YOU WILL NEVER THIRST AGAIN

“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but 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 into eternal life.’ John 4:13-14 (NV).

The woman Jesus met at the well outside the village of Sychar was an outcast of society. She was living with a man who was not her husband after being divorced five times. The people of the village shunned her. She must have felt embarrassed because she went for water in the middle of the day instead of in the early morning or the evening which was the time of the day when the village women went to the well. 

Her story was the same as the story of many women. She was looking for love in the wrong places and leaving behind a string of broken relationships because the men she thought would love her only used her and then threw her away!

She was astonished when a Jewish man spoke to her at the well. No Jew would speak to a Samaritan, especially a Jewish man speaking to a Samaritan woman. That was her first surprise. Her second surprise was that Jesus understood her so well. He knew that she was thirsty for love, and He also knew that she would not find real love from men who selfishly used her to satisfy their own lust.

He told her that He could give her the kind of “water” that would satisfy her thirst. Although she did not understand at first, He meant that He could give her the love that no man could give her. He was not speaking of the “love” she was looking for from a man. He was talking about God’s love which would satisfy her thirst for love forever. 

Every human being needs to be loved. We cannot survive without love, but the love that we have for one another is conditional. We love our husband, wife, parent, friend, child when they please us. If they don’t, we withdraw from them, we punish them by saying unkind words or withholding our care or our friendship, but God is not like that.

Jesus was offering her a love that would not reject her no matter what she said or did; a love that would always be kind and compassionate, a love that would never end and from which nothing could separate her. He called it “water” – something that would quench her thirst to be loved so that she would not need to live an immoral life to satisfy her craving for love.

When we receive God’s love, our hearts are so much at peace that we do not need to live sinful lives like she did to find love. It no longer matters whether the love of our husband or wife, father or mother, brothers or sisters, or friends is not perfect. God’s love is perfect, and we can always be secure in His love. We will continue to be thirsty and continue to drink at the wrong fountain until we submit to the Lord and receive His love forever.