Satisfying Your Thirst

Have you ever noticed how many people walk around carrying a water bottle? People engaged in normal activities like walking through their neighborhood, wandering through a mall, or sitting behind a desk at their office or school have drinking water close at hand. Evidently life can make you thirsty!

With water so readily available in the USA it is hard to imagine that we are at the “Dawn of a thirsty century” as the BBC News declared. Even though two-thirds of the surface of the earth is covered by water, most of it is too salty to drink. Only about 2.5% of the world’s water is not salty and of that amount two-thirds is found in the icecaps and glaciers. When other factors are taken into consideration, only .08% of all the earth’s water is available for human consumption. What is even more disconcerting are estimates that water usage is expected to increase by 40% in the next two decades. At the same time pollution and contamination reduces potable water to alarming levels. The World Health Organization indicates that contaminated waters contribute to 80% of all sickness and disease in the world. Agriculture consumes 70% of the water we have to produce our food. These and a number of other factors have led USAID to project that one-third of all humans will face chronic water shortages by the year 2025. Even in the USA water has become a critical issue. Various states are battling in court to preserve their water supplies. The Natural Resource Council reports that more than one-third of all counties in the lower 48 states will be facing a serious water shortage by 2050.

While the shortage of physical water may occupy our thoughts, there is another “water” shortage that demands our attention. Jesus addresses this shortage in John 4 as he talks to a woman at a well. She is concerned about her thirsty body, while he wants her to focus upon her thirsty soul. Jesus sees her spiritual need as something she was ignoring and needed to address. He offers her a way to have her greatest need met by him as he offered her living water (4:10). Her greatest need was not even on her radar screen so she continues to focus upon physical water. Speaking first of the physical water, Jesus then redirects her attention saying, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water I give them shall never thirst again; but the water I shall give them shall be I them a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (4:13-14).

Now that he has her attention he begins to address the thirst of her soul. He first has her reflect on how needy she really is. He does this by having her look at the sinfulness of her life by exposing her immoral life (4:16-19). Evidently she was trying to assuage her thirsty soul by engaging in diversions revolving around a variety of relationships and sexual encounters. Those escapades left her soul parched as she moved from one episode to another. Having her condition exposed was not comfortable and she tries to avoid the issue by engaging in a theological debate (4:20). When people are confronted with an uncomfortable truth, often they try to deflect the focus from themselves toward a debatable topic. Jesus does not ignore her question (4:21-24), but he does not become distracted from addressing her greatest need – her soul’s thirst. He ends the discussion with her by saying he was the Messiah, the one who could give the truth (see John 14: 6 “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me”) that released the living water. Only Christ could give the living water that could meet the needs of those parched by sin and engaged in a futile search to assuage the thirst of their soul.

The Samaritan woman had come to the well thirsty both physically and spiritually. Her encounter with Jesus had refreshed her soul. She left the well not focused upon the physical but the spiritual. This was evident as she left the water pot and ran to tell people that there was a man who knew all about her sin yet offered her parched soul living water (4:28-29). The message of Jesus’ grace overwhelmed her and caused her to see Jesus as the Savior and to declare him to other thirsty souls around her (4:30, 39-42). The most natural thing for a person whose soul has been refreshed is to tell others how they too can have their great thirst met. As a result many accepted Jesus as the Messiah, “the Savior of the world” (4:42).

People with a spiritual thirst must go to the right source to have their needs met. There are many substitutes offered by the world in which we live that try to provide joy and peace that can only come from a relationship to God through Jesus Christ. At best these diversions only offer a fleeting relief from the pain of a parched existence. It is far better to come to one who offers “living water.”

Samuel Coleridge wrote in the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” of a sailor trapped in the middle of an ocean where there was “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” He was surrounded by an environment that looked like it could satisfy, but in reality it could not. In fact the water that surrounded the sailor could only make him thirstier. He needed drinkable water that could truly satisfy his thirsty body. In a similar way we are surrounded by a world that seems to say, “We can satisfy your soul.” The truth is it cannot. Only Christ can offer the living water that quenches the thirst of a parched soul. To use the words of the Psalmist, “Taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man who trusts in him” (34:8). Are you thirsty? Come to the One who offers living water.

A Catalyst of Transformation

The results of transformation are often obvious while the catalyst for that transformation is often mysterious. For example, we may observe a person who has been addicted to a habit, like smoking cigarettes or over-eating, suddenly set aside their obsession. Less obvious may be the catalyst for such a change. Perhaps a doctor had privately announced that if they did not abandon their behavior, they would be dead in the span of a few months. In this case, the prospect of dying overwhelms the craving for nicotine that diminishes lung capacity or the dainty morsel that keeps adding girth to the waistline. We may observe the change but perhaps not the reason.

Often when a transformation occurs people try to explain what may have ignited the obvious change. In the March 2012 issue of the National Geographic there is a feature article entitled “The Journey of the Apostles.” In the article a Benedictine monk and historian, Columba Stewart, says this about the early church leadership. There was no great organizational structure behind their movement but a “tiny, vulnerable, poor, often persecuted group of people who were on fire with something… blasting out of Jerusalem and scattering across the known world.” They were intent on spreading the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ and his finished work on the cross where he died for the sins of the world. This was the same group for the most part that had abandoned Jesus. They fled their rabbi, Jesus, when he was arrested by the Romans in the Garden of Gethsemane. The key spokesperson for their band, Peter, was the same one that on three separate occasions denied that he even knew Jesus. After Jesus was buried and even after reports had come to them indicating that Jesus was raised from the dead, this same group hid behind locked doors fearing what the religious establishment and the Roman government might do to them.

A transformation took place and their timidity was replaced with a bold message that Jesus was their risen Savior and Lord, and this was good news the whole world needed to hear. The religious community that tried to silence the apostles took notice of the transformation of Jesus’ followers. Seeing the boldness of the apostles they “realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men” and “they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). In other words they saw a transformation whereas once ordinary men were now living extraordinary lives. They were astonished because the catalyst for such a change was seemingly mysterious to these religious leaders.

I suggest the catalyst for such a change was a dynamic encounter with the risen Christ and a direct commission from the risen Lord as to what they were supposed to do. The encounter came when they had lost hope. Two disciples on the road to Emmaus said, “We had hoped he (Jesus) was the one to redeem Israel” (Like 24:21). Those words reflect defeat and despair born from the events of recent days when they saw Jesus die on a cross and then placed in a tomb. Their hope was buried with Jesus’ body. Now on this desolate road they encountered a risen Jesus and he ignited their cold, hopeless hearts so they became burning hearts of passionate hope (24:32). Later that same risen Jesus would speak to a gathering of the apostles and give them a commission “that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations” (24:47). I suppose you could say that the risen Christ Jesus was the catalyst to ignite their lives and then tell them where to burn.

In this Easter season we see worldwide that the transformation begun centuries ago continues. People who encountered by faith the risen Christ are boldly testifying of their faith in places like India, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Nigeria, China, Afghanistan, and even our own country – regardless of the cost. They realize that the Gospel, the good news, is for all nations. Those who are transformed by a dynamic encounter with the risen Savior are so changed by what Christ has done for them that they do not worry what others think or how others treat them for their faith. Paul describes those so transformed as being “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Those who are part of that new creation just naturally love to share with others how this transformation has occurred. The catalyst for this transformation should not remain a mystery. He is the risen Jesus Christ and he should be the focal point of a transforming message.

In this season when there is at least a discussion of Jesus’ resurrection, may those who have been transformed by Jesus Christ “give a reason for the hope that lies within them” (1 Peter 3:15). For those who are curious about these who profess such claims, consider and investigate the claims for yourselves.