POV: You were thirsty but now you're satisfied

Josiah Jones // May 10, 2022

Where do you search for fulfillment? Do you look for validation from other people, seek temporary pleasures, or strive for success through what you achieve? In this message, we see the point of view of a thirsty woman who was chasing all the wrong things in life, but encountered Jesus and discovered how to have a life of full satisfaction.

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All right. Here we go! Welcome to The Porch. My name is Josiah. It's a pleasure being with you tonight. We are in week four of POV. We're looking at Jesus from the point of view of different Bible characters. That's the whole purpose of this series. Before we get going in that, I just want to welcome some Porch.Live locations, so here in Dallas, will you help me welcome Porch.Live Cincinnati; Indianapolis; Greater Lafayette; Boise, Idaho; Scottsdale, Arizona; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Houston, Texas…wherever you are tonight. Y'all welcome them. Come on!

There are so many more I could have mentioned. God is doing a work here at The Porch, and we are humbled to be a part of it. So, wherever you're tuning in tonight, welcome. First and foremost, I just want to start out by saying… It's a good day. Summer is here. We're in the 90s, y'all. I don't know about you, but summer is my favorite time of year. I can shed some pounds, because all I do is sweat in the summer. It's a good day because summer is here.

Before I get going, I thought I'd share a story. This story happened just a few months after I got married. I had this brilliant idea that I would go on this hike with my wife Cathy. Anybody just love the great outdoors? Yeah. Specifically hiking. I had this incredible plan. We were going to go to the Grand Canyon. For me, it was a first. I was like, "We're going to go to the Grand Canyon, and we're not just going there to sightsee; we're going there to hike."

What I did not know is I needed the full day to hike the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. I did some research, and this was after the fact, but here's what you need to know about this particular hike, the Grand Canyon. Google itself says the hike down generally takes around four hours while the hike up, after a good night's rest, will typically take seven to eight hours. A total of 13 miles, rated difficult, and no one recommends doing this in one day. But I'm an athlete. Right? Where are my athletes in the house?

My roommate from college was like, "Bro, I did this. We did it, and it was fine." Little did he say he started at 7:00 a.m. There are two kinds of people in the room tonight: the people who plan out everything and leave no room for surprises, and then the people who just kind of shoot from the hip, fly by the seat of their pants. Yeah, that's me. Come on. I'm like, "We'll figure it out as the day unfolds." So that's kind of what I did.

We pull up to the Grand Canyon at 12:00. I go to the welcome desk, and I'm like, "Hey, I'm wanting to hike the South Rim." They're like, "At 12:00?" I'm like, "Yeah, it'll be fine." They're like, "I wouldn't recommend that." I'm like, "You don't know me." So, we're having some fun. I think we have a picture of it. This is my wife Cathy and me. I mean, we're like five months into marriage. We're not even really dressed… I have cotton long shorts. You can tell that was seven years ago. Y'all men aren't wearing those kinds of shorts. I've seen y'all and what you're wearing these days.

So, we're having a great time. We're going down, because you start on the top and you go down. We're taking pictures, and we're having lunch. I'm pulling out Romeo. I'm romantic on this hike. I did pack a lunch. I thought about that. So, we're having lunch, and we're overlooking the canyon. It's beautiful. I mean, one of the best days of my life so far. I'm looking down at the Colorado River. I'm saying, "Surely it isn't that far. It doesn't look that far. I mean, come on. We've got this."

We had another two and a half hours to go, and I'm like, "We've got to do it. I don't want to just turn back. That would be zero fun." So, we get down to the Colorado River, and we dip our feet in, and it's beautiful. One of the hikers comes up and says, "Hey, wasn't that an amazing hike down?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "Where are y'all staying tonight?" "Staying? We're going back up." He's like, "Bro, you're going back up?" I'm like, "Yeah, we're going back up."

He's like, "You didn't get a hotel?" I'm like, "Well, we can get a hotel." He's like, "No, man. You have to plan out months in advance, and looking at you, you aren't the planner." He's like, "So, do you have a headlamp?" "A headlamp? No, I don't have no headlamp." He's like, "You're not making it up before dark." He's like, "Take my headlamp, and if you make it up, leave it at the hotel at the top of the canyon." I'm like, "If? What are you talking about, bro?" I'm getting a little defensive.

