Overflow

by John Bishop, Director of Spiritual Formation

I got caught up the other day on YouTube watching a man build a mini hydroelectric power plant in a ditch. I know, embarrassing. I’m such a nerd but so are 25 million other people! Here’s the link if you want to watch it 😊. 
 
It’s about overflow! The water that backs up behind a dam is loaded with potential, but there’s not much you can do with the potential that is trapped behind the wall of the dam. Potential has to be released in order to be realized. But if you’re not careful in how it is released it can be very dangerous. So, engineers figured out how to harness a strategic, measured amount of that potential in ways that can produce sustainable power. One way they do it is by creating a low spot in the wall and harnessing the overflow. 
 
God has designed us (humanity) with tremendous potential. The human spirit is profoundly powerful! We marvel at stories of people who thrive in prison camps, sacrifice themselves to save someone else, accomplish unbelievable physical feats, or harness nature to build and create fascinatingly complex tools that bend reality and hold suffering at bay. Our potential, individually and collectively, is seemingly unlimited but the issue is that potential is available to those who would use it for good and evil. That means it can also cause tremendous destruction, pain, and suffering.  
 
While I’m writing this, the videos of war in Israel are flooding to people’s phones revealing the real-time devastation of human potential busting through the walls in rage, resentment, and hatred. How do we hold back the flood of human depravity and use our potential for good? 
 
Luke 6:45 gives us a clue, “The good man brings things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” 
 
There are streams of influence flowing into our souls behind the wall. And what backs up behind the dam of our soul eventually breaks through. Have you evaluated the streams filling up your life lately? 
 
When Jesus walked with the disciples he put them in all kinds of crazy situations as they watched him turn water to wine, multiply fish and loaves, heal blind people, lame people, sick people, then walk across the water, speak to the wind, rebuke powerful men, cast out demons, pray, weep, laugh, die, walk through walls, transform into an angel of light, ascend into heaven, and all this in three years of public ministry. For three years, he filled these disciples with torrents of evidence and examples of God’s power at work with us. By the time He left them to continue the ministry without them they were bursting with potential. 
 
Then in Acts 2, the dam broke and the overflow of the Spirit of God through those men and millions since has not stopped flowing like a stream into the lives of countless others through the generations. And that was His plan all along. He said in John 14:12, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the father.” 
 
How do we hold back the flood of human depravity and use our potential for good? We tend to the streams that fill our lives. We allow Jesus to fill us with the Spirit of God and let the overflow of His love do the rest.  
 
Jesus promises that he will give us living water (John 4), that when we give our lives to Him, we will never thirst again. What we may need to be reminded of is that the abundance of his living water will never stop flowing. 
 
So let it flow! We are blessed to be a blessing. So, let’s get busy doing the greater things He said we would.