Water that Saves

Good morning!

Do you like to drink water?  All our lives we are told that water is beneficial to our health.  I've never been particularly fond of drinking it.  But in the past year or so, I've become very enamored with a particular sparkling water.  Since giving up "soda pop", or whatever it's called in your region, I can still enjoy the "bubbles" of this "naturally flavored", carbonated water.  It is so refreshing!  But, it will cause me to be thirsty again.

Right smack-dab in these first chapters of Isaiah, we find a psalm.  It is a song of rejoicing, which originates from the joyful news in chapter 11.  Remember, chapter 11 was a prophetic chapter, foretelling the coming of Messiah, the Branch, the Root of Jesse, Jesus!  Although chapter 12 is speaking specifically of how things will be during Jesus' future, earthly reign, we can rejoice in a similar fashion today.

Isaiah exclaims in verses 2 and 3 of chapter 12 that God has become his salvation, and that, because of this, he can now with JOY draw water out of the well of salvation!

"God - - yes, GOD! - - is my strength and song,

best of all, my salvation.

Joyfully, you will pull up buckets of water

from the wells of salvation!"

(The Message version)

In reading about this, I was reminded of the story of the Samaritan woman at the well.  The story is recorded in John 4:1-42.

Jesus and his disciples were traveling from Judea to Galilee, on foot. They stopped in Sychar, a town of Samaria, to buy food.  You remember Samaria!  We were just looking at the Northern kingdom of Israel, the one that was looted and pillaged by the Assyrians? Samaria, of Jesus' day, was in that area.  The Samaritan people, although of Jewish descent, did not worship the Jewish faith as did the Jews who lived in the Southern kingdom of Judah, whose capitol was Jerusalem.  Their worship contained some elements of Judaism, but it was viewed by the purists to be somewhat "contaminated".  Furthermore, the people of Samaria had contaminated their Jewish bloodlines by intermarrying with foreign peoples.  For these reasons, the purist Jews looked down on them, and considered them as "less than".  But, not Jesus.

So, going on - - - Jesus sits down on this well in the town square to rest, while his disciples are off buying food.  And, here comes this woman, to draw water.  While I could dive in to the deep end with this story, I'll save that for another day.  Let's focus on verse 13.  Look at what Jesus said to her about the water in that well:

"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;

but, whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.

Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of living water,

welling up to eternal life!"

Do you see the parallels to Isaiah 12:3?

Jesus is that Living Water.  He gives us salvation when He gives us Himself.  He is the only "water" that satisfies forever.

When I attended Bible camp as a pre-teen and teenager, Miss Mackey would lead us in this song:

Drinking at the springs of living water!

Happy now am I, my soul they satisfy!

Drinking at the springs of living water!

O wonderful and bountiful supply!

When we spend time with our Lord, we are "drinking Him in", whether it is in meditating on His words from the Bible or spending time with Him in prayer.  That living water "restores our souls" (Psalm 23).  I speak this to Christians . . . people who have made the life-altering decision to follow Jesus Christ!  If you are reading this, and you are like the woman at the well, then your first experience with The Living Water must be to accept Jesus as your Savior.  Only then can He begin to become in you "a spring of living water, welling up to eternal life!"  And from that point forward, you will never be spiritually thirsty again!

Dear Jesus, I thank you that you are the only source of Living Water, that you are the source of spiritual, eternal life.  Thank you for giving me Yourself, the water that saves.  And not only am I Yours for eternity, but I am Yours now, and You are mine.  Your joy bubbles up in me, because You are in me, now and forever!  This is how You make me to walk....resplendent!  It is in Your precious name that I pray these things, with humility and a grateful heart, amen.