My wife is looking at me at this point. Cathy is just like, "What the heck did you just get us into?" I'm like, "It's okay, baby." I have a little bit of water left, so your boy just drinks it, because he has to stay hydrated…not even giving any to Cathy. That's just selfish. Hey, I'm newly married. God is sanctifying me. But seriously. We get going on this hike, and we're not even halfway up, and we are dog tired.

We don't have any water, and we are thirsty to the point of, like, my mind starts hallucinating. I mean this. This is not made up. I'm like, "What's about to happen? Is a helicopter going to come down? Are we going to make the Grand Canyon Times? Or is a mountain lion going to eat us?" The sun is setting. We're not even halfway up, and we have at least another four hours to go. I come to a place where I'm exhausted, and I'm spent. She's exhausted. We can't even go another 10 yards.

I start there tonight because just like we were thirsty physically, humanity is thirsty spiritually. If you had to be honest with yourself tonight, if you had to be honest where you're sitting tonight… We come into this place, and we're thirsty emotionally. We're thirsty spiritually. Some of us are running to things like sex, thinking it's going to fulfill us. We're running to the next party or the next drink or we're living for the weekend. You're trying to become a millionaire by 30 or you're looking to the next promotion, all the while kind of leaving God over here on the side.

You know deep down… When you lay your head down on the pillow at night, you know that what you're pursuing is not fully satisfying. You're looking at that two-dimensional image, and it helps with the release in the moment, but you know it just keeps you coming back for more. It calls your name. Let's just keep it real tonight. There's not a lot of satisfaction. There's not a lot of fulfillment in that. I can say that. I was a porn addict for 10 years of my life.

So, tonight, we're talking about this idea of being thirsty, because I think that's a picture of what some of us come into this room with. We've all been there at some point. Just like I was that cottonmouthed thirsty, that frustrated thirsty, some of us come into this place, and we're not cottonmouthed from the weed we smoked the other day; we're cottonmouthed from just life. We're just wondering, "What's this life all about? What's really going to fulfill this body of mine, this life of mine?"

I resonate with some of you tonight, because a majority of my life was spent trying to pursue satisfaction. Like the Rolling Stones song says, "I can't get no satisfaction." We're going to look at a story tonight between Jesus and a woman at the well. Way before The Rolling Stones ever penned that song, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," Jesus has an interaction with a woman at a well where she is trying to find satisfaction.

We're looking at a story where Jesus shares with this woman where satisfaction is found. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be opening them to John, chapter 4, starting in verse 3. Tonight, we're talking about how we go from being a thirsty person to a satisfied one. "So he [Jesus] left Judea and returned to Galilee. He had to go through Samaria on the way."

Hold up. This is important. Jesus is a Jew. Jews didn't associate themselves with Samaritans. They had racial tensions. Samaritans were half-breeds. They weren't full Jews, so they racially profiled them. So Jews, in order to get to Judea, would go around Samaria, and this would add days to their travel. Not Jesus. He went right through Samaria. Why? Because he was on a mission. Verse 5:

"Eventually he came to the Samaritan village of Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, 'Please give me a drink.' He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, 'You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?'" Exactly.

  1. His pursuit. What makes Jesus' pursuit of this woman so powerful is this woman was an outcast of society. The text is going to go on and say this woman has had five divorces, and the man she's living with is not even her husband. Now, this would have been crazy, y'all. Today, five divorces seems a little extreme, but in the first century, five divorces would have been unheard of.

So, this woman is at the well trying to get some water, and notice the text says at noontime. Why? Because this woman has been cast out of her society. No one is wanting to associate with her. She got kicked out of the Samaria Girls' Club, if you will, because she's kind of the one who gets around the town, and she's a loose woman. She's going at noon because she doesn't want to be seen, because she's embarrassed and shameful about the way she's living.

Everyone has rejected her except one person: Jesus. Can you imagine what's going on in this woman's mind from her point of view? "Jesus, you're a Jew. Why are you asking me for water? Why are you even talking to me? Why are you even associating yourself with me today?" You might come into this place, and you might feel like God has forgotten you because the circumstances of life seem unbearable. Maybe you've gone through a breakup. Maybe you were on the verge of getting married, and the whole thing just fizzled out.

