John 4:13,14 Jesus answered and said to 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.
I love this verse of scripture, in it we find one of the greatest of all Bible promises. Do you see it? Jesus said that if we drink His living water we will never thirst again. What exactly was He saying? Now of course you will become naturally thirsty as long as we are in this human body. Jesus was saying that the thirst of our soul would be finally satisfied.
Hudson Taylor, 19th Century missionary to China spoke often of this verse. He actually used this verse in prayer after the death of his young wife Maria. He thought he could never continue his ministry without her companionship and found total satisfaction in God while praying this verse. Here are some of Taylor’s words from the book “Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret”.
“How lonesome,” Taylor recalled “were the weary hours when confined to my room! How I missed my dear wife and the voices of the children far away in England! Then it was I understood why the Lord had made that passage so real to me, ‘Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst’. Twenty times a day, perhaps, as I felt the heart-thirst coming back, I cried to him, ‘Lord, you promised! You promised me that I should never thirst.’
“And whether I called by day or night, how quickly he came and satisfied my sorrowing heart! So much so that I often wondered whether it were possible that my loved one who had been taken could be enjoying more of his presence than I was in my lonely chamber. He did literally fulfill the prayer:
“Lord Jesus, make Thyself to me “A living, bright reality;
More present to faith’s vision keen
Than any outward object seen;
More dear, more intimately nigh
Than e’en the sweetest earthly tie.”
Christ Himself is what our heart thirsts for. Whether it is in loneliness or in many of the other challenges we face in our daily lives, Christ Himself will come to all of those who look to Him and satisfy their longing soul. Are you hurting today? There are many things in this life that can leave us broken and empty, only this living water can heal us and quench the longing of our souls.