August 24

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

We may not fully understand the nature of the gift of God, but we can grasp its necessity once we experience its power revealed in our souls. We begin to understand the gift of God when we feel eternal life flowing through our spiritual veins. How do we know we are physically alive? We know it by our own internal awareness of life. We know we live because we feel it. In the same way, if we have spiritual life, we will at times have an internal awareness of it. We will feel the beating of our spiritual heart, the breath in our spiritual lungs, the sight in our spiritual eyes, and the hearing in our spiritual ears. In short, we will have a consciousness of the emotions and sensations unique to the life of God within the soul. Spiritual life is seen by its own light, felt in its own power, and shines forth in its own testimony.

Even the little that we know makes us long for more. If we have ever received the gift of God in our conscience, if we have ever felt the mysterious operation of divine life in our hearts, if we have ever known the sweet sensations by which it manifests itself, it has made us dead to all other forms of religion. As a measure of divine life flows into the heart from the fullness of Christ, we desire no other religion but that which stands in the power of God. By this divine life alone we can live, and by it alone we feel that we can die.