February 14

Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God and who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” — John 4:10 BSB

How blessed is true godliness! That’s the thing I always want to stand up for—not forms and ceremonies, or doctrines that float in the mind, but the life of God in the soul. This is the only thing worth knowing, the only thing to live by, and I’m sure it’s the only thing to die by. How different is this living godliness, received into the heart and conscience by the Spirit of God through Christ’s fullness, from the dead waters of lip-service, formality, and hypocrisy!

If our souls have ever been baptized into a true, spiritual knowledge of this heavenly secret—if we’ve tasted its sweetness, felt its power, and enjoyed even a little of it—we’ll desire no other water but this living water. In everything we do for the Lord, or for those who fear His name, in every prayer, in every ordinance, we’ll be looking for the living water.

Do we, who claim to be traveling through this wilderness, thirst after the living water like a traveler in the desert of Arabia longs for wells and palm trees? Do we know what it’s like to experience long seasons of drought, when the living water seems to have disappeared, only to have it spring up again in our hearts? How living souls thirst for these revivals! We can no longer be satisfied with a superficial religion, a form of godliness without its power. A living soul can’t quench its thirst with dead forms and ceremonies any more than a thirsty person can drink from a pond of sand. We need living water, something given by the Lord Himself, flowing into our souls.

But didn’t the Lord say He would give this living water to those who ask? Shouldn’t we ask for it, then? Will He deny us? Has He ever denied us in the past? Will He deny us in the future? Doesn’t He still have the same compassionate heart that reached out to the poor sinner at the well of Samaria? He encourages us to ask. He sits now on the throne of grace and mercy as our Mediator. If, by mercy, we know something of the gift of God, and if we’ve experienced some of the sweetness of Christ’s love in our hearts, I’m sure we will ask, and God will give us the living water our souls long for.