Devotional Day 54

Scripture

John 4:4-30

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.” 19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” 25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” 27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Psalm 63:1

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

Devotional

Have you ever been so thirsty that it was all you could think about? Hopefully you haven’t, but there have definitely been times after going for a run, walk or long day where I forgot to take water - that feeling of true thirst can be simply overwhelming.

David was no stranger to this feeling. When he wrote Psalm 63 he was actually in the desert of Judah. The Judean desert isn’t what we would usually picture a desert to look like either, there are no sloping sand dunes, but rather sharp rocks, endless dust and eerie silence. David found himself in this desert not because he wanted a weekend adventure - he likely wrote this when he was on the run from Saul or his son Absalom. There was no water to be found anywhere. As David looked around this barren, jagged and dry wasteland, he thought of his soul. His environment reminded him of his soul’s need for God.

It’s so often as humans that we find ourselves with parched souls - moments, seasons in which we find that our souls are endlessly thirsty, unable to be satiated no matter what we fill them with. Maybe your soul feels this way right now. One of the interesting things about going through an intentional process to heal a broken heart with God and overcome deeply entrenched sin and idolatry is that the pain usually gets worse before it gets better. Even though we are in a time where we are likely spending more time with the Lord than we have in a while, have received more breakthrough and revelation than ever, we are also finding that our souls are thirstier than ever - crying out for a drink. The reason for this is because in order to heal our wounds and broken hearts, we’ve got to lay them all out on the table - revisiting the painful moments and memories. Even though we’ve lived with these things for so long, they’re more acute now - because we are dealing with them. It’s at this present moment that our souls can feel the most thirsty, even when they are the closest to water. It’s as if we have finally lifted our hearts up out of our chest, tentatively pulled back the walls of protection and allowed them to feel the sting of the desert wind. You realise how thirsty you are, how thirsty you’ve always been. The idol of pornography didn’t satisfy your thirst, only left your soul worse off. The idolatry of people’s approval, of control, of success, of power, notoriety or comfort didn’t help either. Your soul is tired, depleted and thirsty.

Jesus met a woman once who had a thirsty soul. She was a Samaritan woman who was out to draw water from Jacob’s well in the heat of the day when she ran into Jesus. Why was she there in the heat of the day? She was there because she was ostracised by the other women because of her reputation. She had tried to quench the thirst of her soul with promiscuity. Although instead of condemning her, Jesus spoke to the issue of her heart. She had been searching her whole life for a man to fill the void of her heart, and quench the thirst of her soul - but what her soul had always needed was the living water that Jesus offered her.

Are you thirsty today? After all of this trudging through the trauma, idolatry and pain in your life - is your soul thirsty? You need to come and drink from the well of Christ. Come to him in this dry and arid moment and drink deep from the refreshing waters of the Lord.

Toward the end of John’s vision recorded in Revelation, listen to what Jesus said:

Revelation 21:6

“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.”

Oh what joy awaits us, and what joy is already here!

Take hold of this prophetic promise about the day Jesus would inaugurate from Isaiah:

Isaiah 12:3

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, I come to you with a thirsty soul today. Satisfy my heart Lord, I don’t want to turn to anything else anymore, to the broken cisterns of idols, I turn to you! Bring me healing today by the refreshing of your Holy Spirit. Amen