Just One Drop -- FPC sermon excerpt

The water looked clean, but the children kept getting sicker and sicker.

No one knew what to do.

“One time, I had four children all in the hospital at once.” So says a pastor named Justin, in the African nation of Rwanda. He did not understand about germs and disease transmission in the local water.

Then a couple named Larry and Carolyn McBride showed up on a mission trip from Saddleback Church in California. Saddleback is one of the churches I visited on sabbatical, the megachurch led by pastor Rick Warren. After seeing children carry dirty river water over long distances, the McBrides returned home with a deep desire to do something for thirsty African children.

The McBrides gathered friends for prayer and planning. They began to craft clean water systems for hospitals, clinics, orphanages, and pastors’ homes. Their project, called the Clean Water Initiative, also created teams to equip hundreds of Rwandan church volunteers to improve health and sanitation in 116 communities.

The Clean Water Initiative provided a water filter for Pastor Justin’s home and funded a well in the community. “We have people coming from all over to get clean water and we haven’t been back to the hospital since,” reports Pastor Justin. “It has changed our lives and given us hope for the future.”

Teams are now taking Clean Water Initiative technology and education around the world — from Argentina to East Timor. They are even going to Haiti, to help combat the outbreak of cholera. Larry and Carolyn McBride dream that “no child would miss another day of school or die of such a preventable death.”

New life begins with just one drop.

Jesus knows this, which is why he cries out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:37-38). Whenever the Bible speaks of “living water,” it is pointing us in several directions. Living water can mean fresh, running water — water from a spring, as opposed to a container. It can also mean life-giving water. In this case, Jesus is suggesting both, since he knows that fresh, running water is also life-giving water — something that everyone needs for a life of health and vitality.

Just ask the children of Rwanda.

But there is a third meaning that is offered by John in the very next verse. “Now [Jesus] said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (v. 39). John is convinced that the living water offered by Jesus is nothing less than the fresh, running, life-giving Holy Spirit of God, which comes to the followers of Jesus on the Day of Pentecost, which we will celebrate next month.

Living Water. Holy Spirit. Both change our lives. Both give us hope for the future.