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Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him
 will never thirst.
But the water that I shall give him
will become in him a fountain of water
springing up into everlasting life.  (John 4:14)

Recently God used a string of dreams and open visions to call my attention to a principle I call overflow.  He showed me two key ingredients:  prayer and an open heaven.  Both are basic to the new covenant, though a fresh emphasis on the open heavens is emerging these days.

What is overflow?  I'm learning that it can happen on several levels. 

On the personal level, we experience an overflow of the Holy Spirit when He pours words or works through us that we know we did not manufacture ourselves.  I first tasted this in teaching, when I would sometimes stumble into a level of anointing in which I sensed that it wasn't just God anointing me to preach, but God speaking through me. 

Then ministry to one person can overflow to touch others. Sometimes as a group watches us minister to someone, they form a line because they want ministry too.  The first few times I experienced this, it annoyed me.   It would wreck my plans for how the meeting should go.  It took a while for me to learn that only the Holy Spirit could cause peoples' expectancy and hunger to rise.

On yet another level, the Spirit can overflow beyond a meeting or a ministry encounter.  Sometimes a chance encounter that doesn't seem to be highly anointed can cause an avalanche of Holy Spirit activity that sends ripples of change through a family or a community. 

I first tasted this in India.  A Hindu woman carried her sick baby through a healing line in one of our meetings.  There was nothing to indicate that anything unusual was happening with her or the child.

It was not until the next morning that she realized her baby was healed.  She instantly became an evangelist, running through her village at 5:00 a.m. and screaming, "Look what Jesus has done for my baby!"  It caused a stir, and the village elders called for a preacher.  Many came to Christ, and a church has been planted there.

Overflow is like many other works of the Holy Spirit.  We don't have so much control that we can turn on the flow at will, but we can turn it off if we choose not to get involved.

Jesus demonstrated all three levels of overflow when He ministered to the woman at the well.  First He experienced overflow on the personal level, as the Holy Spirit bubbled up out of Him in spite of His exhaustion.  Then His ministry to the woman overflowed to touch the people she brought to hear Him.  Finally, the move of the Spirit overflowed beyond an afternoon meeting and kept Jesus as the disciples for another two days as the move of the Spirit spread all over town.

The key thought in each of the three levels of overflow is that Jesus demonstrated something we all can have.  In John 4:34-38, He made it clear that His experience in Samaria is a sample of what God wants to do with all of us:

My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to finish His work … I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.  

Of course, the disciples might have objected that Jesus had simply sent them into town to buy lunch, but this is what overflow is all about.  All Jesus had tried to do was to get a drink of water.  The rest was an overflow of the Spirit.


Overflow belongs to those who let God have His way.

We can't just make it happen.  Either God does it, or He doesn't. Why is it often out of reach?  I am learning that it's one thing to ask God for the anointing, and it's quite another to let Him take control.

I recently went to Nepal with two other men, and one, Dennis Walker, opened two of his teachings by getting people healed instantly.  He later explained, "God is teaching me to pause when I teach and see if He wants to do something."

We don't like to pause when we teach.  We like to give an introduction, make three points, and then finish with a conclusion that ties it all together - then, and only then, we make room for the Holy Spirit to move.

Often if I sensed the Holy Spirit wanted to do something, I assumed I should finish my teaching first.  By the time I finished teaching, the opportunity was gone.

This doesn't apply just to pulpit ministry.  Sometimes outside the meeting, I sense the Holy Spirit wants me to do something - but how long does it take me to do it?  How many other things do I think I have to finish first?

On the level of His humanity, Jesus does not seem to have planned the encounter with the woman at the well.  He surrendered to the Father's plan.  When the conversation moved from asking for a drink to speaking a word of knowledge, He surrendered to the overflow of the Holy Spirit and let God take the conversation to a new level.  When the woman brought people to see Him, He surrendered again and chose to minister to them.  Then there was a third act of surrender when they asked Him to stay in town to minister to others.  None of this seems to have been in His appointment calendar.

I can't recommend that we throw our calendars away.  We have to plan our meetings and our travels, and planning is a lot of work.  But I can recommend that we leave some blank space in our planning, to make room for God to overflow if He chooses to do so.

Reach for overflow.

It seems to be something we all hunger for.  We want to see God move.  We want more than just church-as-usual.  We pray for revival, for outpouring, for days of heaven on earth.

I've been in a lot of prayer meetings over the years, and preachers who have studied past revivals will tell us we need to pray fervently.  But I'm noticing that the people who carry the rich anointings today are people who take time to soak in God's presence.

Soaking isn't a time of trying to get God to bless our plans. It's a time of laying our plans at His feet and listening for His ideas.

And it's a time of entering into the open heavens.  We are learning to allow heaven's resources to flow into our lives:  everything from angelic activity to encounters with God's glory to an increased sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.

I am posting a school of the Spirit online - if you haven't seen it yet, visit www.gospelsmith.com and part of the assignment is to soak 10-15 times each month.  I have seen that when people take time to get into God's presence and to let Him set the agenda, their lives become less chaotic and more focused.  They become more sensitive to the Holy Spirit.  Their gifts come alive.

But the other part of the assignment is to edify, exhort, or comfort 20 people each month.  We can decide whether to minister to people, but only God can decide whether to make these encounters extraordinary.  It is healthy for us to learn the lessons of dependence.  If God chooses to do little or much, that's up to Him.  When He does little, it reminds us that without Him we can do nothing.  Then when He overflows beyond our works, we know it is all His doing.

Frankly, by the time I minister to 20 people in a month, I see overflow on a personal level several times - the gifts of the Holy Spirit flow, and He does something I couldn't do in my own strength.  Maybe once or twice it overflows into an opportunity to minister to one person after another.  Rarely do I see it overflow to the point that a testimony spreads through a whole town or region, like the story of the Hindu woman and her baby.

But I'm hungry for the kind of overflow that keeps spreading like a chain reaction.  Jesus walked in it in Samaria.  Peter demonstrated it on the day of Pentecost. It happened repeatedly to Paul.  In these days of outpouring, we can expect it to happen to us.

© 2008, GospelSmith