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ARE YOU THIRSTY?
Our life is a dry, desert
experience in which no 9ne can survive without water. As we trudge
along day by day and year by year, seeking happiness and contentment,
an attractive mirage may appear to us at times, and we joyfully pursue
after it. But when we think we have found water, it will be only a
dry, empty well that can never satisfy our thirst.
During His 3½ year earthly
ministry, an occasion arose for the Lord Jesus Christ to supply water
that would provide everlasting life for a woman who lived in Samaria.
Jesus and His twelve disciples left Judea and were on their way to
Galilee. The Jews usually avoided going through Samaria, but Jesus was
compelled to go there, because He know from eternity past that there
was a woman in the city of Sychar who had a thirst to know God.
Outside the city was a well
that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jesus sat down at that well
and sent the twelve into the city to buy food for their journey. In
the heat of the day, a woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus
asked her to give Him a drink, and in surprise she asked, "Why do you,
a Jew, ask me for a drink. I'm a Samaritan woman, and I know your
people usually have no dealings with us." |
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Jesus replied, "If you knew the gift of God and who is
asking you for a drink of water, you would have asked of Him, and He
would give you living water." The woman said, "Sir, the well is deep,
and you have nothing with which to draw water. Where would you get
this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who drank
from this well which he provided for himself, his children and his
flocks?"
Jesus answered, "Whoever
drinks of this water shall thirst again; but the water that I shall
give to him shall be in him, a well of water springing up into
everlasting life." The woman set her water pot down and said to Jesus,
"Sir, give me this water to satisfy my thirst so I won't have to keep
coming to the well for water every day."
Jesus responded, "Go, call
your husband and return again." She replied, "I have no husband." Then
Jesus said, "You're truthful in saying you have no husband. I know you
have had five husbands, and the one you now live with is not your
husband." To that, the woman replied, "Sir ... I believe you must be a
prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say that
Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus said,
"Woman, believe Me when I tell you a time will come when you shall not
worship the Father in this mountain nor in Jerusalem. We know what we
worship, because salvation is of the Jews. God is a Spirit, and they
who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. The Father
seeks for those who will truly worship Him."
The woman replied
defensively, "Well, I know that Messiah who is called Christ will come
some day, and He will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I that
speak to you am He." Just then the
disciples returned and were surprised to see Jesus talking to the
Samaritan woman, but no one questioned why He was doing that.
Upon hearing Jesus' words,
the woman left her water pot, ran back into the city and said to the
men: "Come, see a man who has told me everything about myself. Is not
this man the Christ?" The men immediately left the city and ran to the
well, their white robes flowing behind them, to see and speak with
Jesus for themselves.
Meanwhile, the disciples said
to Jesus, "Master, eat!" He answered, "I have meat to eat that you
know nothing about." The disciples asked one another, "Has anyone
given Him anything to eat?" Jesus replied, "My meat is to do the will
of Him who sent Me and to finish His work. You say there are four
months until harvest, but I tell you now to lift up your eyes and look
on the fields, for they are white and ready for harvest. He who reaps
will receive wages and gather fruit unto eternal life, so that both
those who reap and those who sow may rejoice together. One sows and
another reaps. I send you now to reap that for which you did not labor
... other men labored, and you are about to enter into their labors."
(Jesus was telling them that they were about to be witnesses to the
Samaritan men who were approaching the well in search of the water of
life)
After the woman said to the
men that Jesus had told her everything she ever did, many of the
Samaritans of that city believed in Jesus and asked Him to stay and
teach them for awhile. He stayed two more days, and many more believed
in Him because of His own words, and they said to the woman, "Now we
believe, not because of what you told us, but we have heard his words
for ourselves and know this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the
world. "
As a thirsty individual, are
you drinking from the only well that can provide eternal life?
Revelation 22: 17 says, "Whosoever will (that is, who exercises his
own free will and expresses positive volition toward the Lord Jesus
Christ) let him partake of the water of life freely."
"Neither is there salvation
in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given among men
whereby we must be saved. " (Acts 4: 12)
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