“Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
John 4:10-14 KJV
The past few days have been pretty hot days with temperatures almost reaching 100 degrees. These are those days when you are almost always thirsty, yet you can’t seem to drink enough liquids. You quickly down a cold 16 ounce bottle of water and at first, you feel like it has quenched your thirst, but soon after you can feel yourself dying of thirst again.
Summer seems to cause this insatiable thirst or a thirst that feels impossible to quench. Our flesh has the same never satisfied appetite. Our flesh has an insatiable appetite or an appetite that’s impossible to satisfy. That means whatever you feed your flesh, it only satisfies the flesh for a temporary period and eventually it requires more. It can be an appetite for alcohol, drugs and/or sex. Or it could be an insatiable appetite for money, for material possessions, accomplishments or success.
Whatever it is you constantly feed your flesh is what you will have an appetite for. But what is crucial to know about the flesh, IT WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED! It will ALWAYS want more and more of “it”. If you don’t control your flesh or submit it to God, you will begin to do anything humanly possible to get more of “it”and will eventually ally worship it or make it an idol.
I know you are thinking, “I don’t worship money, success or idolize my job” but think about it. You may feel like you are not worshipping “it” like it’s a God but anything you love, spend time with or focus on MORE THAN GOD is an idol. Admiring and loving things are not sinful until you admire them and love them more than you do God.
Anyhoo, my point is NOTHING can ever satisfy the flesh and therefore you can’t let it be in control. You must kill the flesh! How, you ask? Easy, don’t feed it! And no, I don’t mean don’t eat. I mean don’t give into fleshly desires that don’t honor God. Don’t spend more time on social media than with God. Don’t curse people out when you get mad or upset. Don’t have sex before marriage. Don’t drink. Don’t smoke. Don’t talk about people. Don’t spread gossip. Don’t be mean to others because you are miserable. Don’t hurt people because you are hurt. Stop sinning!
But when you “stop sinning” or you begin to get rid of “wrong”, at the same time you must replace it with “right” such as prayer, God’s word and worship. It doesn’t happen overnight and you won’t always feel like doing “right” or in reality you won’t EVER feel like doing “right”, but salvation is NOT a feeling. Salvation is a lifestyle. And the more you feed your “new man”, inner man or clean out your sin nature, the stronger your spiritual man becomes.
See the woman at the well first believed God was desiring natural water. And God was using an opportunity to speak to the woman about salvation or God. She didn’t realize it at first by posing the question to God about how was he going to get this water out of the well without a pail. How many times have God ask us what we want or what we desire as a rhetorical question or an attempt to remind us that we should only truly desire Him. Because when we truly desire God and God’s will for our life, we will never thirst again (desire carnal/natural things more than we desire God).
The more of God’s presence, God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s favor and God’s love we ingest or take in, the more of an appetite we have for spiritual things. And the more we desire God, the more of Himself he gives us. God is living waters and therefore they never run out, they never run dry and they will continually satisfy us. Our true and living God is the only thing that can truly satisfy our thirst or our insatiable craving or truly regenerate us (every part of us including our soul).