Jesus: Living Water

Read John 4:1-42 (7:37-38)

If you’ve ever been on a strenuous hike without enough water you’ll know just how distracting it is to go thirsty. It’s all that’s on your mind each step you take! And it’s not like a pain or ache that your body will heal itself. The only thing that will satisfy is a long, refreshing drink.

Identifying your thirst

Thirst is a good way to describe those distracting desires in life that don’t go away with time, only with satisfaction. Perhaps these months during the pandemic have unearthed some of the things you thirst for – stability, companionship, attention, purpose?

What are the things you thirst for? And how do you seek satisfaction for your thirst?

In John chapter 4, Jesus has a conversation about thirst with a Samaritan woman, appropriately next to a well. Jesus moves very quickly past a surface-level conversation about water and dives into her deeper thirst. Jesus identifies her desires. He reveals he knows that she has had five husbands and the man she is currently with isn’t her husband.

How do you diagnose this woman’s thirst? Perhaps she craves love, but is trying to draw from the wrong well. She keeps trying different men, but the repeated pattern shows that there is no lasting satisfaction there.

Finding lasting satisfaction

Instead, Jesus shows her the way to true and lasting satisfaction of the deepest kind. All people are made for relationship with God. Each of us has a deep, eternal thirst for him. Only by getting to know Jesus more and being filled more with his Spirit will we know true and deep satisfaction in this life and through to eternity. Knowing Jesus and experiencing him more is the joy and vitality of ever-lasting life!

From what wells are you trying to draw satisfaction? (Jeremiah 2:13) How is Jesus’ living water for you? How are you finding satisfaction in him?

 

Written by Richard Wallace

Artwork by Rebekah Steele, Living Water

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