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Living Water

March 29, 2010

Wednesday’s convocation speaker made the cross-country trip to Lynchburg all the way from California. Pastor John Ortberg of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church spoke to the student body March 24 with an encouraging message on contentment.

Starting from a passage in John 7, Pastor Ortberg used the historical context of the Feast of Tabernacles to illustrate the need for contentment in Christ. The Feast of Tabernacles in Jewish history, Ortberg said, built up to a final day when the high priest took a pitcher and poured the water out at the altar in the Temple. It was at this time, many theologians speculate, that Jesus stood up and said to the crowds, “If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (v. 37-38)

“There is a God, and it is not you,” said Ortberg. “You are God’s project.” Ortberg defined for the students the common cycle of guilt that many people put themselves through in ‘trying’ to serve God. “We have to know the difference between training and trying. To train means I arrange my life around those activities that I cannot do by directive.”

Contentment, Ortberg explained, comes from the ‘living water’ flowing within the believer. God alone can satisfy discontent and frustration, even when the world says we need more. “Hurry will keep you from the peace of God. You can’t ‘try’ to be patient.” He said.

Pastor Ortberg answered the question of how to keep oneself aware and submitted to the Spirit in order to have the rivers of living water. He said, “We go into strict training to gain a crown of eternal life ... as you go through life, you will make many wrong turns. God will always bring you home by his grace.”

Phylicia Duran

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