Tuesday May 26, 2020

Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:

John 4:7-10 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (8) (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) (9) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) (10) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

Jesus is making the claim to know this woman’s need better than she does. He claims that if she only knew the gift of God, and who He was, then she would be asking Him for a drink. That is an astounding claim. The Bible declares that we need salvation, even if we are unaware of that need. Indeed, one of the most important purposes of the Word of God is to make us aware of our great need for salvation. For a person unaware of their sickness is unlikely to seek out a doctor. Imagine if your body never let you know when you needed water. If you never got thirsty, you would never know when you needed to drink. Dehydration would be far more common. Yet, so many of us are walking around totally dehydrated in our souls. We have neglected to drink from the well of the Word of God and are dying of thirst. We must come to understand our need for Jesus before we can accept Him. We must first understand our own wickedness and depravity before we can seek out His forgiveness and cleansing.

Why do you think people hated Jesus? Jesus was perfect in every way, the ultimate model of the ideal person. You would think such a man would be universally loved, yet He was hated by many. In fact, most people did not follow Him. We like to think it would be fun to meet Jesus. We like to think that we would be one of those who would have left everything to follow Him. Yet, many of us have a hard time leaving our beds to go to church. No, meeting Jesus, coming face to face with perfection, would not be the exhilarating experience many people envision. To come face to face with Jesus is to understand with perfect clarity, how desperately wicked you are, and how far short you fall from His glory. That is why the self-righteous and proud cannot come after Him. For it requires humility to recognize that you need Him. If you think you have it altogether, if you think you have your life figured out, then you are unlikely to depend on Jesus. That is why He tells us that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter Heaven. That is why He declares that the poor in spirit are blessed. For the rich man cannot see his need beyond his self-sufficiency. The poor man, however, has his needs ever before his eyes.

Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

You can only hunger and thirst for righteousness if you recognize your own lack of it.

-Jared Freeman, “Life-Giving Waters”