John 4:10-15
Turn on the faucet at your kitchen sink - water splashes out to wash your hands, fill a cooking pot, or get a drink. The effort required to accomplish this task? Just a flick of the wrist.
My grandmother lived in a home with an old well. There was a pump standing off the back porch. You would place a bucket under the pump spigot and raise and lower the handle until the bucket was filled with water, then carry the bucket - now heavy with water - to the kitchen. A lot more effort required to perform the same tasks!
Both scenarios look easy compared to the effort required for the Samaritan woman to provide water for her household. She needed a jar or bucket that could be lowered into the well, filled with water, pulled back up, then carried to her home. However heavy the vessel was, it was much heavier on the return trip. The task would be completed day in and day out.
Jesus met this woman as she went about the business of getting water. He surprised her by asking for a drink, and now tells her that He can give her living water, the kind that satisfies once and for all, and becomes a "spring of water, welling up to eternal life."
The woman is practical, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?" She understands Him to offer physical water - the kind she hauls out of the well daily. From the same well that Jacob, one of the Patriarchs, had drank from. She asks Jesus if He is "greater than our father Jacob"? You can almost see the puzzled expression on her face as she tries to figure out who Jesus is, and how she can get this "living water".
Jesus knew what the woman needed, to believe in Him as her Messiah. The life giving water He referred to was the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that would satisfy her spiritual thirst as she was filled with God's presence in her life.
The woman responds immediately to having her physical need of water supplied, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." She's tired of the heavy burden of carrying her own water.
We can relate. Everyone has burdens and hardships in life. We may wish God would take them all away and give us something that would satisfy our needs once and for all. It may be restored health, a million dollars, a healed relationship - or water that runs from a faucet. Any of those things are great! But God knows the real thirst we have is one that can only be satisfied by Him, through a relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ!
"On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified."
John 7:37-39
Water is crucial for man's survival. It is essential for life. Without it we will die. Living in the desert, we use a lot of water. We take water bottles wherever we go (love my Camelbak), and store it up for emergencies. Makes me think about the scripture in Jeremiah that talks about cisterns. (Jer 2:13) They were carved out reservoirs used for catching rain water, and God compared them to His people who had turned away from His Living Water, and dug their own cisterns. Am I not also prone to carving out my own cistern when I elevate something or someone above God and turn it into an idol? Or make up my own belief to fit my need in the moment? Or design my own plan or strategy, apart from God? The water in those cisterns will eventually become stale and stagnant. That water can never satisfy my spiritual thirst. When we try to dig a well in our own flesh, it only leads to death. They are broken cisterns that cannot hold water. We can do nothing in our own strength. Shame on us when we do. In our Christian walk, have we not witnessed His miraculous power in our lives, have we not experienced His renewing Spirit first hand? Has God not provided His cleansing water in the desert? Of course He has! We know it in our hearts, but Oh Lord, the world pulls us away from You, our sin nature gets in the way. We need You! As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. Let us come to You, the giver of life. "Whoever is thirsty, let him come: and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life."
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