Why the thing you’re drinking from isn’t satisfying the thirst you actually have

We have a spring on the back of our property.

It’s not dramatic. Just a wet spot on a hill that never dries out. Even in July when everything else is cracked and brown. Even in the winters when the temperature drops to 30 below windchill and the ground pops and cracks from the freeze. That spring keeps trickling no matter the conditions around it.

My son found that out the hard way a few years ago. He was home from the military, decided to take the four-wheeler out on the field. Looked frozen solid from a distance. But it wasn’t. He hit the spring at full speed and the four-wheeler went in eight inches deep into soft mud. In December. In a frozen field.

It took a truck and a tow strap to get it out. And if memory serves me correctly there’s a boot still under the ground somewhere back there.

A spring doesn’t stop flowing just because everything around it looks frozen.

I’ve been thinking about that image a lot recently.

The Thing You’re Thirsty For

What are you thirsty for? What’s the thing you believe will finally make everything better? The relationship you want fixed. The diagnosis you want reversed. The extra zero in the bank account. The new job because you can’t stand the current one. The season of life you keep waiting to arrive so you can finally feel settled.

We spend enormous energy chasing things we believe will satisfy that feeling. And most of them do for a while. And then the feeling comes back. And we go looking again.

We keep going back to the same wells. Not because we’re irrational. Because we’re thirsty. And thirsty people drink whatever is close.

There’s a story in John 4 about a woman who came to a well alone in the middle of the day. Not in the morning with everyone else. Midday. Alone. The detail matters because women in that culture came to the well together in the morning. It was kind of a social ritual. Coming alone in the heat of the afternoon tells you something about her standing in the community. She was avoiding people.

Jesus meets her there and eventually the conversation gets honest. She’d had five husbands. The man she was currently living with wasn’t her husband. And Jesus doesn’t shame her for any of it. He says: you’ve been trying to fill your thirst from relationships. And none of them have worked.

Because they were never designed to.

The Ceremony That Had to Be Repeated

In John chapter 7, Jesus shows up at the Feast of Tabernacles. This was an eight-day festival where, among other things, the priest came down from the Temple Mount every day with a golden pitcher, walked to the Pool of Siloam, drew water, walked back, and poured it at the altar. A picture of how God had provided for his people. A beautiful, meaningful ritual.

That had to be done again every single day of this festival. And every year.

Because it was pointing at something. Not completing something.

On the last great day of the feast, after the priest had poured water seven times. Jesus stood up in the middle of the ceremony and shouted:

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” 
John 7:37–38

He’s not criticizing the ceremony. He’s completing it. He’s saying: all of this stuff – the pitcher, the water, the annual return to the same ritual – it was pointing at me. I’m the thing you’ve been rehearsing.

A Spring, Not a Reservoir

Here’s what I find interesting about the specific image Jesus uses. He doesn’t say he’ll give you a tank full of water. He doesn’t say a reservoir. He says rivers, plural rivers, flowing from inside you.

A reservoir runs dry if you don’t refill it. A spring flows from a source you didn’t create and can’t control. It keeps going because it’s connected to something deeper than the surface.

That’s what Jesus is offering. Not a one-time fill-up. Not a spiritual top-off when things get low. A spring inside you that keeps flowing because the source is him, not your circumstances.

A spring doesn’t stop flowing when the ground freezes. That’s the point of a spring.

Whatever dry season you’re in right now…the diagnosis, the season of loneliness, the job that’s going nowhere, the relationship that’s harder than you thought it would be…the spring doesn’t care what the surface looks like.

What This Means This Summer

Summer has a way of making us think that if we just do enough things, we’ll feel full. Vacations, experiences, events, time with people. All of it good. None of it able to do what we secretly hope it will.

You’ll come back from the lake trip still carrying the thing you carried in. The ache doesn’t take vacations.

The invitation from John 7 is not complicated. If you’re thirsty and you probably are for something, then come to the right well. Not the one you’ve been going back to out of habit or desperation. The one that doesn’t run dry.

Your greatest longing isn’t for water from a river. It’s for the Spirit from the Father.

That’s the claim Jesus makes. And it’s either the most important thing you’ll hear this year or it’s not true. There isn’t much middle ground.

What well have you been going back to? And is it working?