In an arid land, you can always tell from a long distance where the water is, for wherever there is a creek, river or spring there is life.  You can see the trees sticking up from the desert from miles away.  You can see a green patch in the brown landscape and know there’s a spring… There simply is no life on earth without a source of water.

Jesus answered, “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.” 

-John 4:13-14

Jesus points out in this passage that the water we need for physical existence is of temporary value, for it must be replaced over and over, and if it cannot be replenished death will result.  He offers something different, a source of life-giving ‘water’ that will never run dry.  Of course He was not speaking of a physical water source, but of a spiritual one.  He was speaking of something far greater that physical, biological existence; He was speaking in eternal terms.

It is a terrible thing to seriously lack water in our bodies and we all know that it is miserable and unhealthy.  How many millions endure spiritual thirst and have no idea what the problem is?  How many sufferers of this malady cannot understand why their years of therapy produce little or no results, or why they just can’t stop engaging in self-destructive behaviors?

The answer so often is that they are dying of thirst spiritually and do not know where to get a drink.  It is for us therefore to take the water bucket of Christ’s living water to a thirsty world.