No Longer Thirsty

In John 4:1-39 we learn about Jesus and the woman at the well. On His way back to Galilee Jesus had to go through Samaria - this was on purpose and for a purpose. Jesus stopped at this well to rest, and this is where he would encounter a woman, the Samaritan woman. Now we know that Jesus was a Jew and the woman was a Samaritan … Jews and Samaritans hardly interacted with one, but that did not stop the Savior of the world.

Jesus asks the woman for something to drink and she’s like “Uh why are you asking me?! Y’all Jews don’t like us Samaritans!” Then Jesus responds and says “Woman, if you knew who I really was, you’d be asking me for a drink and I would have no problem in fulfilling your request. The type of water I give to those who ask freely, my water is alive”. So after hearing this, she asks Jesus where this living water is. Because this interaction takes place at Jacob’s well, she also inquires if His water is better than the well water. Jesus then tells her, “Anyone who drinks this water (from the well) will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” - meaning that Jesus is the water that she would be drinking and she would not only be satisfied, but she would have eternal life. 

Our souls have a deep longing and desire to be connected to Jesus, whether we recognize it or not. Psalm 42:1-2 (NLT) says, “As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him?” These two verses speak directly to what Jesus was telling the Samaritan woman - that if she drinks from the water He gives, she’ll never be thirsty again.

How often do we long for the things that will never truly satisfy us? Yet we keep going back and back again. In this case, the woman was going back to men to fill a void. She previously had five husbands, and now the current man she was living with wasn’t her husband (John 4:16-19). We can infer that she was thirsty for love and companionship, yet she was unsuccessful in quenching that thirst. Jesus knew all about what this woman had going on and yet he still called her to himself. 

Then when we get down to verse 27 the disciples catch up with Jesus and they see Him talking to the woman and are basically like “Um why are you talking to her?!” Here’s something else I want to highlight, verse 28 says, “The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village, telling everyone,” … The woman left and ran back!

This should tell us that there is an action step required when Jesus meets us where we are. The action step is not to remain in that place, but to get up and GO! Once we get the revelation we need from the meeting, we have to go to where He’s calling us to or what He’s calling us to do. We simply cannot stay in that same place forever. We cannot keep doing what we were doing before expecting different results, that’s the definition of insanity. Jesus met that woman at the well, met her in her current circumstance and encouraged her soul so much that she literally took that drink from Him and action went forth. When we have an encounter with Jesus it should move us to action! No encounter with Jesus should ever leave us where we were, and if it does that means we didn’t learn the lesson we needed too. Sometimes cycles repeat themselves until we are ready to make a choice and do something different. When the longing gets insatiable, that’s typically when action takes place. I would imagine, sometimes God is thinking why did it have to take us so long to get up and go … but He’s still a kind and patient God.

Anytime we pursue Jesus, it requires action on our part. We cannot stay in the same places and spaces, we have to keep moving. He meets us where we are, but what will we do next? 

This should also tell us that even when we try to soothe our desires on our own eventually we become unsatisfied. You have to do so much to keep up that very thing. So we eventually become discontent with it. BUT, when we turn those desires over to the Lord, he gives us eternal satisfaction and contentment - far better than we could ever come up with and try to maintain on our own! Everybody has a longing for something deeper than the world could ever try to give, and that something is Jesus. 

Everything on this earth is temporary, it will pass away - but Jesus and a relationship with Him, that’s eternal.