Water of Life
John 7:37-39 - Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Psalm 42:1-2 - As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?
Jesus was in Jerusalem with all the people celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, and He proclaimed that believing in Him would produce an outpouring of living water. He had shared something similar with the Samaritan woman at the well when He told her, “…the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” John 4:14
The Apostle John tells us that Jesus was equating the living water with the Holy Spirit. The people were not sure what He was talking about, because no one knew about the Holy Spirit at that time. The woman at the well had a similar problem, because she was thinking physically, rather than spiritually.
Jesus told her that His water could lead to eternal life, and, we know that with eternal life, we also receive the Holy Spirit, along with His power in our lives. We see in Ephesians 5:26, that the Holy Spirit uses the water of the Word of God to cleanse the church, to sanctify us.
In heaven, we will see the river of life, Revelation 22:1.
So, maybe we are seeing the three facets of salvation in the living water: justification, by believing in Jesus, sanctification, by the Holy Spirit cleansing us by the washing of the water of the Word, and glorification, when we see the river of living water, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.” We may have been thirsty enough, at one time, to come to Him and drink. We may have eternal life and we may have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We may be experiencing burn-out now, or a lack of desire to read the Bible, or to go to church, or to do the things we used to do, as a new Christian. What if we aren’t thirsty anymore?
The deer, in Psalm 42, was panting, probably because the wolves were after him. He was desperate!
Are we desperate enough to call out to God? Are we desperate enough for the cleansing power of His Word? Are we desperate enough to come to Jesus for eternal life, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, submitting to Him for His leadership in our lives, instead of trying to do it ourselves?
Proverbs 3:6 says to Acknowledge Him in all our ways – that’s moment-by-moment! Are we desperate enough to do that? If we do, He promises to direct our paths, to make them straight! That’s what the water of life does for us!