Are you thirsty?
by Pastor Michael Cisler
North Kent Bible Church
When I was in college, my roommate and I worked for a few hours a day at a package shipping company in Georgia. After four hours of loading boxes on trucks, we would be hot and thirsty. When we got home we would share a pitcher of flavored sugar mixed with water. It was cold and wet and felt very refreshing. Unfortunately, this sense of refreshment only lasted about a minute. After that, we would be very thirsty again and no matter how much of the sweetness we drank, we would still be thirsty. I later learned that the sugar actually made us thirstier because the body uses water to break down the sugar we were consuming. No matter how much of the wrong thing we drank, we remained thirsty.
In John chapter four, Jesus has a discussion with an individual about water. They are together at a well, drawing water, and Jesus begins a conversation comparing physical water with a spiritual need.
He says in John 4:13-14, “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.”
When we recognize our need to come into a relationship with God and we make a decision to come to Him, we receive this water Jesus is talking about. We receive the gift of holy spirit to help us in our lives and, as Ephesians chapter one says, this gift is a “deposit guaranteeing our inheritance.” This need of God that we have is one that we sometimes attempt to fill with other things. Because these are the wrong things to fill this need, we will always remain thirsty. When we come to Him, we will never be thirsty again.
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