Living Water

Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."

John 4:13,14

Yesterday my lead campus pastor, Pastor Bubba, preached out of John 4.  You might think like I did when I first heard his name, that this is a nickname, but we learned yesterday that Bubba is his given name.  It's on his birth certificate.  His young parents agreed - when his mother was pregnant, that if he were a boy, his father would get to name him and if he were a girl, his mother would get to name him - no arguing from the other half.  Bubba was a boy and having been born in the south and having a mother who kept to her word, Pastor Bubba proudly bears his name!  

Pastor Bubba stands at the door, every Sunday, greeting us warmly with a smile and a hand shake on our way in and he's there, saying good-bye to us with a smile and a handshake, on our way out.  The love of Jesus Christ splashes all over us each week, through Pastor Bubba.

Jesus is the Living Water.  When we drink from Jesus Christ, we will never thirst.  The water springing up from Jesus, who is eternal, is eternal life.  He is all satisfying, refreshing us daily with His abundant grace and lovingkindness and mercy and peace.  Satisfaction begins with Him and once begun, never ends.  When we share the good news of The Living Water in our place we are offering the only source of true joy and fulfillment.  True joy and fulfillment is knowing our sins are cleansed and forgiven - that we don't have to work for God's favor  because we are accepted and loved by God because of the love and sacrifice of the Living Water, for us.  When we look to anything else other than Jesus to satisfy, we will come up thirsty, again and again.  The blessing of complete satisfaction in Christ begins to flow with our repentance, with our turning from sin and from those things which don't truly satisfy - which ultimately take us down the path of misery and destruction.  When we drink from any other source other than the Living Water, we are dipping our buckets into a well of hot, gritty, desert sand...but when we drink from Jesus, we are dipping our buckets into the sweet, never ending, delightful presence of a loving, forgiving, Savior.