The river Ezekiel describes (Ezek 47:1-12) is a river of abundant, teeming life. It’s a place where life can grow and healing can occur. As such, it is a picture of the overflowing life that God offers us.
Many of us live life with God added on as an afterthought. We want a comfortable, safe God who will do whatever we want, whenever we want, and who will not make demands of us. The God of the Bible is not like this. He is a wild, wild river. His love is like a raging sea. Rich Mullins wrote about a ‘wildness in God’s mercy’ and ‘the reckless raging fury/ That they call the love of God.’ (‘The Love of God’) When we read the Bible, we see a God who is jealous for us, who is passionate, a God who is able to do miracles and who speaks to people and uses them in ways that cannot be explained away by science or reason. He is a God whose heart yearns for people who will not draw back from Him, but who will plunge into the water and swim with Him.
We need more of God. We need Him to fill us up and send us out. We need to be broken by God so that we take off our own clothes, our ways of ‘doing God’ and let Him lead us afresh into deep water, where we swim in life-giving, thirst-quenching, Spirit-filled water and as we do that, in the power of God’s Spirit, bring abundant fruit into the lives of those who desperately need Him. Religion is not the answer. God as a convenient extra is not the answer. But God Himself, the spring of living water, is.
