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I want to be like Jesus. In a lot of ways. I wish I could know God and his Word perfectly, I think it would be great to be able to heal people, and walking on water would be great. What I’m talking about here, though is that I wish I could be a lot more like Jesus, and the way that he knows people’s hearts better than he knows themselves.
He knew the Samaritan woman’s heart in John 4. And he put on a masterclass of leading her to find something out about herself- that she has a deep spiritual thirst. It’s a thirst that’s foundational to all of us. A thirst for love, for acceptance, and for security. It’s a thirst so many of us try to quench in ways that are destructive. But you knew that already. So how do we quench that thirst?
Jesus leads us, too, to learn about ourselves, our spiritual thirsts, and the ways that we go about quenching them. All so that he can really, finally, truly be the one who gives us something real to drink.
It’s that thirst that Jesus wants to quench for us. And he came to earth to quench it. For this woman, too, he broke geographical, cultural, racial, and gender barriers so that he could give this woman a drink of living water. The kind of water that when you drink it, you will never be thirsty again.
John 4:4-18
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “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.” 11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but 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.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
