Release the Hounds!

Last June, for the grand finale of Crosspointe’s Super Summer events, I was placed in charge of helping set up our giant water slide.  Last summer was a scorcher, and the addition of a super slip-n-slide down the hill behind the church was sure to be a hit.  Now this was no ordinary slide; this thing was huge!  The plastic sheeting that we used for the slide was 100’ long and 10’ wide.  Oh, but we didn’t stop there.  In order to really make the slide a hit, we added about 10 bottles of dish soap!    

Sweating in the heat, we unrolled the plastic, staked it down, and began to pour the dish soap on the 1,000 square feet of summer fun.  I couldn’t wait to see the kid’s faces when they got their first glimpse of this behemoth.  It would be priceless. Of course, in order to make all this happen, we needed the most important ingredient of all, water.  The water faucet we needed to use however was located on the opposite side of the church.  This meant that I would have to scrape together as many hoses as I could find just to get the water to the slide.  After a few phone calls and some digging, I had all the hose I needed.  I pieced them together, put the hose into place, and I was ready to go.  “Release the hounds,” I shouted, as I turned the faucet to full power.  Jogging around the church to see my masterpiece in action, all I could envision was a torrent of water and bubbles flowing like a raging river down the slide.  As I turned the corner much to my surprise there was no torrent, there were no bubbles, and what was even more distressing, there was no water coming out of the hose! The hose was dry, the slide was dry, and my Super Summer slip-and-slide was nothing more than hot plastic baking in the sun.

This paints an excellent picture of what can happen to many Christians. Many times we get so caught up in the glory of God, His greatness, the vastness of who He is, His power, and His wisdom that we forget that He has actually asked us to come along side Him and work His will in the earth.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing to get swept away in the majesty of Almighty God, but the point that I'm trying to make here is that God has chosen  us to show the world His glory, His greatness and His majesty through our lives.

The Apostle Paul tells us that Christ is the head of the church (Ephesians 5:23), but we are His body; we are the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27).  It has been said that “without God, man cannot, and without man, God will not.”  God needs us to be His literal hands and feet in the earth.  Jesus puts a little different spin on this in John 15:5 when He states, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." There is a great truth in this that we must see.  When we are connected to Christ, all that He is, all of His goodness and all of His provision is available to flow through our lives.  This is how we “show” the glory of God; we let God flow out through our lives for the world to see. 

As I stood at the edge of that giant dry slip-and-slide, I stared at the end of the water hose wondering why in the world water wasn’t flowing out.  I knew that there was water coming from the faucet; I had checked it before I had attached the hose.  There was only one thing left, the hose itself must be clogged.  Section by section I disconnected the hose, and finally, in a piece of old hose that I had dug out from the shed behind that church, I found the problem.  After lying around not being used for all those years, dirt and grime had built up inside the hose to that point that the water could not pass through.  After a quick clean, the water was flowing once again, and Super Summer was back on.

What a great picture of the Christian life.  When we don’t allow the glory of God to flow through us, the things of this world will slowly begin to clog us up and restrict the flow of all that God has for not only our lives, but those around us as well.  Paul tells us once again in Romans 12 not to be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that [we] may prove or show what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.  You and I have a great opportunity to show the world just what God is by the way we live and the fruit we bear in our lives.  Let us shine bright and show the world the glory of God!