Do you keep chasing the things of this world and keep coming up tired and empty? In this clip from her Bible study, Proven: Where Christ’s Abundance Meets Our Great Need, author and speaker, Jennie Allen explains how Jesus offers us satisfaction and an overabundance of joy and life in His living water.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
Jesus sets up what it’s going to look like to do life with Him, all that He’s going to promise us.
He says, “If anyone is thirsty let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:37-38)
The original Greek for the water that’s coming out of us is actually from our innermost being or out of our belly from the very depths of us.
I think that we are so thirsty. We are looking for our significance, we are looking for worth, we are looking for affirmation from this world. And we keep going to places where it’s dry and we’re trying to drink, but we keep feeling thirsty. And the power of the promise of Jesus is that, He not only quenches our thirst, He actually gives wellsprings of living water in and through us. Isaiah 12 actually says it this way, “With joy you will draw water out of the wells of salvation.” (Isaiah 12:3)
God actually describes why we keep feeling this thirst and why we’re so tired and empty. He writes in the book of Jeremiah, “My people have committed two sins: First, they have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and second, they have dug their own cisterns—broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)
Inside of you, if you are a believer, flows streams of living water. And yet, we keep going back to broken, man-made cisterns. And sometimes it’s the cisterns of people who aren’t actually meant to fill our souls. Sometimes it’s looking for significance from our season of life or job and not finding it. Sometimes it’s numbing out through distraction or entertainment. But yet, we never feel rested.
Then, when our little hearts have come to the end of all our vices and the things that we chase, we come to the only One who promises water that will actually satisfy us. And not just satisfy us, but fill us to overflowing.
What if I told you you could go from feeling needy to meeting need?
What if instead of being consumed with yourself you could be consumed with love for other people?
What if instead of performing you could actually start to enjoy your life?
What if instead of striving you could actually deeply rest?
You can. It is so good. It is so full. It is so freeing to be full of Jesus. His resources are unlimited. I can’t seem to get to the end of His grace and I test that often. His love for me, for us, it is altogether deeper and kinder and more consuming than any other love that I have known on this earth.
