at His promise again friend. Let's read it. John chapter 7, verse 37:

If anyone (not some special people). If anyone is thirsty let them come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me (not just the special spiritual people). Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from them. By this He meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Jesus were later to receive.

There are three parts to that promise. The first one is, "if you're thirsty get a drink". When life is dry and parched and empty, if anyone is thirsty. You know what anyone means? Anyone means anyone. Come to Jesus and He will fill us full of His water. A water that when we drink it, a living water, we'll never be thirsty again.

The second thing He says is, "and whoever believes in me". You see, it's a faith thing. When He says, "whoever believes in me" that word "in" means literally "into". So it says whoever believes into me. You may have heard me say this before. I can look at a chair in the distance and believe that it will hold me and I'm believing in it.

But if I want to believe into the chair I walk over and I sit down in the chair and I say, "you see, the chair can hold me". I've put my faith into the chair. My trust into the chair and so Jesus says, "whoever believes what I say, whoever reads what I said and says you know something, like a little child I'm going to believe and accept that from Jesus".

Whoever believes into me from their belly rivers of living water, not just a trickle, not just a steam, not just one river, rivers plural, get it? An abundance, a flood-tide of blessing of the Holy Spirit. Whoever believes into me from their belly rivers of living water will flow out.

The last few days of the program we've looked at some of the things that can stop that from happening, the blockage, our own rejection of God, the compromises, the sin, the devil in the spiritual realm robbing us of what God wants us to have. And you might say, "Berni, I think you're being unrealistic. Well I have problems and stresses and strains in my life."

Absolutely, Jesus promises those too. Look at how He trained His disciples. He promised them all those things and He never promised them that He would somehow lift us out of those difficulties and trials and exempt us from suffering. To the contrary, He promised the absolute opposite. He said:

In this world you will have tribulation.

But in the middle of all that He also promised that He would fill us to overflowing in this thirsty, parched, dry place. He would let us experience the incredible satisfaction of a deep drink of His Spiritual water of Him Himself. Now we might be spiritually or emotionally thirsty or parched or dry and Jesus says, "Come to me and I'll give you the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. I'll fill you with Him to overflowing."

And we're all different. We're all close to God in different ways. Some people do it by singing, other people like me get up early in the morning and pray. Other people love to read, other people find Jesus just most in the middle of life. And there are combinations and permutations of those things but the consistent message of Gods word is this.

When we draw close to Him, He draws close to us and that's a special thing and there is an incredible satisfaction of being, not just fulfilled full of Him but being filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit. He fills us in ways that nobody else, that nothing else can. The problem is so many people have been living so dry for so long they've accepted that as being normal. I mean so many spiritually dry people.

We think everyone else is like that. We can't imagine how God could ever fill us with His Spirit. How He could ever make a fountain of living water bubble out so that other people can come and meet Jesus and drink from that fountain 'cause that, my friend, is the normal Christian life.

Can I encourage you? Don't accept second best, don't accept a dry, parched land, don't accept anything else, don't settle for anything less than the fullness of God in your life. The very presence of Jesus through His Spirit in us. Thirst then wait to be filled by Him and just don't take anything less.