Pathway of Peace - Water

Pathway of Peace - Water

There is a power of refreshing presence that satisfies our soul in times of emotional struggle. This is not the fiery furnace we spoke about last week, of the fiery trials of faith through ‘necessary’ suffering. This is the living water that alone can satisfy the sorrowful soul in a dry and thirsty place. 

John 4:7 Tired from the long walk, Jesus sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?”

Jesus was thirsty and he wanted to share a drink of water with this woman. But he knew that her thirst was that of an unsatisfied soul in a relational wilderness, perhaps with unrealistic hopes of how the world or other people could satisfy her soul. Only ONE person can truly satisfy our soul. He always appears, in the right place at the right time with the right answer to our need. But we so often don’t get it. Jesus can often seem like an interruption to our day. He comes disguised as our life.

Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift that God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” …  “Anyone who drinks that well water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”

 “Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me this water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to get water.”

She didn’t get it. All she thought she would get from this wizard’s strange offer would be saving herself a daily trudge to the well. 

Psalm 84:5 Blessed are those whose peace is in you God, those whose heart is the journey you travel upon. When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs. 

The heart of Jesus is the journey you travel upon. So the goal becomes not the pursuit of happiness but of managing struggles of unhappiness on the journey, in the valley of weeping. It involves surrender. 

“Go and get your husband,” Jesus told her. 

“I don’t have a husband,” the woman replied.

Jesus said, “You’re right! You don’t have a husband, for you have had five husbands and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now. You certainly spoke the truth!” …

Then Jesus told her, “I Am the Messiah!” …

The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village, telling everyone, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could he possibly be the Messiah?” So the people came streaming from the village to see him.

Surrender is not giving up on self – it is giving self to someone else. You place self in the hands of Jesus, to survive! When we can’t manage the struggle we hand the management of the struggle to someone else. He knows the struggle. He has been thirsty too, and now he wants to share this water with you, on the journey that he is on with you. Once you have done that you have no other option than to believe. You wait in that place of trust till it becomes a place of refreshing springs. You wait in that place.