Good morning. Our worship is directed to God. That is true today and every day, but especially so on these first days of the week. Sundays are our days set apart for coming together for fellowship, communion, increasing our understanding, and to bring heartfelt worship to our Almighty God, who is abundantly worthy of all glory, honor, and praise. God is worthy of our best efforts in worship, but another truth about worship is that the worshipper is also blessed. Proper worship satisfies a need felt deep within us in ways that nothing else can do.
The Samaritan woman we read about in John chapter 4 met Jesus at the well outside of her village. She had many needs, and the most significant was one she didn’t understand. It was a need that required satisfaction, but that wasn’t going to happen as long as she pretended that it didn’t exist.
She had come to the well to meet one critical need, for she needed to draw water for the day. We can all relate to the need for water, because when a person is truly thirsty it is a need that demands attention. This woman was thirsty, but it was a thirst she didn’t understand. She needed Living Water because she had made poor choices, and her spiritual life was a mess.
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13-14
Jesus told her that satisfying the need for a drink of water was a temporary fix of an ongoing problem. Her deeper need was for spiritual satisfaction, and that He was the answer. For a person who was not given to consideration of spiritual issues, meeting that kind of need had not been on her mind. But Jesus reached out to her, accepted her, and revealed God’s power and love to her. Jesus satisfied the need which was so well hidden in the depths of her spirit that she had learned to ignore it completely. She had come to the well to draw water and left after Jesus had satisfied the needs of her soul.
We share the spiritual needs of the Samaritan woman. We too may have pushed those needs aside while we focused on satisfying the needs, desires, and hopes of daily life. Jesus speaks to us with the same words He directed at her, speaking of anyone who turns to Him: “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
What are the needs of your spirit today? Have you prayed for the wisdom and the courage to discover those needs? Will you pray to your Savior for the satisfaction of those needs. Will you allow your spiritual needs to be uncovered as you participate in worship?
Worship well today my friends and pray for a new level of satisfaction.
Vern