“Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.”

Consider what is happening and help us to speak your word. How often do we keep our mouths shut because of what others might say or do? Do we turn and walk away from wrongdoing so we do not make any waves?

I know I have. I regret it, I have asked forgiveness for it, but I have done it. I think if we were all honest, we would all say this has been true for us. I tell myself it was different in Peter’s day. Yes, it was different: they were thrown in jail for speaking up. Stephen got stoned for speaking up. I do not have to worry about either one of those. Yet, there are times I do not speak up.

Dear Father, I come and seek your forgiveness for keeping my mouth shut. I come and ask that you walk with me so that I might have the boldness needed to spread your word in my corner of the world. Help me to give more then money. Help me to send others not only to far reaching parts of the world, but to downtown or around the corner or next door. Lord, help me to realize that this city, this neighborhood, needs to be clean as well. Lord, help me to go myself.

In John chapter 10, we read of the crowd trying to stone Jesus, trying to seize Him, but He escapes. Other scriptures tell us of times that the crowds wanted to harm, even kill, Jesus, but it also says that the timing was not right.

If He stopped them in John 10 and the other places, I have no doubt He could have stopped them at Gethsemane. He knew what Judas was up to. He could have stopped him or had one of the other 12 stop him, but the timing was right.

Jesus wanted to follow God’s timing. He wanted the timing to be not His own. How often do we get impatient with God’s timing? Our example here shows us that we need to wait. How often, when we are going through hard times, do we find it difficult to wait on God’s timing?

Be still and know that I am God.

"Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?" Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

My Jesus, my savior, my guide lived this. He sat at a table with Judas, the man who would betray Him. He was anointed with oil.

A table is prepared for me as well. I come before the throne with my Savior, with my Jesus at my side. I come to hear of God’s love, to hear of God’s desire for my life and to hear God’s instruction for how I am to live that life. I also come to receive the nourishing, living water.

He, in turn, gives me this life giving water, the substance that sustains my life, without which I cannot live. This nourishment allows me to live.

It is not amazing that He uses the reference of water to tell me what He does, and can do, for me. Our bodies can live for 4 - 6 weeks without food, but we can only live 3 - 7 days without water. Our bodies are made up of 55 - 60% water. But I wonder... how long do I think I can live without God? How long do I go without His word? Should I try to live without His word? Should I go 4 - 6 weeks and starve or should I try to go a week and thirst? Do I thirst enough for God’s word? Or do I allow God’s word to well up in me? Do I allow my cup to overflow? Jesus told the woman at the well, “The water I give you will become in you a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Have you ever just stood and watched a waterfall? Have you ever just stood with your eyes closed and listened to a waterfall? Both are just amazing! The water rushing over is a wonderful sight and sound. That is how God’s love comes to us every day. It flows by the bucketful over the top and plunges to the depths of our hearts. But wait: God’s love wells up inside us as well, and runs over the top and causes another waterfall...or it should. That is the waterfall we create when we share the good news of Jesus Christ.

How is your waterfall flowing today?