Copyright © 2006 by The Voice of Prophecy

P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

Are you an Artesian?

There are three kinds of givers in the world. To understand them, you need to understand three kinds of wells.

The first kind of well has no water in it. It's a dry hole. You spend a great deal of money drilling down and down and down, but there's nothing there. Nothing ever comes back. Some people are a dry hole. Stingy. They don’t give at all.
But most people are not like that. Most people are like an ordinary well. If you drill down to get it, the water is there. You have to pump it out, you have to pipe it up, but once you do it will flow. Many people will give if you ask them nicely enough; if you stroke them the right way. They have plenty of sweet water within them. They just need convincing.

But the best kind of giver is represented by another kind of well—a well whose water flows under internal pressure. Given an outlet, the water just naturally wells up and overflows. It's called an Artesian well.

I spent several years of my life in the Hagerstown area of Maryland. I met my wife Jeannie there. Not very far from Camp David, the presidential retreat, is an Artesian well. It’s on the side of Pleasant Valley Road. A pipe juts out that is ever flowing with pure, sweet water. People come from miles around to fill up their jugs with this water that never ceases to flow, even in times of drought.

Now an ordinary well has to be coaxed to give water. You have to go down and get it. But an Artesian well just can't help but flow. Hour after hour, year after year, it pours forth an unending stream of sweetness, delighting the hearts of every passerby with its free offering.

An Artesian doesn't worry that most of its water gets lost in the dirt. It doesn't fret about the extravagance of its giving. It doesn't worry about running out of resources. It doesn't take care to conserve the blessing. It just flows.

Which kind of giver are you? Are you an Artesian? Artesians are generous people. And God blesses them. You can get in on the blessing. You can become an Artesian.

When I think of Artesian givers, I think of Jeremy Muth.

Jeremy Muth gave me the greatest gift I ever received, other than the gift of eternal life, of course, and except for my wife. At the time Jeremy was a six-year-old in Paradise, California, when I was preaching there. Little Jeremy always used to come up to me at the end of the service with little notes and cards. One Sabbath morning he learned it was my birthday and he gave me a little Valentine birthday card. “Happy Birthday, Pastor Lonnie, Happy Valentine's Day.” He had created it himself. And he handed over this little envelope with little dirty smudges on it. Inside the envelope was Scotch-taped two nickels and four pennies. Fourteen cents.

At the bottom, here's what it said: “This is my entire life savings.”

That gift is the most treasured thing I have in my possession. I called Jeremy's parents and said, “I do not usually rob children of their life savings and their piggy banks, but I'm sorry—Jeremy's not getting this money back.” Jeremy had somehow learned a secret that many adults never learn. He was an Artesian well. That's what the kingdom of heaven is like. Extravagance like that is the Hallmark of heaven.

Now do you think that Jeremy misses that 14 cents today? Do you think he would have been substantially richer today if he hadn't given away his entire life savings to me? I don’t think so. He never missed that money, because God gave him so much more. That’s how it works. That’s the secret of giving. Part of his reward is that his name is honored not only in heaven but here today, and as a result of his generosity some of you will be inspired to discover the joy of giving.

Here’s something else to think about. Do you know why an artesian well flows? Because somewhere nearby the water table is higher than the well. That is, the surface of the water table lies above the Artesian outlet for the water. That is why there is pressure.

So if you want to be an Artesian, you have to GET LOW. You see, water seeks the lowest level. God's grace flows to the humble. You have to bend down and place yourself beneath the flow of God’s grace to become a channel so that His grace can flow through you to others. You have to plunge into God’s sea.

Artesians swim in an ocean of grace. And as long as they stay immersed in that grace it flows naturally out of them to others.

Friend, learn nature’s simple but powerful lesson of the river and the sea. There is a passage in Ecclesiastes 1:7 that says, “All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.”

If you think about it, that’s one of the great secrets of life. You’d think the rivers would run dry after a while. But those streams that send all that water down to the sea never seem to run out of water, because somehow the sea gives it back to them. That’s God’s great circuit of beneficence. The more we give away, the more we get back. You want to be a part of that. So start giving. Don't short-circuit the circuit of grace. Some people stop up the flow by trying to keep it for themselves. But the faster you send it on to God, the faster it comes back to you.

Proverbs 11:25 says, “The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.” That reminds me of a song most of you have sung. Sing it now with Connie and I:

I've got a river of life flowing out of me
Makes the lame to walk and the blind to see,
Opens prison doors, set the captives of free,
I've got a river of life flowing out of me.
Spring up oh well within my soul.
Spring up oh well, and make me whole,
Spring up oh well and give to me
That life abundantly.

In John 4:14 Jesus says the water He gives will become in the believer a fountain springing up to eternal life. And in John 7:37 Jesus says, “He who believes in me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

Have you ever read that verse before? “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” That's one of the most beautiful promises in all of Scripture. If you really believe what I have been preaching today, if you really believe God will do what He said, if you will open up your heart and become an Artesian giver, then out of you will flow rivers of living water. Not just of money, but of time, of affirmation and blessing, of prayer, of grace, that will water other souls. So on this Thanksgiving day, thank God for His goodness, and go with the flow.

We have Artesians among us today. The high school I attended back in Hagerstown is called Mount Aetna. Today many of the buildings on that campus were built with funds donated by a business man by the name of Frank DeHaan. Frank is an Artesian. His pastor—and my friend—Tim Crosby, wrote a poem in his honor entitled “The Circle.” It goes like this:

Life is a ring. As lifeblood to the heart,
Our offerings* return to where they start.
Of all the gifts of God, the ones that stay
Are those we keep by giving them away.

Those seedlings that you watered in the glen
Now shelter summer dove and winter wren.
The stand of thriving oaks touching the sky
Will seed a mighty forest by and by.

Those drops of blessing shed along the way
In ever deeper channels flow today,
A mighty river surging to the sea—
A promise of the glory yet to be.

Nature completes the circle once begun.
As leaves yield up their moisture to the sun
To find the sky and fall again as dew,
So all you give will come again to you.

Annie Johnson Flint was an Artesian. She was crippled by severe arthritis. She had once been a teacher, but now she could no longer teach. So she made a living by selling her poetry—poetry that she scratched out with great pain, using her gnarled and twisted fingers. Let me share with you one of her poems about this great, generous God we serve. It goes like this:

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;
To added affliction He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
His love has no limits, His grace had no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto men:
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father's full giving is only begun.
His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto men:
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!

Friend: give like God gives. Become an Artesian. Let God's generous love flow through you today and every day, in an ever-widening stream of blessing, an ever-deepening river of grace.
Tomorrow we'll tell you how you can become a philanthropist! That’s right! It’s not as
hard as you might think.