Abba's Dearly Beloved

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.”

John 7:37 (NIV)

Hanging on the wall of my room there is one of those five-piece canvas wall pictures of a cascading waterfall pouring water into a turquoise pool beneath (image pictured below). It has become one of my favourite landscape pictures and not just because it looks so beautiful. No the real reason is that one day in looking at this picture hung on the opposite wall to my bed, the Holy Spirit revealed to me that this was a picture of God’s never failing love that does not just soak us but continually drenches all who choose to come to him. Both the psalms of David and the apostle Paul proclaim the truth of the immeasurable height, depth and breadth of the gracious and unfailing love of God (Psalm 103:11; Ephesians 3:17-19).

Like a waterfall’s ever-flowing cascading waters, God’s unfailing love and faithfulness is a never-failing stream poured out onto us day by day, unceasing in its power to cleanse those who choose to walk under it.

Ultimately this picture is likened to and embodied by the person of Jesus Christ who is the living spring, well or indeed waterfall under which we can be soaked and cleansed by God’s love forgiveness, clothed by Christs own righteousness and robed in the new family identity as sons and daughters embraced by the living God.

Being an exact representation of the Father as Jesus proclaimed in his own words, God is therefore the ultimate spiritual water source and he does not withhold this from us, nor is he stingy with it. As Jesus at Jacob’s well in Samaria introduced himself to the broken Samaritan woman thirsty for hope as the source of eternal waters of life and salvation from which she would never again thirst, so God meets us at our well and extends that same invitation to us.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “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 water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:10-14 (NIV)

The miracle of this is not only do we receive from the source of a never ending fountain, spring and waterfall of living water but that we too become vessels and springs of the living waters of God’s Holy Spirit within us that gushes forth to introduce others to the power of a divine love and salvation that has led our hearts to bow the knee to the eternal King of Kings Jesus Christ.

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

John 7:37-39 (NIV)

So turning to you reading this, are you in desperate need of refreshing this day? Have you found yourself at distance or out of sight from the loving fountain of living water that is Jesus Christ? Is shame or disillusioned frustration or pain the reason you linger away from him? Christ’s response is thus: He invites you and waits for you to come to him as the scripture says:

“Yet the Lord still waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love.”

Isaiah 30:18 (TLB)

He invites you to come to him, for only in him will you find as Jesus described water from which you will never again thirst. In other words, on Christ can answer the inward yearning of the broken restless heart of man and woman and restore them to the place of abiding peace and communion with God that they was created for. The waters of his unfailing love and mercy beckon.

Just as he waits for you to come he also stands at the door of your heart knocking gently, waiting for you to open to him to quench your ailing thirst (Revelation 3:20). Today, will you?