Living Water

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 (John 4:10).

 

Have you ever wondered, "What is this 'living' water of which Jesus speaks?"  We can catch a small glimpse from our everyday lives.  If we allow a glass of water to sit on the kitchen counter overnight and then take a sip of it the next morning, we will know what "living water" is not.  I have three cats, who are always searching for "living" water; they are very sensitive to, and always reject, 'non-living,' or stale water.  I have a fountain for them that is supposed to circulate the water, but it repeatedly gets clogged up and fails to do what it is supposed to do.  One of my cats sits before the fountain, pawing at it, trying to get it flowing again.  Another one will sit in front of the bowl of water which I am supposed to refresh each morning and cry until I put in fresh water.  She will not drink stale water.

 

Spiritually, though, I think most human beings are not as smart as cats when it comes to 'living water.'  Most of us seem to be trying to live on spiritually 'stale' water -- the water that was offered to us as children, or even the water that satisfied our spiritual thirst some years ago, but which has now grown stale.  We wonder why the old water does not satisfy our thirst today.  Like the manna God provided in the desert, it is not possible to gather water for more than one day and expect it to satisfy us in the days to come.

 

God does not speak to us one time from Mt. Sinai and expect us to live forever on that word.  The word of God does indeed "go forth" from Mt. Sinai and from Jerusalem, just as manna went forth from the desert for the Jews on the way to the Holy Land, where they were to settle.  The manna in the desert was a living lesson that God would provide for them on a daily basis, that He would never desert them or abandon them.  But the manna he provided in the desert ceased once they entered the land "overflowing with milk and honey." 

 

Hebrews 4:12 says, "The word of God is living and active.  Sharper than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."  Now the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts as children, or those of many years ago, or even those of yesterday, have changed.  Our life situations, the problems we face today are not those of yesterday, or those of when we sojourned in the desert.  It is today that we need to meet Jesus and to receive from Him that "living water" that will satisfy our thirst today.  Today, we need to hear His voice speaking in the depths of our soul.  Today, we need a Scripture that shouts or whispers, "I am God's voice, God's living word, for you today." 

 

Each day, God gently invites us into His Presence to listen, to hear the word He speaks to us today--not the word spoken to the nation of Israel as it sought to establish its identity -- although that word is eternal and everlasting, and it will never go 'stale.'  It stands forever, as fresh as the day it was spoken to Moses.  But even as Jesus taught in parables and some went away shaking their heads, not understanding the words He spoke to them, the disciples went to Him saying, "Explain to us the parables." 

 

We, too, like the disciples, need the 'living' explanation -- the Rhema, or 'spoken' word of God that refreshes our souls:  the word that says, "I am speaking to you as I spoke to Moses on the mountain."

We need to know in the depths of our heart the living word of God, the word that divides the soul and the spirit, the natural man from our spirit man.  We need to hear the Voice of God speaking in our hearts, not just the voice of someone else quoting the Scriptures --- even though that may be the way God needs to use to 'open our ears' to hear Him speaking to us.

 

Jesus opened the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf.  That was not just for "then" and for "them."  We are all spiritually blind and deaf until our eyes and ears are opened by the Spirit of Jesus saying to us Ephphatha: Be opened!  The miracles are "now" and "for us."  We need living water even now, and we need to ask for spiritual sight and hearing to be able to see and hear what God wants to say to us today. 

 

I once met a woman -- now I think it might have been an angel sent to teach me -- who knew the Word of God so well that my heart was 'burning' as I listened to her explain the scriptures.  "How did you learn all this?" I asked her; "did you go to ministry school?"  "Whenever I don't understand something," she answered, "I stop reading and pray that the Spirit would reveal to me what I am to understand."  From that day, I learned that the Scriptures must be, like Mary, overshadowed by the Spirit of God if they were to leap off the pages as the "Living" Word to us. 

 

We need to drink 8 glasses a day of fresh, not stale, water -- or so the experts tell us.  Most people, I suspect, live in a state of partial dehydration.  Spiritually, too, we are probably slowly dying from dehydration if we are attempting to live on 'stale' water.  Fortunately, we know the Source of Living Water, and He has made it easy to approach Him daily for the Living Water He so wants to give us, not only to satisfy our own thirst, but to become "rivers of living water flowing out from our bellies" to a thirsty world around us. 

 

It has been predicted that fresh water will become the world's next crisis, that we are running out of usable water because of pollution.  Such a crisis is only a mirror of what has been happening spiritually for ages -- we have run out of fresh water because we have failed to recognize and acknowledge the Source of all Life and the Living Water that sustains our life.