Living Water in a Thirsty World

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, because his disciples had gone into town to buy food. “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. 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.” “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 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.” Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 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.” (John 4:7-14)

Devotional: Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well in the heat of the day. She is an outcast, worn down by life, coming to get what she thinks she needs, which is water. But Jesus offers her something far greater. He tells her, "If you knew who was asking you for a drink, you’d be asking Me for living water." She came for a temporary fix, but Jesus points to her deeper thirst, one she has been trying to satisfy in all the wrong places.
That is not just her story. It is ours too. Maybe for you, it is not relationship after relationship, but it is success, recognition, comfort, or control. We chase the next achievement, the next purchase, or the next distraction, hoping it will quench something in us, but it never does. Like salt water to a thirsty soul, the more we drink, the drier we become.
Jesus is not offering another self-help plan. He is saying, "I alone can satisfy you." Full stop. No plan B. No backup well. The question is, are you willing to stop running to dry wells that cannot hold water? Are you ready to trust Jesus as the only source of true and lasting satisfaction?

Today, ask the Lord to expose the wells you keep running to. Lay them down. And instead, let the living water of Christ do what nothing else ever could, which is satisfy your soul forever.

Prayer: Jesus, I confess that I’ve looked to other things to satisfy my soul. Help me to drink deeply from Your living water and to find my fulfillment in You alone. Amen.