LIVING WATER FOR ALL
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Opening Prayer
Holy Spirit, thank you for your work in me. I am grateful for my faith in Jesus and for your continuing investment in me as you draw me closer to him and enable me to share his love with others.
Read JOHN 4:1–15
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
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.[a])
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.”
Footnotes
- John 4:9 Or do not use dishes Samaritans have used
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
‘As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.’1
We all need water to live. In 2015, one of the United Nations’ targets was to ‘achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all’ by 2030. By 2020, 74% of the global population had access to ‘safely managed drinking water,’ so a quarter of the world (around two billion people) still did not enjoy safe water.
In Bible times, too, access to safe drinking water was a matter of concern. Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well began with a simple request for a drink—and developed into a discussion about ‘living water’ (v. 10) and spiritual thirst. Living water symbolizes the Holy Spirit,2 through whom we enter into the only relationship that can fully and permanently satisfy our most fundamental thirst. Whereas water is essential for life, living water is indispensable for eternal life. The God who ‘so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son’3 made salvation available for all. Jesus offers living water to anyone who asks (v. 10).
At the physical level, Jesus experienced thirst—at Samaria, after a tiring journey, in the noonday sun (v. 6); and again, at Golgotha, after being whipped, scourged, and nailed to the cross. At a deeper and far more agonizing level, Jesus thirsted for the salvation of the world. The cross—from upon which he cried out through cracked and parched lips, ‘I am thirsty’4—was the terrible cost he bore to make this living water freely available to all people. The encounter that began with Jesus asking for a drink of water concluded with many in Samaria confessing, ‘we know that this man really is the Savior of the world’ (v. 42). The goal of living water for all had begun to be realized!
Apply
Where are places in the world that God might be calling you to be a part of providing physical and spiritual water?
Closing prayer
Jesus, help me to consciously and consistently cultivate a thirst for you and help me to share with others about the living water you offer.
1 Ps 42:1,2 2 John 7:37–39 3 John 3:16 4 John 19:28
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