Billions of people on planet earth are thirsting to death—they can’t find drinkable water anywhere. After all, if you drink from the wrong source, the results can be fatal.

Amazingly, 70 percent of our planet is covered with water. 70 percent. If all of the planet’s water was poured onto the United States, it would create an ocean 90 miles deep. There is so much water, but most of it is completely useless to us.

Fully 97 percent of the Earth’s total water supply is salt water found in oceans and seas. Most of the remaining three percent of freshwater can be found frozen in glaciers and ice caps. Just three percent In fact, there is more fresh water in the atmosphere than in all of the rivers on the planet combined. That means that even though we cannot exist without water, most of the water on our planet is either undrinkable or inaccessible to us. 

Billions of people in this world are spiritually thirsty, too, and they have no idea where to find the relief they crave. I’m talking about a thirst for the things that really matter in life—things like meaning and fulfillment and peace and love and contentment. God programmed these thirsts into our genetic code because He wants us to seek them. He wants us to find them. Somewhere along the way, however, (around the time of the fall), we got pretty confused about how to quench those thirsts. Instead, humans have come up with all sorts of solutions, and all of them are empty.

In John 4, Jesus encountered a woman who was spiritually thirsting to death. She had no clue how to satisfy this deep thirst inside of her, so not having any other ideas, she tried to quench it through relationships with men. Five marriages and at least one live-in boyfriend later, she continued to search. I’m sure that somewhere along the way, she found temporary relief from loneliness and emptiness, but it didn’t last. She had to keep returning to that same well. 

Her problem: She was trying to satisfy the wrong thirst. She wasn’t completely ignorant of God, but she drank deeply from romance and sipped from God. And then Jesus showed up in her home town. 

Take a moment to read John 4 and notice how Jesus interacted with this woman:

• He gave her His full attention at the town well. 
• He showed an interest in her life.
• He revealed her sin and then pointed her to the truth. 

Look at how Jesus turns the conversation to spiritual truth. 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.” (John 4:13-14)

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” (John 4:15-18).

In his book, Inside-Out, Larry Crabb identified three deep, human thirsts in every life: 

Casual longings – These are longings for convenience, comfort, and personal preference. We prefer that it not rain on our picnics and fishing trips. We don’t want the car to break down.

Critical longings – These are deeper, more important longings. For example, we long for meaningful human relationships. We want to see loved ones come to know Christ. We want to see sick friends regain their health. We want to have a great marriage. These are things that are important—things that matter to us. But even if these longings are met, we may still be thirsty. That’s because there is still a deeper level of thirst.

Crucial longings – Crabb identifies these as the deepest thirsts of our innermost being. This is a thirst for things like meaning; fulfillment; peace; love; joy; contentment. This is what we all long for most—the stuff that makes life work loving.

Crabb points out a huge disconnect between the first two categories and the third. The things that satisfy our casual and critical longings don’t work to satisfy our crucial longings. A+B does not equal C. We can work like crazy to satisfy our casual and critical thirsts, but we don’t have the ability to meet our crucial ones. Nothing in this world has that kind of power. The only thing that will ever satisfy those deepest levels of thirst is a relationship with God. 

When the formula for your life is Jesus + _____ (money, relationships; success; looks; fame; power; talent)—you are forever thirsty for more. Those combinations keep you working perpetually to meet your casual and crucial needs, but the deeper thirst in your life remains. 

Our thirst can only be filled by 100 percent pure Living Water, which is a gift from Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can give that gift. Jesus said in John 7:37-38, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

Only Jesus can give this gift because only He is the Messiah, the Son of God. In John 4:26, He confirmed that to this woman, telling her plainly—I am (the Messiah). And do you know what? This outcast, lonely, thirsty Samaritan woman believed Him, and as a result, she finally found relief to her deepest longest.

FINAL WORD:

Charles Spurgeon used to tell a story about a vessel sailing off the northern coast of South American that was flashing a distress signal. When they were finally spotted by another ship, they sent the desperate message: “Dying for water!” 

The other ship sent back this response: “Dip it up then. You are in the mouth of the Amazon river.”

Here was a ship surrounded by freshwater. All they had to do was reach for it. Yet the crew was dying of thirst because they thought themselves surrounded by seawater. What a poignant picture of our culture—people everywhere dying of thirst while the very water they crave is freely available.

REFLECT:

Grab your journal, mediate on these questions and write down your responses.

According to Jesus in John 7:38, the life that is FULLY believing in Jesus has the resource of Jesus flowing out of it perpetually. As this devotion points out, however, that whenever we rely on something else for our deepest fulfillment OR attempt to combine something else along with Jesus as the “answer,” we come up empty. Read Colossians 2:6-10, paying careful attention to verse 8, and ask your heart this bold question: What have I embraced (possibly a very good thing) that I thought would give me ultimate satisfaction?

Meditate now on verses 9 and 10 and write out a prayer of response.