Maybe you come into this place, and you lost your job or you didn't get that promotion or you lost that loved one or you're still single at 30, like I was, and you're like, "Come on, God." Maybe you come into this place, and you think you're too far gone because you're entrenched in your sin, and there's no way up because you're just addicted. Let me tell you something. Way before you ever came to The Porch tonight, Jesus has been pursuing you.

In a world where there are almost eight billion people, Jesus says, "You're the one I want." This is what he's communicating to you. If you find yourself in the circumstances of life or you think you're too far gone because of your sin, Jesus is looking straight at you tonight and saying, "No, that's the person I want." Just like he looks at this woman and says, "Hey, let's talk. I don't care about your past. I don't care about your present. Let's talk about where life is found."

Some of you have this idea that Jesus is more like a police officer. Your boy up here has a need for speed, so there was a month when I got three speeding tickets and was on the verge of spending some jail time. Like, real talk. But this is a picture of how you think Jesus is. Right? Like, he's just out to catch you in the act. When you get offsides or when you get out of bounds, he's just coming to get you, like, to slap your hand.

One guy I talked to… I said, "Hey, man, do you want to come to church?" "No. If I came to church, lightning would strike." It's like, "Whoa." That's not how Jesus is. Jesus is looking at you in all of your mess, and the well you're running to, and saying, "No, I want you. You're the person I love and want." Here's what I learned: even when I was running from God for a great majority of my life, he was always pursuing me.

When I was running to the next relationship or the next baseball game I had and thinking that was going to fulfill me if I did well in that game and got the affirmation and "attaboys" from the coach or that next party or that bottle or that drug I tried or making money, do you know how God pursued me? He allowed me to be empty and unsatisfied with all of that. I felt like Solomon in Ecclesiastes. The whole book of Ecclesiastes could be summed up in one sentence: "All is vanity."

He allowed me to pursue all of those things only to leave me empty and unsatisfied and unfulfilled with those things. It was one of the kindest things God could have done for me. He met me at my well in all my mess. Listen. If you're here today, which you are, Jesus is after you. So, we're going to see how this story unfolds, and we're going to watch how Jesus does the same for this woman.

Verse 10: "Jesus replied, 'If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.'" Look at what her response is. "'But sir, you don't have a rope or a bucket,' she said, 'and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water? And besides, do you think you're greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?'

Jesus replied, 'Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.' 'Please, sir,' the woman said, 'give me this water!'" I think I would say the same thing. "Then I'll never be thirsty again, and I won't have to come here to get water." She was still operating in the physical realm. She was still thinking this was some physical type of water Jesus was offering her.

Then Jesus does a hard left, and he looks deep within her soul and exposes something in, I believe, the most gentle, loving, but convicting way. Verse 16: "'Go and get your husband,' Jesus told her. 'I don't have a husband,' the woman replied. Jesus said, 'You're right! [Thanks for your honesty.] You don't have a husband—for you have had five husbands, and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now. You certainly spoke the truth!' 'Sir,' the woman said, 'you must be a prophet.'"

  1. His promise. Jesus is looking at this woman, and he's promising her living water, water that quenches every longing this woman would ever have. From the text we see that the greatest longing this woman had was a longing to be loved, but she was looking in all of the wrong places for that love. For her, she had been drinking at the well of men. She had gone through one broken relationship after another relationship after another relationship.

Now she's at a point where she's like, "I'm just giving up on marriage, but I don't want to be single and alone, so I'll just shack up with this guy, and we'll just be roommates. We'll just live together." She keeps going back to the same empty well. Jesus looks at her in the most loving way and just says, "Hey, do you want a water that will satisfy the deepest longings of your soul?"

The fact that Jesus wasn't driven away from this woman because of all of her issues shows us the heart of the Father. In other words, he's not driven away from her. If anything, he's driven closer to the issues of this woman. See, this is God's heart for us. Why? Because Jesus' main mission in life was to pursue and save sinners by giving them a promise. What's that promise? That he alone is living water, that he alone is the source of life. The reason any of us find ourselves not satisfied is because we're going to the wrong well to drink.

