Never Thirst Again

Jesus is having a most life-changing conversation with a non-Jewish woman. This moment, this trail walk is so encouragingly close to home, I really have no excuse, not one, for not being able to share fully in this.

Jesus is not just talking to a Samaritan woman, but to a woman who thinks that she knows, about God. Don’t we also think that we know it all about God, because of our ancestors, traditions and beliefs? She is head and head with Jesus in conversation and everything He mentions, she has the answers to offer this bold Jewish man, who dares to ask her for water from her claimed fore-father’s well.

Don’t we also go head and head with Jesus, when He tells us what He desires and we have the legitimate, lawful reasons why it is not right for us? This truly humbles me, emboldens me and sets me on this trail, in full expectation, when I see the patience of Jesus with this Spiritually dry person. Note, like many of us, she did not even know that she was a dry person, a person needing water herself.

Whoever you are, male or female, can’t you see yourself here? Can’t you hear the Lord saying these words to you, in your particular situation? 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. John 4: 10b. Clearly Jesus has diagnosed and described this woman’s problems. First, she does not know the Gift of God. Secondly, she does not recognize who is asking her for water. The sad, lamentable truth is that many a person who thinks that he or she is a believer, bases this solely on God and not Jesus. This woman knew God and the things of God but she did not know the Gift of God – Jesus Christ His Son. She could recognize God through her ancestors and through Moses, for example, but the Name Jesus, has no living, visible impact on her life.

The patience of Jesus is phenomenal and His understanding is beyond any human reasoning. She is looking at Jesus, the Man with whom she is having conversation and asks Him with quiet subtleness. 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? John 4: 12. It is here that Jesus brings this time to a fruitful ending. It is here when He pulls in the reins, as it were. It is here that He makes the life-giving offer to her. It is here that NEVER rolls out like an ever-flowing river, untamed, unleashed and unlimited. Will you by faith, be buried in these words, with promise to rise victoriously, as one never to thirst again? Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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. John 4: 13 – 14.

I can assure you that the human mind cannot even begin to imagine what this really means to a life who earnestly asks Jesus for this water. This Spiritual water ensures that you will never thirst again. Here, Jesus draws a living example from the natural life of all people who are in the flesh. Drink water, be it from the most expensive, exclusive wells or fountains, or drink from the public fountains, where all and sundry drink, and the result for all, is that you will thirst again. Now Jesus contrasts this with those which He gives. When you drink the water He offers, then the possibility of thirsting again, is wiped away, non-existent, dead.

Three most glorious and God-praising facts have been rolled out like a red carpet before us on which to joyfully walk.

1. We will never again know the possibility of thirst.

2. We will never again be in the position of thirst.

3. We will never again face the problem of thirst.

We also hear Jesus, in a loud voice, on the final and greatest day of the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles, publicly calling. Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. John 7: 37b.

Jesus goes on to give this guarantee that anyone who drinks the water He gives, will never know thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The water will become a welling-up, a self-filling, self-replenishing spring of water in the individual, for life.