Living Water

A sheep’s water source has two key qualities: stillness (turbulence frightens a sheep) and purity. If a sheep drinks water that is stagnant or impure, they may ingest harmful bacteria or parasites and fall seriously ill.

Nothing survives or flourishes without water. But to drink the wrong sort of water can, in some cases, be just as dangerous as to go without it.

Jesus talks about the water He offers in John 4. It’s a beautiful exchange between, interestingly, two single people. Jesus – who was single and emotionally healthy, and a woman who was single and profoundly relationally dysfunctional. She had been married five times, and at the time of their meeting was living with her boyfriend. I wager no-one goes through five failed marriages without some pretty intense heartache. Jesus highlights something essential for this woman: they drew from different water sources. The water the woman was drinking would never bring her the life she truly needed.

In fact, Jesus explained (verses 13 & 14) –

“Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give to them will never thirst. Indeed the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The metaphor is clear: the only source of living water is Jesus.

Where have you been turning in your heart’s thirst for life?

Perhaps, like this woman, you’ve looked to relationships in the past (or even now) for fulfillment to the aching thirst inside for life. I suspect, like this woman, you’ve found only a deeper ache in those waters. Or perhaps it’s been your career, or status, or friendships, or countless other things. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but none of them alone will satisfy your thirst.

In Jeremiah, God says,

“My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns; broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

There is no water source apart from the Shepherd that holds the water you need.

David once described his thirst as a deep longing to meet with God (Psalm 42:1-2).

Are you thirsty? When was the last time you truly met with God? Take some time to return to the source of life and drink of His presence.