I liken it to this. This is a bucket, and imagine you're trying to get filled by the bucket of people. You're thinking, "Hey, people are what's going to fulfill me…this relationship, this friendship, this date. Ultimately, hopefully, it leads to a marriage." We run to the bucket of people, thinking this bucket is going to fulfill us, because we have this possible daddy wound. We were never affirmed by our dad, so we jump from one relationship to another relationship to another relationship, thinking that man is going to satisfy.

I have two little girls, and every day I say three things to them. I say, "Hey, baby, Daddy loves you. I love you not because of your performance, not because of anything you do or don't do. I love you because you're mine. You're my daughter. And, baby, you're special to me, and lastly, you are beautiful, not because you wear princess dresses and put makeup on but because of how God has created you."

Some of us, if we had to be honest with ourselves tonight, never experienced those types of words. We never experienced with specificity that from our dad. Last time I taught I said I have a mama wound. This mama wound plays out in really broken ways, where I think that people… This is my ditch sometimes. I want the affirmation and the praise of people. That's why I ran to teachers and coaches and other people's parents to try to get "attaboys."

This is why some of you run to thirst traps. You know who I'm talking about. You post things just to get affirmation because you never got it when you were a kid. You don't believe God's approval of you, what he says of you, who you are in Christ, is enough. That's why you post things and do things and say things: to get the world's approval. You run to the bucket of people only to find out that they're broken.

For you, it might not be people. It might be pleasure. You run to the bucket of pleasure, and you run to sex or porn. Let me say this for a second. Do you know why I ran to porn for a decade of my life? Because I had a desire to be desired. I wanted to be wanted. So, in those few minutes where I could escape reality from not feeling wanted by my mama… I escaped reality, and I went to that two-dimensional image, thinking this would satisfy me, this pleasure of porn would do it, but it only left me more and more thirsty.

For some of you, it's not porn. It's just the party. It's just that drug. It's just that drink. You have way too many, so it leads you to do stupid things, but you kind of like it because you can just blame it on the alcohol. Or for you, whatever that blank is… "If I just get to that next season…" What's that next season you want to get to? Is it the season of marriage or just the season of getting that date? Or maybe if you're married, you're like, "If I could just have kids…" It doesn't stop, y'all.

Not only people are broken, but pleasure is broken, and performance is broken. Before, it was like, "Hey, I want to pad my stats on the baseball field. My performance is where I'm going to find my worth." Today, after Christ, for me it's like, "I want to build a bigger stage for myself. I want to live in that neighborhood or that zip code" or "I want to get to that tax bracket" or "I want to get to that car. I want that car." It just doesn't stop.

You just run from people to pleasure to performance. Some of these things, if I had to be honest tonight… They're broken, but they're not necessarily bad in and of themselves. If you put Jesus at the center of all of those things… He can do amazing things with the people in your life, even the pleasures you have. There's some good and holy pleasure you can redeem for the glory of God. Or the performance you're running on.

Go get it. Go build something. Go create something. Have significance. If you want to make money, go make money, but at what expense? The expense that you can't be a Christian and do the things this book is saying to do, and it's only going to leave you more and more broken? If you're trying to find significance in your success, it will never fully satisfy. This is what God in his kindness is trying to share with this woman tonight.

The truth is God could give you everything you ever wanted, whatever future season out there that you're thinking you want, and it still would not satisfy you. Sometimes in his kindness he gives you everything just to show you that it won't ever fulfill, and sometimes in his kindness he doesn't give you everything because he's trying to save you from pain, heartache, and greater levels of brokenness.

See, a lot of you… I talk to you, and you claim, "Jesus is my living water. He's my fulfillment." You have that verse in the bio. You would say he alone satisfies you. But if I were to follow you for a whole week, and I would go where you go, I would listen to how you speak, I would watch the decisions you make, would your actions be aligned with your words?

I don't ask that to put guilt on you. I want that for me. That's why I'm in community with other men who can walk with me and observe things in me and point out things that are inconsistent with the character of Christ, because at my heart of hearts, I want to be God's man. Some of us tonight say one thing, but we do another thing, and it's just downright confusing. We keep making excuses as to why we're not really all in.

