Refocused on the Living Water
Third Week of Lent — John 4:1–15
In Gospel of John chapter 4, Jesus meets a woman at a well in the heat of the day. She comes carrying her water jar. She expects a routine task. Instead, she encounters a Savior who names her thirst more honestly than she ever could.
Jesus says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.”
Lent has a way of exposing what we are really thirsty for.
Since Father’s Day 2019, I have carried the same 32-ounce blue tumbler almost everywhere I go. It has a picture of Willie Nelson wearing an American flag bandana on it. It was a gift, and somehow it just stuck. That tumbler has been in hospital waiting rooms, church offices, road trips, and countless meetings. Most days it is filled with iced tea.
If I am honest, I know I need to drink more water.
You can feel it when you are not hydrated enough. Your head aches. Your energy dips. Your focus blurs. Your body just does not function the way it was designed to function. You may keep pushing through, but something is off. You are running on less than what you need.
Spiritually, we do the same thing.
We fill our lives with substitutes. Productivity. Approval. Comfort. Noise. Even good things can become replacements for the Living Water. Like the woman at the well, we keep drawing from sources that promise relief but never fully satisfy. We sip, but we remain thirsty.
Jesus does not shame her. He simply invites her. “If you knew the gift of God…” He is not offering better technique. He is offering Himself.
When we do not have enough water in our system, our bodies struggle. When we do not have Christ abiding in us, our souls do the same. We become irritable. Anxious. Distracted. We try to muscle through discipleship on spiritual dehydration.
Lent is an invitation to notice our thirst.
What if this week we refocused not on doing more, but on drinking deeply? What if we paused long enough each day to ask, “Lord, where am I running dry?” What if we let His Word sit with us instead of rushing past it? What if prayer became less about performance and more about presence?
I still carry that blue tumbler. And every time I reach for it this week, I am reminding myself to choose water more often. Not because iced tea is evil, but because water is essential.
Jesus is not an accessory to our lives. He is essential. We need Him in our system. Not occasionally. Not symbolically. But daily. Deeply. Continually.
May this third week of Lent refocus us on the Living Water who meets us at our wells, knows our thirst, and offers us Himself.
In God’s grip,
Pastor Chuck Church
