This is a slow read for those who are truly thirsty and want to “FEEL” the Life of Christ and the anointing flowing deep within their spirit! If that’s you – DRINK …

A small “snack” from this book, “The Anointed of the LORD” to be released in a few days … enjoy!

Thirsty for Living Water …

There is a beautiful portion of Scripture where God invites us to come and to drink to be satisfied,

“Come, everyone who is thirsty, come to the waters; and you without money, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost!” Isaiah 55:1.

He calls on us to come and drink! He calls on everyone thirsty to come and be satisfied!

“Come ye THIRSTY!”

The thing we have to ask ourselves is, are we going? Are we responding? Are we thirsty?

For if we are, there is nothing that can prevent us from being utterly full of His Presence. The only thing restricting us, is our thirst! We have to become thirsty for the River of God to flow within us. We have to, not only “want the River to flow,” we have to want the River to flow in us.

We have to want more than just to dip our toes in it for a while, we need to want the River to become a permanent well inside of us, springing up into eternal life. The waters needs to become a River of His Presence flooding our lives everyday and bringing newness and freshness inside of us. Revelation twenty one tells us that the River of God flows straight from underneath the threshold of His Throne, and that from there it produces His Life in everything it touches,

“And he showed me a river of water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out of the throne of God and of the Lamb,” Revelation 22:1.

When this Heavenly River flows into our lives it produces all of the fragrances of God’s beauty within us. It brings His Life into our lives and causes us to be “touched” and to explode with His new Life.

Heaven fills our spirit and floods our soul, and everything begins to look different in our eyes. We see with new perspective and experience with renewed reality.

Imagine for a moment that you are watching a black and white still film –

The scene: A beautiful colourful garden, filled with a variety of blossoming flowers in full bloom, on a warm summer day, located beside the banks of a fresh water stream.

Now imagine how colour begins to roll into the picture like water that comes down a dry riverbed! Suddenly everything that was dull and grey is clothed in the most brilliant colours.

Suddenly everything comes to life – the bees are seen and the little buzzing buzzards are heard also! The whole atmosphere is changed. The beauty that was hidden away, suddenly becomes visible and bursts unto the scene.

So it is in our Christian lives when the River of God begins to flow in us also! What has become no more than known truths, suddenly become vibrant realities as they are touched by God’s Life giving Spirit!

Suddenly what had stagnated begins to flow again and we find ourselves rediscovering the Beauty of Christ and the wonder of His fellowship within us.

Suddenly it seems as though all things have become new again as God’s River of Life floods our being.

Is this not what you thirst for?

If so, it is as close as opening yourself up to Him and allowing the River to flow in! Nothing can prevent it! The invitation is already made! Those who are thirsty “come and drink”!

There is nothing worse than living the Christian life void of intimacy, and void from Union with the Holy Spirit, and there is nothing better, either!

We were designed not to be slaves of the LORD, but lovers of Him and of His Presence.
So many people today know religion without encounter. Form without reality. Ritual without relationship. Conversion without Christ! So many are serving God faithfully, but so few know Him intimately!

Yet His will for us was to KNOW Him. His desire was for us to become One with Him as a husband and a wife are consummated in their love for another. He wanted complete Oneness with us, without any separation between Him and us.

His purpose was that two “would become one Spirit and one flesh.” Jesus did not want to dwell in our hearts, He wanted to live in us completely by the indwelling Presence of His Holy Spirit.

He wanted to be perfectly Unified with us, within a relationship that far exceeds merely “knowing” Him from afar, through our knowledge of Him. He wanted us to “know” Him intimately in the Spirit, to be in the same relationship of intimacy in the Spirit that we will know as our deepest bond with another human being in the natural – The act of giving oneself to another in marriage to become known in a more intimate way than with anyone outside of that relationship.

This may sound like strange language to use in relation to our salvation and to our relationship with God. God wants us to understand intimacy, love, union, faithfulness, becoming one flesh with another, the feeling of being so in love that we could never feel separate from another person and be in complete harmony with their soul and body.

To be so in love and so intoxicated with another that all the world seem to become a daze. Where it seems as though nothing else exits except for each other.

All of these wonderful emotions and deeply felt experiences in the natural world, was given to us as a foretaste of what our spiritual love walk would be with Jesus!

