Several countries in Southeast Asia celebrate the regional new year with a water festival. Traditionally, people sprinkle each other with water as a sign of respect and blessing, but many people intensify it with wild, joyful, boisterous dousing of anybody and everybody with water. Walk or drive down the streets during those days and you might be accosted with garden hoses, water cannons, water pistols, or even bowls and cups filled with water. It is raucous. It is fun. It is vivid. Everyone knows it is out with the old, in with the new.
Water was a key feature of the ancient Jewish festival called the Feast of Tabernacles. For the first seven days of the festival, with trumpets blowing, a priest would take water from the Pool of Siloam and carry it through the streets in a golden vessel, eventually delivering it to the altar in the temple.
Jesus was in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles, when, on the climactic day of the festival, he stood up and shouted out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37–38). The Gospel of John then has this explanation: “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (John 7:39).
“Influence” means something hidden flowing out in order to affect others. Jesus talked about the spiritual reality of a person taking in the life of God and then having “rivers of living water flow from within them.” This is a wonderful description of spiritual influence–not the kind of thing you will hear at a leadership training seminar while you sit on an uncomfortable seat at a long table in a hotel somewhere–but perhaps the most important principle you will ever get anywhere to deepen your ability to serve and lead others. You seek the “flowing in” of the truth and life of God, and it flows out to the eternal benefit of others. Amazing. What would happen to the quality of our leadership if we committed ourselves entirely to this dynamic? What if we really believed that we “will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isa. 58:11)?
TAKE AWAY – We all need to be better influences in our work, our families, our leadership, our churches, our communities. You are invited to an online seminar called “Deepen Your Influence” starting next week. Information HERE.
