What are you thirsting for?

Let’s take a look at a story of a woman who had a thirst. John 4:5-26…

5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

10Jesus 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.”

11“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

25The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

This woman not only had a natural thirst, she had an internal thirst, as you see from the story she tried to quench that thirst, that longing with different men, she thought they would satisfy her need, but they didn’t. That’s why she had went through so many husbands.

In Webster’s 1828 a thirst can be described as “A want and eager desire after any thing.” According to the Thayer Greek dictionary thirst means, “figuratively, those who are said to thirst who painfully feel their want of, and eagerly long for, those things by which the soul is refreshed, supported, strengthened.” Your Soul is your mind, will, intellect, emotions, and imaginations. So when you thirst for something you are trying to satisfy those things. What are you thirsting for? Do you have a thirst for power, recognition, comfort, love, approval? A thirst for alcohol, drugs, or sex? A thirst for relationships, a thirst to be needed and wanted? A thirst for money or material possessions? What are you thirsting for, what are those things that are in the forefront of your soul? Those things that your mind, will, emotions, intellect, and imaginations crave?

Before we were born again our soul is what ran us, but since our spirit has been revived it is time thirst after what is going to satisfy the spirit, and not the soul. Here Jesus said “whoever drinks from the water I give him, will never thirst.” This means that we do not have to let any outside thing rule us. Jesus has given us everything, living water that will satisfy our spirit for eternity. It’s time to take an internal look, if you are thirsting after the wrong things, start to adjust your thinking (Romans 12:2), and go to the Father and start to drink in the living water. God bless!!

Tracy Houston