The same intimacy, passion, Oneness and complete surrender in love, is what He has for us, wants to share with us and calls us to “come and drink” into from the River of His Presence and His Love.

I will never forget the first time when God shared this truth with me. I was busy conducting some revival meetings along the South Coast of South Africa at the time. I went for a walk along the beach one afternoon, just before sunset. As I walked along the shoreline, I noticed two youngsters on the beach close by.

It was not hard to notice them at all, in fact it would have taken a blind man to miss them, because they were so tangled up in each other that one could scarcely tell where the one began and the other ended!

They were literally so entangled in each others arms that I could best describe what I saw as an “octopus-grip” that they were engaged in! And it seemed that at least one of them was in desperate need of resuscitation, because they were glued together in a “kiss of life” technique that never seemed to end!

I was a little taken by surprise, since this was not something that was commonly seen in South Africa on a public beach very often.

My first thoughts were, “Wow, that’s a little wild. Can’t they behave themselves in public!”
But they were clearly on another planet. They could not care what anyone thought or said and were blissfully unaware of the whole world, except for each other’s embrace.

I could clearly see that this was that “dangerous” kind of love. That puppy love that would cause you to lose your appetite for food, friends and life, and become so intoxicated that nothing in the world mattered expect for that one person in your life.

The kind of love that would cause you to be together all day, and then call as soon as you got home to spend hours on the phone. The kind of love where it was “you and me against the whole world” and where nothing would be able to separate us, or prevent us from being together.

They were clearly in love!

As I passed by a while later after returning from my walk, they were still there and still in each others arms, quietly staring out across the last rays of the sun playing on the breaking surf, a few feet ahead of them.

Then the LORD began speaking to me. He said –

“Do you see that?

That is what I want with My children! That is what I want with My church!

I want them to be so intoxicated with My Presence and so saturated in My Love and so in love with Me, that they would be totally oblivious to the world around them!

I want them to be so in love with Me and One with Me, that they would not care what the world thought or said about Us, and about our embrace of each other!”

My life could never be the same after that afternoon – Neither my walk with God. I had always been intimate with Him, and had always shared a unique and special relationship with Him.

I had always known Him, and had shared the most amazing times with Him in solitude and intimate embrace – But this would be a new level of intimacy He was wooing me into, and a completely new experience and adventure that would await!

God wants intimacy with us beyond anything else! True Union, true inseparable Oneness in the Spirit.

Do we want the same?

Are we thirsty for His Love?

Are we prepared to swim in His River?

Do we desire for His River to flow in us?

Well then – “Come and drink” and be satisfied!

There is nothing more that He desires for us, than to be deeply In love and deeply intimate with Him! This is the bedrock of the Anointed Life! Without intimacy we will never know true Anointing, because true Anointing is the fragrant Presence of the Master Himself!

It is the Sweet Perfume of His Presence, and whenever we are near Him, we are perfumed to carry the sweet-smelling fragrance of His Presence within our lives also!

The Anointing rubs off – but it only lingers on when we remain in Him, as He remains in us, in the perfect Union and harmony of His Love!

Are you thirsty yet?

“Come and drink”!

“My love has gone down to his garden, to beds of spice, to feed in the gardens and gather lilies,” Song of Solomon 6:2.

There still remains a perfumed Garden for each of us to know. The secret Eden of His Presence. A place of unbroken Union with Christ in a broken world.

A place where we may choose to walk with Him in the “cool of the day,” to listen to His Voice, share the rhythms of His heart and to gain the understanding of His ways.

In the midst of this Garden of Life, the Life-giving River flows and waters many trees of every kind bearing an abundance of every kind of fruit. That ‘secret place’ is hidden inside each of us, and so is His River of Love and Life!

Will you not open your heart and give yourself away?

Allow the River to just begin to flow!

Drink from His Presence and be satisfied with His Love!

“Come”

 

~ Johann van der Hoven

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Johann van der Hoven is in South Africa. He has been serving the Lord in ministry since 1991 and has hosted numerous apostolic revival meetings in South Africa and in South America. He also currently pioneers a organic church planting movement across South Africa. For more information about him and his ministry visit www.sonsofsovereignty.com or Revival.

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