Grace full mama

Have you ever felt spiritually dead? Dehydrated? Like your tongue is swelling up inside your mouth and your lips are dry, but you have no moisture with which to lick them? Your heart aches. Something inside of you is absolutely desperate.

And so, you try to alleviate the pain. Maybe you use Facebook. Maybe gossiping about someone who is doing worse than you helps. Maybe you are tempted towards hatred. Maybe you binge sweet and salty foods, trying to fill the grande canyon that has opened within you. Maybe you drink. Maybe you binge watch Netflix. Maybe you try hard to “be good,” and you compare yourself to others to try and feel righteous. Maybe you feel like your good works will buy your way into heaven. There are a million ways to try and fill the void within us.

“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and they have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” Jeremiah 2:13

“Jesus answered,’Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14

Let’s break these verses down a little bit. In Jeremiah, God says that his people have forsaken him. The word he uses is the Hebrew word “azav,” which is the word used for leaving a child unprotected, abandoning a spouse, or deserting a battlefield. He isn’t talking about passive neglect here. He is saying that his people have intentionally abandoned him, the fountain of living waters. The word for fountain, “maqor,” means the origin point… the source where all water begins and flows from. After abandoning the source, God’s people looked for a way to sate their thirst; so they dug cisterns. Cisterns were huge dug out pits built for storing rainwater.Digging them was a massive effort, it was heavy labor. Digging our own cisterns exhausts us… it is saying “I can do this myself, God. I can fix this myself.” We believe our enemy that there is something other than Jesus that can fill the desperate thirst within us. This is what works based religion, pride, and performance identity looks like. This is what trying to “be a good person” without redemption looks like.

And these cisterns? They don’t hold water. These cisterns are broken. The word for broken here means “shattered, violently collapsed.” This isn’t a little crack. These ways that we try to become good, or fill the emptiness inside us, can’t hold life giving water even if it is poured into us.

If you were to expand the verse in Jeremiah it would sound something like this, “My people have committed a double catastrophe: They have abandoned me, the only source of life itself, and instead have exhausted themselves carving out man made containers to try to hold their identity and meaning. Containers that are structurally shattered and cannot sustain life. Even when they fill them, they remain empty.”

Does this sound familiar at all? Have you ever abandoned the source, dug your own cisterns, and then maybe even been angry at God that his living water won’t fill them?

Enter the Samaritan woman. She had gone through five husbands and was living with a man who wasn’t her husband, in a time in history when adultery was punishable by stoning to death. This is a woman who was trying to fill her thirst with something other than living water. We don’t know what hurts and trauma had caused her desperation… but listening to her story, we know that she was desperate.

Jesus chose her.

He chose this woman who had dug her own cistern and was exhausted trying to fill this shattered container with water that would make her feel alive. She had run headlong into sin. She had rejected God and gone her own way trying to fill the chasm within her.

She was broken. She was desperate. She was a great big sinner. And she is the first person Jesus offered living water to.

Jesus told her that he would give her water that would make it so that she would never thirst again. The Greek word for thirst here is “dipsao,” which means more than just physical thirst. It also means deep longing, unmet inner need, and a spiritual ache. Jesus told her that he was willing and able to permanently end this woman’s pain and craving for meaning and life.

Jesus says that he will become in us a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. This is huge! He isn’t saying that he will fix our broken cistern so that we can hold stagnant water. He is saying that he will place within us a transformation that is constantly renewed with fresh and flowing living water. It wells up with eternal life… kingdom life that starts now and never, ever ends. He is telling us that he will place the source of life inside of us… no more heavy labour and digging cisterns that fracture and leak. Meaning, life, identity… the source of all of it is in us when Jesus is Lord in our lives.

Maybe we need to turn back from the two evils mentioned in Jeremiah. Maybe we need to turn our face back to God, walk back to him and repent for trying to fill our empty, cracked selves with anything other than him. Repent for all the ways we have tried to do it on our own. Then, we can ask him for a drink. We can ask him for water that will make it so we never thirst again. We can ask him to be the source, the spring that wells up inside us!

Put down the shovel, friends. You don’t want that stagnant water anyways. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords is ready and waiting to fill that void with spiritual water that will take away the ache and pain. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. His water is everlasting.