Money doesn’t solve money issues. Shopping doesn’t solve a spending issues. Drinks (more of it or less of it) doesn’t solve drinking problems. Food (more or less) doesn’t solve eating disorders. New relationships do not solve relationships. New marriages don’t solve marriage problems. Sex doesn’t solve porn habits or infidelity.
More and Less Will Not Fix Our Lives
It won’t be more or less of anything that helps to solve the issues in our life. I believe this is part of the meaning of the interaction that Jesus had at the well with the Samaritan woman. He told her she would be thirsty again, and they were standing at a really good water well. A well that had been productive for generations. If they were standing at a bank, I think he would have said to someone needing money; you can have all this money and it won’t solve your financial problem. Jesus wouldn’t stand on the sidewalk of a liquor store with someone who is desperate for a drink, and say, I will give you all the drink you need to solve your problem. Jesus knows our problems are deeper than what we can handle or anything from the outside can solve. We have heart issues that need Him to heal from the inside.
Anything we use or don’t use from the outside, will never fix what is broken inside. It is like taking a painkiller for an abscessed tooth. Yes, it might help for temporary relief, but the issue of the tooth and infection is what needs to be dealt with.
John 4:10-18
John 4:10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
15 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.” 16 “Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”
17 “I don’t have a husband,” she answered.“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said. 18 “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
He Said, She Would Never Be Thirsty Again
Jesus told the Samaritan woman, he had living water that would never leave her thirsty again. She was ready to sign up for that program and never have to come around that dreaded well again. It was a source of pain for her and she would prefer to stay away from it. Jesus didn’t say “done,” problem solved, you will now no longer have to deal with the well. He actually told her to get her husband (which was another painful subject for her) and come back to that well, the exact place she already struggled in. He had told her she would never be thirsty again and that sounded good to her. Why would she ever come back here and bring even more pain with her. He was telling her to bring all her painful past and gather at the most sensitive place, and meet with Him.
Jesus and Jesus Alone Will Provide What We Need
Jesus point was that her issues couldn’t be fixed with more of what she wanted to get through another day; her problems wouldn’t be solved with avoiding this problem area either. It is Jesus and Him alone that can heal us from the inside and still allow us to go to the well (do things in our physical bodies) without making it shameful and sinful. We can still drink water and be married and handle money and eat food; even when it’s been a source of pain and sin and suffering. God can heal it from the inside. But getting more or less of what we crave and the things that provide temporary relief will never be the answer to our healing.
Jesus asked this woman for a drink of water. He was asking her to give to Him, the only thing she came there to get and get it over with. And when she engaged with Him about it, He told her everything she had ever done, according to her testimony to the whole town. She wasn’t proud of her sin and shame and failures, but she was glad to have it out on the table and deal with it to be free.
