========================================================================
  (SERMON CLIP) CHOKING ON THE WATER OF LIFE
  by Leonard Ravenhill
========================================================================

Summary: This sermon challenges the need for churches to shut down for
self-reflection and renewal. It questions the effectiveness of preaching
without genuine compassion and love, emphasizing the importance of a
spirit-filled life that overflows with mercy and compassion. The speaker
highlights the tragic reality of spiritual famine and the desperate need
for authentic, heartfelt ministry that reaches the broken and lost.

Topics: "Spiritual Renewal", "Authentic Ministry"
Scripture References: John 7:38, Micah 6:8, Matthew 9:36, James 2:15, Isaiah 58:10

------------------------------------------------------------------------
DESCRIPTION
------------------------------------------------------------------------

This sermon challenges the need for churches to shut down for self-
reflection and renewal. It questions the effectiveness of preaching
without genuine compassion and love, emphasizing the importance of a
spirit-filled life that overflows with mercy and compassion. The speaker
highlights the tragic reality of spiritual famine and the desperate need
for authentic, heartfelt ministry that reaches the broken and lost.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENT
------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd like to see every church in the nation shut down for a week at
least. Why should I preach to you? God knows I'm not in condemnation to
you tonight. You can't handle the truth you've already got.

You've had it for five or ten years, you can't handle it. Why should I
bring you more truth? Why should I give you the challenge of having a
spirit-filled life? Out of his inmost being, when he is resident, out of
my inmost being will flow rivers, not trickles, rivers of living water.
What kind of rivers? Rivers of mercy, rivers of compassion, that will
melt my eyes to tears.

Rivers of love that will let me go to the most perverted and wicked and
crooked people. That helps me to look at the TV and not see a bunch of
skeletons. The lady here said the other day, she was tremendously moved,
I was, it was on last night again.

Those million people in Ethiopia, somebody says that's a contrived
famine. I could give you names of men who contrived it too. A million
people may die in Ethiopia and more than a million in Africa.

There's a woman with a withered breast and little things sucking,
sucking, getting nothing. She gets some water and that kid's glands are
so swollen, when she pours the water it goes all over him, down his
body, he can't even take it. Well I want to tell you tonight, I believe
the same thing happens in our churches every Sunday.

People are choking and we're trying to pour the water of life into them
and the poor souls are so damned and lost they can't take it. They've
listened to the same preacher year after year, says the same things in
the same way. He hasn't shed a tear since he left his mother's womb.

He went to the seminary and got a big fat head and a shrunken soul.

========================================================================
Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/GxWmZV42RyM.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/leonard-ravenhill/sermon-clip-choking-on-the-water-of-life/
========================================================================