“The
Gift Of God”
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot
of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was
there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It
was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw
water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His
disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
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.)
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.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have
nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?
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?”
Jesus answered, “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
4:4-14
Tom and
Mark’s ministry refreshes lives. This is clear in the video they share of a
group of fully clad children laughing and dancing in the refreshing water of an
open shower—their first ever. The men work with indigenous churches to install
water filtration systems on wells in Haiti, easing and lengthening lives as
diseases connected to contaminated water are prevented. Access to clean, fresh
water gives the people hope for their future.
Jesus
referred to “living water” in John 4 to capture a similar idea of a continual
source of refreshment. Tired and thirsty, Jesus had asked a Samaritan woman for
a drink (vv. 4–8). This request led to a conversation in which Jesus offered
the woman “living water” (vv. 9–15)—water that would become a source of life
and hope within them, like “a spring of water welling up to eternal
life” (v. 14).
We discover
what this living water is later in John, when Jesus said, “Let anyone who is
thirsty come to me and drink,” declaring that whoever believed in Him would
have “rivers of living water [flowing] from within them.” John explains, “By
this he meant the Spirit” (7:37–39).
Through the
Spirit, believers are united to Christ and have access to the boundless power,
hope, and joy found in God. Like living water, the Spirit lives inside
believers, refreshing and renewing us.
How
has Jesus satisfied your thirst through His Spirit? How will you share what
Jesus has done for you?
Dear God, thank You for leaving us Your
Spirit. Work in us so that our lives point others to You.
Our Daily Bread – December 15, 2019