Come And Drink
Pause:
Before you start reading this devotional, take a moment to stop what you’re doing, slow down and focus on Jesus.
Pray and ask him to open your eyes to see as you read the Scriptures, and to open your ears to hear as you wait on the leading of the Spirit.
Read:
John 4:1-15: “When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were), 3 he left Judea and went again to Galilee.4 He had to travel through Samaria; 5 so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph.6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon. 7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 because his disciples had gone into town to buy food. 9 “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. 10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.” 11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.” 13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again.14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.” 15 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”
Going Deeper:
This week I have found myself in the heart posture of being thirsty. I actually had a very tear filled conversation with God about this, sharing with Him where I’m experiencing Him and His presence and intimacy in my life and where I’m not. I actually had no idea how sad I was about the areas in my life that I wasn’t experiencing Him like I wanted to, until I started talking outloud to Him about it. A very specific area of disappointment being in my morning devotional time, where I expect to encounter Him most. In this conversation, I brought all of my disappointments about this to Him in a very candid and childlike way. I wish I could say as I sat there on my bed, waiting for Him to comfort me, that I heard from Him, was comforted, and fell asleep in peace. I didn’t. I actually fell asleep feeling more discouraged than when I started. What the heck, right?
Truthfully, that is not a common habit for me to come to Jesus like that, for that length of time, and wait and beg for the comfort I so desire, and is something I am trying to practice more of. I am not as familiar with it as I’d like to be. But I’ll stray away from me now and move more towards truth and hope, because that is what my heart woke up so thirsty for today. And although I may not be as in tune with hearing these things from God in the exact moment I ask for them, in the exact way I’d like to hear from Him, hope and truth are still so abundant. And they are ours. I’m thirsty for what only Jesus can provide, and His word says all we have to do is ask for it. I’d like to spend some time in scripture this morning and remind us of His promises and ask the Spirit to minister to us in whatever mood or season we are currently in.
“Come, everyone who is thirsty, come to the waters; and you without money, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost! 2 Why do you spend money on what is not food, and your wages on what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and you will enjoy the choicest of foods. 3 Pay attention and come to Me; listen, so that you will live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the promises assured to David.”
Isaiah 55:1-3 invites us to come, drink, eat, and live. I love how John Piper puts it: “God is inviting you this morning to enjoy the banquet of Salvation”.
“On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, he should come to Me and drink! 38The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.” 39 He said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were going to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been received, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”
John 7:37-39 points toward the promised Spirit. Thank you Jesus that we don’t live in the time of verse 39 and we can lean inwards and draw from the Living Water that you have placed to flow from deep within us!
“As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God. 2 I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long people say to me, “Where is your God?” 4 I remember this as I pour out my heart: how I walked with many, leading the festive procession to the house of God, with joyful and thankful shouts. 5 Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God. 6 I am deeply depressed; therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and Your billows have swept over me. 8The Lord will send His faithful love by day; His song will be with me in the night- a prayer to the God of my life. 9 I will say to God, my rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?” 10 My adversaries taunt me, as if crushing my bones, while all day long they say to me, “Where is your God?” 11 Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God.” (Psalm 42)
“For My people have committed a double evil: They have abandoned Me, the fountain of living water, and dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.”(Jeremiah 2:13)
Psalm 42 empathizes with us when our emotions aren’t lining up with the previous scriptures above, when we are finding it hard to believe the Gospel; that God is for you, with you, and loves you. The Psalms show us that we can plead with our soul to once again turn from cisterns that cannot hold water, put our hope in God (again, and again, and again) and praise Him as our Savior and God.
Lastly, I think it is important to acknowledge that Jesus Himself was thirsty on more than one occasion in the Scriptures. I’m reminded of the moment on the cross when He says the same words I said out loud this week: “I am thirsty”.
“After this, when Jesus knew that everything was now finished that the Scripture might be fulfilled, he said, ‘I’m thirsty.’ ” (John 19:28)
In Matthew’s account of the Gospels this takes place right after he calls out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. And I can’t help but wonder, was He thirsty for water, or for the Father? The aching my heart sometimes feels for a deeper closeness with the Father will never, ever amount to the separation and longing that Jesus felt on the cross. We will never have to be that thirsty because Jesus was that thirsty in our place. My God, my God, thank you that you will never forsake me.
I hope that even just one of these verses has ministered to you and drawn you closer to the God of Living Water. It is my genuine prayer that through these reminders you can return to your day with a greater confidence that God is good, and His provision for you is so abundant that you can’t even measure it. And ultimately, that He loves you.
Pray:
Jesus, I am thirsty for you. Not because I don’t believe you are present, and not because I have yet to experience you. I am thirsty because I have, only by your grace, experienced the Living Water that you promise, and because I want to experience more of it. I can easily list off all of the things and people in my life that I try to pull water from, and the daily return to those wells is exhausting, and lonely, and dry. Thank you that I will never have to know what it means to be truly thirsty for you; you knew I could not bear it. Today I lift my gaze to you, our living hope, because you are so lovely and worthy of my praise.
Listen:
What is the Holy Spirit saying to you this morning?
Apply:
What are you going to do in response to what God is saying to you from the text and by the Spirit?