Are you thirsty?
John 7:37–39 (NASB)
37 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.
38 The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
At the end of the feast, Jesus stands up and says this simple question:
“If anyone is thirsty…”
He says this at a moment when food and drink are within arm’s reach. No one is lacking physically. And yet Jesus is asking a deeper question: Are you thirsty for more than this?
If Jesus were standing right in front of you and asked, “Are you thirsty?”—how would you answer?
Like many, we might say, I think I’m okay.
But if we were honest, we might respond differently:
Yes, Jesus, I am.
This life isn’t enough to satisfy me.
My career isn’t enough.
All that I’ve achieved isn’t enough.
We thirst for more than food, drink, and things. We thirst for meaning, for purpose, and to be seen. We thirst for love. And that appetite—that longing—is not small.
C.S. Lewis once wrote:
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
—C.S. Lewis
If we’re honest with our desires—and this is dangerous for anyone who wants to sell us something—we discover that nothing in this world can truly satisfy us.
Our thirst is so deep that we could have all the wealth in the world and still want more. We could sit at the greatest feast and still feel unsatisfied. Less isn’t more. More isn’t more either.
Why? Because we thirst for something infinite.
We thirst for God.
God made us to desire Him—to desire the infinite.
Yet, in the corruption of our thirst, we’ve settled for the finite—for things that will pass away. We sabotage our souls when we settle for less than God.
It’s why we sin. Because we’re trying to quench our thirst apart from Him. We think, If I have this, I’ll feel better. But instead of satisfaction, we lose our peace and our joy. One commentator adds: it’s like trying to quench your thirst with alcohol.
We continue to consume from the well that this world offers us only to still feel completely thirsty.
This question rings even clearer: Are you thirsty?
Jesus recognizes our thirst:
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.”
Jesus knows that the people were thirsty. He knows that you and I are thirsty too.
So the question isn’t only: are you thirsty? The question also is: Where are you drinking?
What wells are you drawing from? What are you consuming?
Jesus is saying, I am what you’re looking for.
I am what you were made to thirst for.
Furthermore, there is something really important we must understand—He is the only one who can truly quench our thirst and still be left with wanting more.
When we drink from this well—Jesus—we go from being a desert to becoming a flowing river. This is what Jesus goes on to say:
38 The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
Water is the source of life, and Jesus is saying that life will flow through us. When we drink from Him, we don’t just survive—we become conduits of life.
Our cities need rivers of living water. Our local communities need them too. So much has dried up in people’s lives. Many are living in deserts of exhaustion, disappointment, and longing.
Our world today needs followers of Jesus who reflect His life into every dry and barren place.
I want to invite you into a moment of honest reflection:
Do you feel spiritually dry?
Are you thirsty?
What wells have you been drinking from?
Jesus is inviting us to set every other well aside and turn our thirst toward Him. He longs to be the one who satisfies your heart’s deepest hunger.
Maybe in the coming days, we can set aside a few distractions to make room. Maybe we take a deeper look at what we’re consuming daily. What area of your life is God asking for?
Friends, my prayer is that we would all come and drink.
It in Jesus that we’ll find what our hearts have been aching for. The deep longing within us finally met. And the beautiful truth is this: Jesus is the only drink that truly satisfies and leaves us wanting more. And more of Him is the infinite we’ve been longing for.
