Spiritual thirst
Senior minister Mat Yeo writes about the spiritual thirst that we all experience and which can only be satisfied in Christ.
We continue studying the Gospel of John throughout May and begin the month with the well-known story of the Samaritan woman at the well—a story that has a fair bit to do with water and thirst.
We live in difficult times for many Australians at the moment, with what has been described by some as the worst drought in their living memory. Living on the coast, we are spared much of the pain that our rural fellow Australians are feeling. Make sure they are part of your prayers.
The woman at the well had a far greater problem than physical thirst. As do all without Christ. Spiritual thirst. A thirst for the eternal God.
In Psalm 63, David says:
O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.
In Isaiah 55, this is God’s offer to us:
Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
The Samaritan woman met Jesus and found life! Her response to that was to invite the town to meet him too. “Come and see.” And they did. They met Jesus and urged him to stay with them. And because of his words, many more became believers.
The next verse John writes is our verse of the month for May: John 4:42. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.”
A few chapters further on, in John 7:37, Jesus says these words to the crowd: On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”