Day 7: Are we thirsting for Living Water?

We are in this season of reflecting and thinking about this momentous task of turning Singapore Godward. And I found in John 4 something that caught my attention.

There was Jesus travelling from Galilee to Jerusalem, and to do so he had to cut through Samaria. He took this detour to the Samaritan town of Sychar, or Shechem, where Jacob’s well was found.

While he was resting at the well in the heat of the noonday sun, a woman came to draw some water from the well. For some reason, this woman had not come in the cool of the morning or the evening as others would have done – possibly because she was avoiding people.

But right there at the well, she runs into Jesus. And what does the Lord say to her?

“Give me a drink.”

Not expecting a Jew to speak to her, she replies: “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”

To this Jesus replied: “If you knew the gift of God and Who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink’, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.”

The woman was confused by this answer, seeing that Jesus had no water nor the means to draw water from the well.

Jesus tried again to tell her: “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Friends, it seems to me that our endeavour to turn Singapore Godward is a bit like this woman trying to draw water from the well.

Sure, we can put in the effort and do everything necessary to extract the water that is so needed for life. We can even organise water brigades and have people work tirelessly and continuously at this most important of all tasks.

That’s one way of doing it. But if we simply rely on our human effort, we will surely and shortly thirst again.

The gift of Living Water

Have you considered how massive an undertaking it is to reach a whole nation? The sum of our efforts could not keep up with the needs out there.

Personally, I am not confident that we are going to get there by simply trying harder and being more disciplined. That is too linear a growth path when what we need is something exponential and viral.

So what are we to do?

Well, Jesus had the answer. Living Water.

Our endeavour to turn Singapore Godward is a bit like the woman trying to draw water from the well.

This isn’t the regular water we get from a well by lowering a bucket and hauling it up. This is a life-changing power that transforms us and satisfies our thirst altogether.

When this woman got a dose of that, she went and told everyone and many from that village believed in Jesus. That’s what it took.

If we are really going to do this right, we are going to need more than just our strategies and effort. We are going to need some of that Living Water so that we ourselves are transformed and so that joy begins bubbling forth from within like a spring.

We need the real thing.

I just wonder when was the last time we took a drink of that Living Water.

Jesus said: “If you only knew the gift of God, you would have asked and He would have given you living water.”

Isn’t this what we all need? If it is, would you ask the Lord for it and not settle for plain old well water?

Let us pray:

Dear Lord Jesus, we thank You for calling us to this important task of reaching the world with Your Gospel. Lord, we confess that we are not able to do this on our own strength. We need You. We need a touch from You. And we need Your Living Water. Would You give us this Living Water? Fill our hearts with the joy that would propel us into the nation with Your Good News.

In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.