Springing up

Sprite has an advertising slogan that reads ‘Obey your thirst’.  Everyone knows what it is like to thirst, and we all know that there is nothing like a cool refreshing drink to take away our thirst.  

Just as we can thirst physically, we can also thirst spiritually.  We can look to many sources to try and quench this thirst but soon we find like the hymn writer said, 

I tried the broken cisterns, Lord,

But, ah, the waters failed;

Even as I stooped to drink they fled,

And mocked me as I wailed.

Now none but Christ can satisfy,

None other Name for me!

There’s love, and life, and lasting joy,

Lord Jesus, found in Thee.

The only way to quench this thirst, this longing within us is to come to Jesus, the fountain of life.  

There was a woman in the scriptures that heard Jesus explain this.  When Jesus spoke to the women at the well in Samaria, he spoke to her concerning ‘living water’, water that would quench the thirst of her soul.  Jesus was thirsty and he was resting at the well of Jacob which John 4:11 reminds us was ‘a deep well’.  As the woman approaches him, he takes the opportunity and asks her for a drink of water.  This question surprised the woman because the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans.  Jesus takes the time to converse and relate to this woman.  He explains that he can refresh the soul.

John 4:11 points out that a woman from Samaria came to draw water.  This woman comes at a time when no one else was around.  She was not expecting to see anyone to talk to anyone.  The bible says she came at the sixth hour, which is noon.  The normal custom would have been to come to the well in the morning or in the evening that way when you drew water it was cool, it was refreshing.  This woman to avoid the chat from people, to avoid being see or noticed by anybody comes when no one else draws water.  

Little did she realise that while no one wanted to talk to her or be in her company there was one waiting for her, who was interested, who wanted to reach out to her.  As the conversation unfolds Jesus begins to reveal things he never revealed to anyone else.  He begins to reveal his identity, he begins to explain things that the woman struggles at first to understand with her head, Jesus said to her that he would give her living water and she would never thirst again.

That is the promise that Jesus offers us today we will never thirst again.  The drink companies today can’t even say that.  They would love to be able to say it but they can’t, Sprite says ‘Obey your thirst’, Lucozade’s slogan is ‘Replaces lost Energy’, but Jesus ‘Never Thirst again’. 

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

(John 4:13-14 ESV)

The water he gives us will become in us a spring of water.  Think of a spring, it is a place where water pushes up, and overflows unto the surface.  Something is happening at a spring slightly different as I see it.  Surely it is natural for water to flow down, you pour water into the ground it will seep through the soil and so on.  At a spring water does just that, it springs up, I also learned, a spring can be called a rising or a resurgence.  He gives us this water and one way or another it has come to out.  It is natural for it to flow out.  We just need to let it happen.   We all know that Jesus is referring to the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit dwells within us as believers as children of God.  When the Holy Spirit is present and abiding there he will express himself.   What is needed today is for us as believers to stop hindering the spirit in our lives, to stop quenching the spirit, to stop grieving the spirit.  What we need to do is have a spring within us, a spring welling up.  We need a rising, we need a resurgence.  When I think of a resurgence I think of something that is unstoppable, if you try to get in the way it is going to carry you with it.  For something to resurge it needs to revive.  That is what we need to do as God’s people; we need a resurgence of the Holy Spirit within our lives and in our Churches.  

For too long now we have neglected our own wells.  We have let them become blocked with things that God never intended to be there.  We are afraid of the well might rise up, it is unpredictable, it makes us uncomfortable.  Instead of the well welling up like Jesus said it is just bubbling a little, we contain it. And we have lost our thirst.  We have lost appetite for the things of God. We need to get back to that place where we hunger and thirst after righteousness for then we will be filled. 

In Genesis 26 we read these words, ‘And Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of Abraham his father;’

Maybe that is what we need to again in our own lives and in our churches, dig those wells again, start digging.  Dig out anything that is of the flesh, empty ourselves and let his spirit rise, resurge again. When was the last time we felt it rise within? Let it rise.