If Only

Jesus replied, "If you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask Me, and I would give you living water." John 4:10

In these words of Christ, I hear a heart filled with yearning that those He has been sent to would know Him and receive the wondrous gift of His saving love, and all the giftings that go with that. I hear a heart that knows the state of all those without Him, knows what they could be with Him, and knows what will become of them if they remain without Him. On an even deeper level, I hear a heart that is not only yearning for those who have never believed upon and received Him, but yearning just as deeply for those who have and yet have never broken past the surface of a life in and with Him.

So many who consider themselves followers of Christ, have never followed very deeply into the life that He offers. There's a reason for this; the way into that life always involves the cross. We can believe upon His name. We can believe upon His work....but we shrink back at believing up to and beyond His cross. A cross that bids us come and die....as He did....that we might come and live....as He does.

John 4:10 is part of the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. She was likely a prostitute with a multitude of marriages in her past. She was at the well at a time that she'd expect no one else to be there, and she wouldn't have been welcome if there had been. She was a social outcast. More, being a Samaritan, she was despised by all Jews.....except not by Jesus. Jesus knew all this and as He looked upon her, saw her weariness, her brokenness, hopelessness, and desperation. He also saw what her life could be if she would only come to and believe in Him. So He told her of Himself and of herself. He offered her the Living Water of Himself. He invited her to "drink of His life." She did. So filled with His life was she that she ran to tell all the other villagers of the One she had met. Villagers who had always rejected her but who were so impacted by the transformation they saw in her that they listened...and they came...to the One who offered that life. All because Jesus saw her as she was....and saw and brought her into the life He had offered her. None of which would have happened had she not entered into the fullness of the life He offered her. What is not happening in and through our lives because we shrink back from entering into the fullness of His life? Who, beside us, is missing His life....and what will be the cost?

When Jesus looks at you and me, does He utter the words, "If only," about us? Does He grieve deeply over the difference between what our life could be, and what it actually is? This is not what He has intended for us. For you and for me. He offers the abundance of His eternal life....if we will believe....receive...and follow. Follow Him to the cross that we may die to living for ourselves and begin to live for Him. The miraculous power of His Living Water never runs out, but surface lives never really drink deeply of it. That comes only by way of the cross. We may have it.....if only we will come.

Blessings,
Pastor O