Obeying Your Thirst*

Next week is National Drinking Water Week (here's to a century of chlorination!), which got me started thinking about water. For one, I never drink enough of it. Two, I never give my plants the right amounts of it, so thank goodness I married a "farm boy". More importantly, though, I think water is probably the most precious resource we have. Sure, we might be able to survive for a while without food, clothing, or shelter, but our bodies demand water to live.

Just as God designed us to thirst physically, He also created us with a spiritual thirst. I think many of us go through life trying to quench our spiritual thirst in the wrong ways. We try to fill that emptiness with sex, wealth, popularity, the newest cell phone on the market-- whatever it is that we think will make us feel better. Then we always find ourselves thirsty again. For some reason, it reminds me of the latest Dos Equis ad campaign. At the end of the t.v. commercial, the "most interesting man in the world" tells us, "Stay thirsty, my friends." The things of this world will always leave us dry, exactly like Jesus tells us in John 4:13: "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again..."

Everyone's deepest need is a relationship with God; He is the only One who can quench our thirst. He offers us living water that won't just satisfy us for a day but instead will refresh and renew us for eternity. "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink," Jesus says (John 7:37). "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst... The water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life" (John 4:14). Wow. I'll drink to that!
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* Yes, I know, I'm an advertiser's dream.