Many of God’s Family have come through the door of salvation into the kingdom and not much further.  Jesus, however, actually talked more about living in His kingdom than about being saved.  He taught us about living in His kingdom in such a way that we would be full of everlasting Life.  We enter the kingdom by asking Jesus the King to live in us, as we surrender to Him fully for the first time, but the key to being a flowing river of life is properly applied thirst .

John 4:5-14 Then He came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
And Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus upon the well. It was about the sixth hour.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me to drink.  (For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)
Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, How do you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water.

The woman said to Him, Sir, you have no vessel, and the well is deep. From where then do you have that living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his children and his cattle?

Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life

The main verses here are:-   

Vs 10   Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked of Him, and He would have given you living water.”
Vs 13   Jesus answered her, “Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”

It is a fact of life that all of us have a thirst for more of Jesus deep within us.  It is what we do with it that shapes what happens to us.  If we focus our attention to try to drink anywhere else but Jesus through our spirit, or “new creature” it doesn’t satisfy.  It may appear to bring some satisfaction at first, but when that first flush of interest has gone we find that we are just as thirsty if not more so than before.  Some that I know move on from one corporate so called “improving event” to another, but because there is no drinking from Jesus, there is no satisfaction at the end of it, just fatigue and burn out when the enthusiasm finally runs out.  This can happen in Christian events as well because what we receive from God depends on our focus.

James 4:3 You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it upon your lusts. 
James 4:6 But He gives more grace.  Therefore He says, God resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.  Therefore submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you

John 7:37-38 “in the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst let him come to Me and drink.  He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”

He was talking about the Holy Spirit’s permanent connection to our spirit.  When we open up to Jesus Himself to drink, we get our wells working again because we are reconnecting away from self and into our spirit.  What happens when we come together is a result of what happens when we are in private with God.  Not the other way around.

Feeling good because we are praising and worshipping together is great, but we can praise and worship at home or work to connect with our spirit - new creature place inside and know His peace presence wherever we are as well.  Our well should flow in private just as much if not more than when we are together.  That is speaking the opposite of the pew based programming many of us have been sucked into, where we believe that it all happens and only happens when we are doing church.

I love singing and worship together but we need to see that we come together to encourage others more than get and spectate.  After all, the place most accessible and likely to find those needing encouragement and blessing is a gathering of those who are otherwise at the coalface of workplace or “in the home” ministries.  How much we are able to experience His presence as a group or congregation is related to individual levels of closeness to God that we come together with.  That is why some meetings are better than others.

We are tabernacles of God

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of Heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.

A tabernacle, or tent of meeting as it was called in Moses time, had three areas to it.

•  The outer public area.
•  The inner sanctified place where Moses the apostle prophet and the priests went.
•  The holy place were the ark was kept.

Both inner areas away from public gaze were sanctified places and speak of our soul and spirit.  The inner sanctuary speaks of our spirit and the dwelling place of Jesus, Holy Spirit and our Father. John 14:13-28

John 14:16   And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, so that He may be with you forever,
John 14:18   I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.
John 14:23   Jesus answered and said to him, If a person loves Me, he/she will keep My Word. And My Father will love that person, and We will come to that person and make Our dwelling place with him/her.

My experience is that for the early part of my Christian life, I was confused about whether God dwelt fully in me and how much of what we do depends on Him sending anointing and blessing to us as we meet.  This was mainly due to the spoken and unspoken attitudes of those I fellowshipped with, most of whom thought that we are dependent on His mercy to pour out blessing and fire from heaven into the room we met in.  What this really means is we regard our Christian walk as dependant on God outside us and dwelling in a high and lofty place and we need Him to come down into our sphere in order to experience His blessing and miracles.

But eventually it sank in as He revealed it point by point, that He dwells in a high and lofty place AND with him who has a soft heart toward Him.  So if He truly dwells in me and you what does that mean?  It means a belief shift that moves away from most of what I had been told and into a place of believing that He really does dwell inside me.  So I realised I had better learn how to let Him do what He so dearly wants to do through me.  I know I am not alone in hungering for Him to move, and hungering for more of His fellowship through all my days.

As the journey continued from that point, I began to realise from scripture that Jesus taught about what the Kingdom of God is like and how it works so that you and I can align ourselves that way and see Him flow.  He was not about teaching a set of rules, but describing what exists within all who belong to Him.  The reality is that our Spirit identifies with and loves to be in tune with His kingdom this way.  Not only that, but when we are in tune with our spirit, we naturally flow into kingdom ways and works.  Religious Self will always try to substitute with a set of rules.

I began to realise that Paul and others have written about keys to influence the jump from self into the spirit connection place inside us and do so more consistently.  E.g. 1 Thessalonians 5:14-24 .  When we are not living from our spirit, but from self, we thirst for Him again.  When we have tasted the fire that He is inside us at home or work or play we want to live there all the time.

Christian, the good news is that you can.  The veil we put up on the inside that blocks His flow isn’t that hard to shift.  Your decision to believe that He lives in you in all His power and Glory is a start.  John 17:22 And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one, I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made complete in oneness;

If we truly wish to experience God’s lordship released in our meetings with greater glory and miracles etc as a routine event, enough of His Family must come ready to flow from His Spirit, ready to pour out from the wells within, expectant and already knowing His flow.
Let’s ask ourselves some relevant questions.
Do we come to meetings to work with Him?
Am I ready to work with Him?
Why not?  Do I need help?

Some nuts and bolts

Through Matthew 5, Jesus taught about things that enable us and things that stop us turning to Him in private and getting our wells working.  He wants each of us to be able to shine with the light of His own righteousness filled Life and shows us here what stops us receiving and flowing.

One example is in verse 22 - anger.  Do you have unresolved or lurking anger buried?  Every time we are hurt we get angry.  We need to see that it stops us satisfying our thirst and let Him deal with that anger that has been buried.  At any stage of Holy Spirit’s dealings with us we cannot afford pride over these issues and that’s just what He is saying in the following verses also.  An antidote is in verse 9 - Congratulated are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.  It’s an attitude of wanting to make peace out of compassion that always wins over anger and irritation.

Reality check

Folks, there is a full on spiritual battle going on - raging even - all around us.  We cannot see it with natural senses, but it is there.  Do you realise how much your one life can affect that battle?  When you let our Father clothe you from the inside in Jesus righteousness and walk in that, listening to His spirit through your spirit, no power of darkness can stop you.  Everywhere you go, the power of God goes with you.

Think about it, you become a moving island of His righteous life.  Darkness cannot put out that light.  Light puts out the darkness.  Let Him deal with all that baggage of anger, frustration, unforgiveness, bitterness and agony that you have pushed down inside.  You will know when he has dealt with it because you will be able to care for those who have hurt you.  You will be able to bless those who have wronged you with a heart influenced by Jesus own love.  Compassion will flow where there was ache and pain in your heart.

Our Family doctor is the Holy Spirit.  He is the rivers of living waters that flows from the wells inside each of us.  The choice is ours - individually and then collectively to seek oneness with Him at the expense of our agendas and desires and programs wherever and whenever He decides necessary.

To be willing to teach truth as He is revealing it and not compromise or filter it with our understandings or long held traditional doctrines.  The Family of God in Jesus Christ is suffering and we the Family members must start on an individual basis to pray for our Family in fervent crying out prayer for healing waters, oil of anointing, and good food, and then be ready to obey Him when He asks us to help.