John 4:7-15

“A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

WOW. So I was thinking about my two minute testimony again… it hit me hard. I realized that I was exactly like the woman at the well. Later on in the passage, after verse 15, Jesus talks about the woman’s husbands and how to call to her husband, but she has had many, and currently is living with a man that is not her husband. My testimony is not exactly like that, but I searched for contentment and love through the world and the attention it gave me. It does not satisfy. In verses 13 & 14, Jesus tells her of the water that never leaves you wanting more. He talks about the water that he gives that will never leave her to “be thirsty again.” The night that God truly changed me, my mom came in to talk to me. Three questions that she asked me that I remember distinctly are: “Sarah, Do you know how beautiful you are? Do you know how much God loves you? Do you know how much he wants to use you?” These questions were Jesus asking me to drink from his well of Living Water, to find contentment in him rather than in my search for contentment elsewhere.

It’s funny how many times, as humans, we turn back to that unfullfilling, unsatisfying water, when we have the living water given to us by Jesus to satisfy us. Why is that? Why do we turn from that thirst quenching water? Why do we turn back to the things that hurt us in the first place?

I wish I had the answers to these questions. They seem impossible to answer!