#DailyDevotion Who Fulfills Your Thirst?
John 7 370n the last day, the great day of the festival, as Jesus was standing there, He called out loudly, “If you’re thirsty, come to Me and drink. 38If you believe in Me, streams of living water will flow from you, as the Bible has said.” 39By this He meant the Spirit, Whom those who believed in Him were to receive. The Spirit had not come yet, because Jesus hadn’t been glorified yet.
When Jesus says to come to him if you are thirsty he is referencing Isaiah 55, “Oh, come to the water, all you who are thirsty! You who have no money, come, buy and eat. have no money come buy and eat Come and buy grain without money, and wine and milk that costs nothing.” Jesus identifies himself, he points to himself as the very LORD who has spoken these words to Isaiah. Pointing to himself as the one who fills our thirst he is the LORD who in Psalm 36 it is said, “You let them drink from Your river of delights. 9With You is the spring of life,…”
The Psalmist tells us, 42 “As a deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, O God. 2 I thirst for God, the living God.” He says in 63 “O God, You are my God; I’m eagerly looking for You, I’m thirsting for You. My body faints with longing for You, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” Again he says in 143 6 “I spread out my hands to You, longing for You like thirsty ground.” Those who belong to God have such a thirst for God within them. Jesus is this God, this LORD, the Psalmist speak to and about. Because of the condition of our souls and the condition of our flesh, we who know there is a God, the God of the Bible, those whom the LORD will call unto himself and has chosen to be his people before the foundation of the world thirst for this God and this LORD.
Jesus calls out to us who have a thirst for the LORD, who thirst for righteousness, to come to him and drink. He calls us to believe in him as he told the woman at the well he would give living water to the one who trusted in him. This living water is the Spirit of God. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit into us who believed in him. The apostles had not yet received the Spirit yet because Jesus had not been glorified by the cross or his ascension to the right hand of God. But once Jesus had been glorified his pours out his Spirit upon all flesh. To those whom the Spirit creates faith in Jesus and they believe he makes them his holy temple.
This Spirit also gives us eternal life and is eternal life. When the Spirit makes us born from above the life that is Jesus from eternity at the Father’s side becomes our life. This life is ours now and the proof it is ours now is our faith in Jesus. In the world to come our eternal life will be made manifest as it says in Revelation 21, “To anyone who is thirsty I will give water, without cost, from the spring of the water of life.” That which is prophesied in Isaiah, that which Jesus promises in the Gospels, it is fulfilled now and on the day of his revelation. The Spirit of God and the Life of God filling us and pouring forth from us unto time without end.
Merciful God and Father, in your word you promise to give us the living waters, the Holy Spirit without cost which will be overflowing forth from us. Always give us this living water so we may rightly believe and confess Jesus Christ as LORD now and forever. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.