Thirsty for Living Water
In the Gospel of John, we see the idea of thirsting way before Jesus utters those words –that word– “I thirst.”
When Jesus went to a well that is called Jacob’s well, a Samaritan woman was there. The text tells us that He sat down by the well and that He was tired as one would imagine. He was also thirsty because He asked a woman for a cup of water. When the Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”
The disciples had gone into town to buy food; that is not what he wanted. He wanted something to drink. When they came with the food, He told them: “I don’t need that, because I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” They wondered: who brought Him the food?
No, what Jesus wanted was something to drink. He asked the Samaritan woman for this drink and she was surprised by it. She said, “You’re a Jew and I’m a Samaritan woman? How can you ask me for a drink?” For she knew that Jews did not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, “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.”
The woman said: “Sir, you have to 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 his sons and flocks and herds?”
And Jesus answered:
“Look, I’m not talking about the water that’s in this well. I’m talking about another kind of water. Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.”
The question that I want to ask you is whether you thirst? What are you thirsty for? Do you thirst for more out of life than what this world has to offer? Do you thirst in the midst of its struggles?
Jesus shared our earthly thirsts for the water from the wells of this world. The One who got tired and needed a drink of water from the Samaritan woman has a drink to offer us that is not a cup of wrath, but a cup of mercy and grace and eternal life.
It is a cup which, if we will thirst for it and long for it, Jesus promises that we will never thirst again It is Living Water. A little bit further on in John 6:35, we find Jesus picking up the theme of Living Water again. He says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” Never be thirsty! Do you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins on the Cross? Have you put your faith in Him as your Lord? Have you confessed with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that He raised you from the dead?
Jesus promises that whoever believes in Him will never thirst. A little bit further on, He picks up the theme one more time. In John 7:37, on the last and greatest day of the Feast of Preparation He announces with a loud voice: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” Whoever believes in Him as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within Him. Jesus clarifies His words: by this He meant the Spirit Whom those who believed in Him were to receive. “Whoever is thirsty, let him come to me.”
“I thirst.” Do you know what? I thirst. I thirst for what God is promising here. I thirst for it for our church, I thirst for it for my family. I want it personally. I want eternal life. I want to be filled up, so full that it overflows from my life out to other people’s lives. Do you thirst like that? Do you say “I thirst?” Say it out loud to the Lord in a prayer from distress, or longing:
I thirst. I thirst. I thirst for you Jesus. The Sacred Scriptures speak about thirsting for righteousness, thirsting for His holiness, thirsting to know Him, thirsting and desiring with all of our being to be like Him, to be faithful to Him, to somehow obtain eternal life. “I thirst.”
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