#DailyDevotion Are You Thirsty?

John 4⁵He came to a town in Samaria by the name of Sychar, near the piece of land Jacob gave his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s Well was there. So Jesus, tired as He was from traveling, sat down by the well. It was about six in the evening ⁷A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give Me a drink,” Jesus said to her. ⁸His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. ⁹The Samaritan woman asked Him: “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Jews, you see, don’t drink from the same jar with Samaritans. ¹⁰“If you knew what God is giving,” Jesus answered her, “and Who it is that says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” ¹¹“Sir, you have nothing to draw water with,” she told Him, “and the well is deep. Where can you get living water from a spring? ¹²Are you greater than Jacob, our ancestor, who gave us the well? ¹³“Everyone who drinks this water,” Jesus answered her, “will get thirsty again. ¹⁴Anyone who drinks the water I’ll give him will never get thirsty again. But the water I’ll give him will be in him a spring of water bubbling up to everlasting life.”

So we’re probably familiar with this account from Jesus’ life. He meets this Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and asks her to give him some water. So right off the bat we have the issue of Jews and Samaritans not getting along which goes back some 400 plus years in history. She’s kind of wondering what is going on as well. Jesus tells her if she knew the kind of gifts God gives she would be asking him for living water. (Now normally living water is running water as opposed to pond or well water). Rightly so, she goes straight to thinking about the well and well, regular water. Jesus has a greater meaning. “The gift of God” Jesus spoke of clues us into that. That gift is the living water Jesus refers to. God is the giver of good gifts. He gives material gifts and he gives spiritual gifts. The gift giving God and his son Jesus Christ are bringing this woman to the knowledge of who she is talking to and what he wants to give her.

Jesus is still trying to clue her in to the gift God wants to give her through him, but she is focused on Jesus is not Jacob and he doesn’t have any water fetching devices. Shoot, he asked her for a drink! What’s he talking about? Jesus tries to make it clear the water he is talking about is not the everyday water we drink from but something different. Drinking this water makes you never thirsty again and you can only get it from Jesus. So what is this water?

The Psalms tell us 46⁴”There is a river whose streams delight God’s city, the holy place where the most high God lives.” John in Revelation 22, “Then he showed me a river of the water of life bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb land down the middle of the street of the city.” The Spirit says in Rev. 22:17 “If you are thirsty, come. If you want it, take the water of life as a free gift.” In John 6, Jesus says, ⁵⁴“If you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have everlasting life, and I will raise you on the last day.” This living water is the life and the Spirit of Jesus who gives us his life and Spirit freely. When he gives it to us to drink and we believe it we no longer have to thirst for righteousness because he fills us with his own, as a gift, freely and fully.

Merciful God and Father, you sent Jesus to restore back to us the living waters of his life and Spirit. Grant us faith to drink of his water so we may have eternal life within ourselves and never thirst again. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.