Can I Get a Drink?

While listening to a podcast by Steven Furtick titled ‘Tired on the Inside’, a part of his message jumped out to me. During the sermon, he was discussing about the time Jesus went to chill by a well in order to ask a woman for a drink and it occurred to me that this was a question that had both a physical and spiritual meaning.  

Looking at it from a physical perspective, at different points in our lives, our body prompts us to get a drink and we instinctively respond by getting a drink to quench that thirst. Imagine yourself on a long walk in the blistering heat (the 45⁰c type of heat), as you approach the end of the walk, you see a familiar friend or maybe an aboki kiosk; you instinctively ask for a drink and you get your request fulfilled. The problem with this type of drink is that within a few minutes you will get thirsty again, after all, according to mayoclinic.org men and women require an average of 3.7L and 2.7L respectively of water per day. Yet, no matter how much water you drink, you’ll still end up thirsty. That was what Jesus was trying to tell the woman of Samaria at the well (John 4:5-26). In vs.7 when Jesus asked the woman for a drink, she responded just like anyone of us would. Based on the assumption that the requester was looking for water (H₂O). But when Jesus asked her for a drink, He was really prompting her to ask Him for a drink: Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” (John 4:10, NKJV)

As you would notice from the verse, Jesus didn’t just say water, he said “living water”. At this point, the woman responded just like any one of us would, by asking where He would get that living water. She went as far as asking how there could be any water better than the water that could be gotten from the well of their father Jacob (John 4:12). Unknown to her, she had met the son of God and his question had a spiritual meaning. There are times in our life when we get thirsty and we long for a way of quenching it and in doing so, turn to the wrong well and drink the wrong water. All through life, we see people turning to all sorts of things to quench their thirst or asking the wrong source for a drink. And the water can come in many forms: money, porn, prostitution, alcohol, cocaine, weed etc. But one thing you would note is that everyone that drinks from these waters still end up thirsty. Isn’t that strange? If you want your quench to be completely sated, then you need to turn to the one who gives living waters and ask Him for a drink; and you know what? He will gladly give you a drink (Rev. 3:20).

As we go into the rest of the week, the charge is simple. Ask Jesus for a drink. Whenever you find yourself turning to the wrong source to ask for a drink, turn back to Jesus and ask Him for a drink. He will never leave nor forsake you (Heb. 13:5) and you will never be thirsty again (John 4:14).

Photo cred: YouVersion