Not a Drop to Drink

The church plant I attend doesn’t have a building, so we’ve been using other church buildings until we get our own. The former building we met in kept their sanctuary overly warm. In July. UGH!

One day I was feeling dehydrated and ducked out of the service to find the water fountain. It didn’t work! I saw a water cooler near the auditorium… but no cups! I was on the verge of twisting my bulletin into a cup when I saw three water bottles on the lobby table.

Reminder: this is not our church building. Those are not our water bottles.

I asked a leader’s wife who was standing in the back if I could take a bottle. I was either going to be drinking that water bottle then or they’d be giving it to me to help me out of my faint. I do not handle over-heating.

Therefore with joy you will draw water
From the wells of salvation.
Isaiah 12:3

The water was so refreshing!

There’s an obvious spiritual application here.

The Well that Never Runs Dry

All other religions are spiritually dehydrated. They are not preaching and teaching about the living water found in Christ Jesus. When I see photos of people lighting candles to idols or doing any of the other myriad works to appease their gods, it’s so sad.

They’re dying of spiritual dehydration and many don’t realize it until too late.

I had a little bout with dehydration the week before Labor Day. I worked too hard in the heat and didn’t drink enough water, but I didn’t realize I was dehydrated until I got sick. Spiritual dehydration is worse.

I feel like in the passage of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well, He was leading her into a conversation to show her that she was spiritually dehydrated.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”— Jn 4:10

She didn’t quite get it. She was thinking only of physical dehydration. When she begins to realize who Jesus is, she runs back to the other villagers to tell them that this may be the Christ.

I like that detail that John mentions about her leaving her water jug at the well. She is no longer thinking about the water that keeps us alive, but the water that gives us life.

We too need to be like the Samaritan woman in that moment, running toward those dying of spiritual dehydration with the news about the living water; the salvation that only comes through Jesus Christ.

Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! — Jn 4:35b

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.