HOPE! - Living Water

When you’re in the desert, you need water. That goes without saying. Without water, you’ll die of thirst. In the desert, water is life. Now, in the Scriptures, God is described as the One who brings water.

In Psalms 63 David writes, “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.”

The introduction to Psalm 63 says that this is a psalm of David written when he was in the Desert of Judea. This was a difficult time in David’s life. He was on the run from Saul who was out to kill him over his own jealousy of David’s success.

And so David fled to the desert for safety. The scripture says that David went to a place in the Desert of Judea called En Gedi. Now, En Gedi is an oasis in the desert, fed my many springs the bubble up out of the ground. And the water from these springs is pure – it’s referred to as “living water.”

And so for David, his life is like a desert, both literally and figuratively, and God is like an oasis. And the “living water” of En Gedi can be contrasted with the “dead water” found in the cisterns.

In Jeremiah, God accuses his people of abandoning Him, the spring of living water, and exchanged him for cisterns. And Jeremiah says how foolish it is to exchange the God of En Gedi, the God of the oasis in the desert, for the god of the muddy leaky pit in the ground. Why would you exchange bubbling fresh water for old stagnant dirty water?

When we get to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, Jesus begins to talk about this “living water.” And what he’s saying is that the thing he has to offer is fresh, is new, is healthy. It isn’t old and stagnant. It is purifying and cleansing, rather than dirty and stale.

Jesus says, “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 to eternal life.”

The lives we live can be very much like living out in the desert. Hot. Dry. Exhausting. Dangerous.

But God doesn’t call us to live by ourselves. He doesn’t send us into the desert alone. He calls us to live in community. And not only that, but he gives us the Holy Spirit. God will always go with us. We just need to trust him, listen to him, and experience living life with him on a daily basis. He is our “living water” in the desert.

It is tempting to think that we can do the desert on our own strength, but we’re wrong to think that. We are too easily disoriented. And the heat and the thirst of this life drives us out of our minds. And we begin to look for other things, even good things, to try to satisfy our thirst. But there’s only one thing that satisfies. God.

In the land of Israel, the Dead Sea looks like it could be a good substitute for an Oasis from a distance, but when you get close up, you find that your hopes were in vain. It’s just a bunch of salt water. It takes and takes, but it doesn’t give.

Jesus explains later on in John 7 that the source of the living water he speaks of is the Holy Spirit. God dwells in us, filling us with life. And the life he gives to us overflows to those around us, giving life to them as well.

But if we’re out in the desert of life trying to live in our own strength and trying to help others without being refreshed by God, then we can actually do more harm than good. Life is more than good deeds, or avoiding the bad just enough to not cause any major harm.

No.

Life is living in the presence of God. Relying on him for everything. And allowing his life to flow out of you into those around you. It is a life transformed into the image of Christ by the Spirit of Christ coming to live inside of us.

Psalm 42 says, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”