Insatiable thirst; our need for intimacy (part 1)

© Géraldine vW

 The Lord has me in the Gospel of John currently. It's no coincidence that He's been speaking about intimacy through the most intimate book of the Gospels. While the other 3 Gospels focus on Jesus' public ministry, John focused on the behind-the-scenes kind of action. The intimate things.

If you'd like to join me as we explore the truths hidden and revealed in this passage, grab your bible (we will use it), your journal and a cup of tea.
Maybe you're yearning for more of the Lord today. Maybe you don't know that you're missing something. Let's be intimate with God & explore how to satiate this thirst.

"The more we know God, the more intimate the relationship becomes."

We all thirst for intimacy. We all yearn to become one with someone and to be close to him/her/them. Let's face it, some friends are closer than siblings (prov. 18:24), we crave unity! It's part of our design.

In John 4:4-9, we find a woman who is lacking. She is thirsty and in need. She decides to go look for water to quench her thirst. It's noon, a very unlikely hour for drawing water, but she knows this. She purposely draws water when no one else is there. However, she finds an unexpected man there, not an ordinary man, a Jew who also happens to be the Messiah. Samaritan & Jews do not get along. Long story short, Jews think Samaritans are gentiles, and Samaritans think they're part of the Jew heritage. Jesus goes against culture & tradition and asks for a drink from this woman. The woman responds with the "I'm this and you are that" fact, as if Jesus didn't know that.  You see, we are guilty of the same thing. I'll be the first to admit that I've said "Lord, you are holy, I am not... you can't [insert something irrelevant here] me."

Verse 10: Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and
who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he
would have given you living water.”

If we knew Him. Do we know Him? Our unbelief stems from our lack of knowledge of God. We don't know Him. Many time, the context of the word 'know' in Hebrew means sexual intimacy. Why? This is the most powerful, human metaphor of what the Lord desires. He desires to become one with us. For us to know Him as He knows us. If we knew Him, we'd be desperately asking for His living water. The invitation is given to us.


In verses 11-14 we see the woman asking Jesus about the kind of water he meant. Jesus tells her that whoever drinks of the water will never thirst again. Not only that, a welling spring will come from within the person who drinks it.
The thing is, we've fallen short. Statistics say a high percentage of you are hooked on a bunch of crap, pornography & masturbation being the biggest ones. We've gone to the wells of addictions, distractions and bad habits and drawn water from them instead of the well with the living water. With useless attempts we've tried to quench our thirst, and we've been left more thirstier than before. But He is waiting to give us the living water so we won't have to thirst over harming things ever again... so we won't be slaves to sin...

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.  The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” v. 15-18

 Once we recognize we must go the well of intimacy of God, the well full of living water, we will be confronted with who we really are. This is where most of us back up and leave. We don't really want to know what's deep within us. We desperately want to believe the humanistic theory that's been fed to us: that we are good, beautiful, etc..

And before the Lord reveals us more of Him, He will lead us to know ourselves... our sinfulness, our shortcomings, our need for God. Jesus confronted the woman with her immorality: she was drawing water from the wells of fornication and adultery. If you're struggling with sexual immorality, whether that's porn or masturbation or whatever it is, you have an intimacy issue. If you can't stop flirting , you have an intimacy issue. If you can't be single for long periods of time, you have an intamicy issue. All intimacy issues are rooted in our thirst for the living God. If we tasted a bit of the living water, we would ditch the other wells in a heartbeat. Nothing can compare to the well of intimacy with God.

[To be continued...]

What we've learned so far:

1. Intimacy is essential to our humanity; God designed it for our benefit.
2.  He invites us to be intimate with Him, to be known and know Him.
3. We are drawing from the wrong wells, wells that feed on our thirst and make us even thirstier. We must be confronted with the reality of who we are (why we're drinking from the wrong well) and our need for God (we were made to drink from the fountain of life). We must see the ugly in us before we see the beauty of God. Only then will we be able to run after a beauty that's not our own.

[Part 2]