Water To Drink

This devotional considers John 4:1-18, 25-26, 39-41.

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well, 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…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.

Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that what we want? Never to have need and to always be brimming with restoration and hope? That’s what Jesus offered this woman and offers to all of us who he comes alongside. I love the picture of Jesus coming to sit down at the well with this woman. He didn’t have to travel through Samaria, but it seems he was on assignment to pursue this Samaritan woman. 

By our worship, prayers and commitments, we often see our relationship with God as one in which we pursue him. Upon examination, though, we’ll find that he comes to us, and first. He engages us with all of who he is, and reveals the gap—the bridged gap—between who we are and who he wants us to become.

The Lord pursued her. But why her, a woman who had had five husbands, not counting the man she was with at the time? It seems this woman of great need was a woman of great faith. The Lord sees what we cannot and does not discount us based on the sin of our past or present. This Samaritan woman was responsible for the salvation of many of her people based on one conversation with Jesus. She trusted that the one speaking to her was the Messiah she was waiting for to explain everything.

When Christ confronts us with the truth of who he is, and the truth of who we are and have been, he doesn’t do it to condemn. He does it to get us to drink like this woman did. We must drink of him, and him alone. Sin is a wasteland destroying our bodies and souls. Christ, the sacrificial gift of God, is our only remedy and way to God’s eternal intent for us. 

Amen.