It happened every summer.
Our family always had a little camp not so far outside of Moundsville, WV.
We'd usually spend every weekend there but it wasn't always fun and games
even though my grandparents would try to make us dig a well at the
beginning of each summer seem like FUN and GAMES! So they sank most of
their money and a lot of our time into digging a well. A drought came and
the well came up dry. Wells have a way of doing that.
Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from John 4. A great
story, one I love, and I'm going to begin at verse 13. You'll recognize
this as an account of Jesus' trip through Samaria where He met a Samaritan
woman who had come to draw water from the well. She had a pretty sordid
background; she'd been pretty busy with the men in town, shall we say, and
she has a reputation that goes with it.
Now Jesus says to her after offering her living water, "Everyone who
drinks this water will be thirsty again." I can almost picture Him
pointing to the well. "But whoever drinks the water I give them will never
thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life."
"The woman said to Him, 'Sir, give me this water so that I won't get
thirsty and have to come here to draw water.' He told her, 'Go call your
husband and come back.' 'Well, I have no husband' she replied. Jesus said
to her, 'You're right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you've
had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.'"
This lady went to a well that day to meet her need. She'd been doing that
for a long time emotionally and spiritually as well as physically. You
see, emotionally, I think her well was men. She kept trying to quench her
incurable heart thirst with male attention. "Maybe this
relationship...maybe it will finally do it." But she always needed one
more, and the one more never did it.
Jesus proposed something better. Jesus said, "I want to give you an
internal life source that will allow you to finally relax, and end your
search, and have peace." You see we all have wells we depend on for our
emotional life. Maybe your well is people's applause, or the approval of
the opposite sex. Maybe it's another career conquest, the acceptance of a
group of friends, buying things that make you feel secure, or maybe it's
really depending on one of your children, or on position, or power, or
money.
But there's a problem with wells. First of all, they dry up during
droughts and they leave you adrift. Secondly, you always need another
shot, so you're always restless, you're never filled, driving for more,
always afraid of losing it...always restless...always thirsty again.
The Bible uses this wonderful word to describe the result of beginning a
personal relationship with Jesus. In John 4, it says that with Jesus
you're "complete in Him." Complete. Not searching anymore. Not always
having to look for something to fill me up, make me feel loved, make me
feel important or satisfied. The reason only Jesus can do that is,
according to the Bible, we are "created by Him and for Him" but we haven't
lived for Him. We've lived pretty much for ourselves. So we're chronically
restless because there's a missing Person in our life. The Person we were
made by and made for. It wasn't His choice that we be away from Him. But
it was His choice to do whatever it took to bring us back. It took a
Cross. It took Him taking my hell for my sin so I could be with Him for
time and for eternity.
And today, He's knocking on the door of your heart, giving you this chance
to finally be complete in Him. You're parched, no, you're flat out thirsty
and when's really the last time you've been quenched! Tell Him today,
"Jesus, I'm Yours." Drink deeply. Drink up!
Jesus wants to make you secure by putting your life source inside you. He
is enough. You're meant to draw your life from inside you, not from around
you. The key to peace, the end of roller coaster living, is to depend on
the spring of water welling up inside of you. And that's the identity
Christ can give you.
So, be sure you know who you are without your wells. They go dry and
they're never enough. That's the trouble with wells.
See you in Church,
Rev. Chuck Behrens
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