July 6 I Saturday

Job 32-33

Acts 14

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.”  —John 4:10

We were all born with a thirst for love, identity, meaning and purpose. These are good, wholesome appetites we spend much of our time pursuing. When Jesus encountered the woman of Samaria, retrieving water from a well, He told her of the gift of God He was offering her, which would never leave her thirsty again.

This is the longest personal dialogue Jesus had with any one person recorded in the four Gospels. The woman had no idea who Jesus was, and when He identified her thirst and told her He could give her water from which she would never thirst again, she did not understand and cynically replied, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can You get this living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” (John 4:11-12).

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). The picture Jesus gives is one in which the water will be deep like a well, fresh like a spring and will never run out. The first word of the gospel is not about God “demanding” but about God “giving.”

Jesus told this woman that He knew she had been married five times and was currently living with another man. This was symptomatic of her thirst, and when people are thirsty they will drink from anything, including broken cisterns. God speaks of broken cisterns when He says to Jeremiah, “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Without God in our lives, we are easily seduced into digging our own cisterns. Any cistern other than Christ Himself is broken, and leaves us drained, disillusioned and thirsting for something more.

Jesus said, “Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:38). In relationship with Jesus, we not only begin to drink of this living water, but it flows out from us in blessing to others. We cannot be satisfied with a superficial Christianity. Christ goes deep into our lives to exercise His reign and provide His resources. The living water He gives meets the needs of our hearts and is lasting. Not only does it run deep, but is fresh like a spring and in endless supply as we live everyday in union with Him.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, Your gift of living water is precious. Help me to spread the good news of Your overflowing well of life that is Your Son, Jesus Christ, to others around me. Amen.