It's kind of like saltwater. I don't know if you know much about saltwater, but saltwater makes up 70 percent of the planet. Did you know that? That was something I learned this week. Only 1 percent is fresh water. So, if I were to ask you, "How much would you have to drink…?" Like, if you were thirsty… Go back to my story in the beginning. If I just started drinking saltwater, how much would I have to drink to be satisfied?

Here's the thing. If you know anything about saltwater, there's not an amount you could drink to be satisfied. It only leaves you more and more thirsty the more and more saltwater you drink. It's like God in his kindness is looking at this woman, and he's looking at you and me tonight, and he's saying, "Hey, you can keep chasing the bucket of people, the bucket of pleasure, the bucket of performance, but if I'm not at the center of those things, you're drinking saltwater, and it's only going to leave you more and more thirsty in this life and in the life to come. It won't end well for you."

Proverbs 14:12 says, "There's a way that seems right to man, and that way ends in death." I'm not just talking about physical death; I'm talking about spiritual death, separation forever and ever from your Creator, the one who's pumping breath into your lungs, giving you a heart that beats, a body that functions. I believe when we really double down on who God is and who we are, it puts us in the right perspective to see what this woman is about to see.

This woman believes there's more to life than the things she has been pursuing. It goes on and says in verse 25, "The woman said, 'I know the Messiah is coming…'" That's important. If you were a Jew, you looked forward to this Messiah, this God who would come and save the people. They were looking forward to that day. She had something in her body hardwired. God has hardwired it. We see in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that God has written eternity in the hearts of every man and every woman. So, even you know there's something greater out there.

She says, "I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." She's still not connecting the dots. So, what does Jesus do in his kindness? Verse 26: "Then Jesus told her, 'I am the Messiah!'" Jesus already told this woman he was the living water, that he would quench her thirst. Then Jesus showed the sin she had been committing and the sin she was currently living in, and she still didn't connect the dots. She still thought Jesus was speaking in code and being cryptic.

But Jesus said, "Hey, let me set the record straight. I'm the Messiah. I'm not a prophet. I'm not just a good teacher. I'm not just some religious person. I am the one you have been waiting for, the one you have been thinking about and have read about in the Old Testament. I am on the scene. I am God." The one they would have been anticipating back then.

The greatest promise you and I could put our faith in is that Jesus is the Messiah. In other words, Jesus is God. He didn't just come and do some cool miracles and give the blind sight and cause the lame to walk. He didn't just come and teach some good things, like, "Love your neighbor as yourself," the Golden Rule. No, no. He ultimately did those things so people would see that he was the Messiah, that he was God.

The ultimate act he did for you and me was that he died on the cross for our sin. You and I know we're not perfect, that we're broken and there's a chasm between us and God, and the only bridge that is sufficient for that chasm is the cross. It's not your good works. It's not your religiosity. It's not your Porch attendance. It's only what Christ has done for us on the cross.

All of our sin was poured out on him at the cross, and he soaked up the wrath and the judgment you and I should receive. Scripture says and history records that he didn't just die, but he rose again on the third day to defeat sin and death, and now the ball is in your court and my court. What are you going to do with Jesus? It's the greatest message out there. There's not another message you could proclaim or embody that's going to give you life now and in the life to come.

This is my story. It was a Saturday night. I'd just finished playing a three-game series, and the boys were getting ready to go to the party, my roommates and also my teammates. I just said, "Guys, I'm taking this one off." I finally just said to myself, "What is my purpose in life? What kind of meaning does my life have?" I got real with those questions, and I asked myself, "Where am I going when I die?"

God met me right there in my sin. It was an unbelievable conviction of sin but comfort of his promise, that I wasn't too far gone. Only a God who can give you conviction of sin but comfort in his promise simultaneously is a God worth following. He didn't expect me to go and make things right. I couldn't make it right. But he helped my eyes look to the cross, look to what he had done for me, and I was like, "That's my sin on the cross."

I stopped comparing my life to everyone else, even people in the church. When I did, my mouth was stopped of all justification. You and I know that if we keep comparing our lives to other people in the church, we can always find someone worse than us. I would justify that I was a pretty good person. "I'm fine." Not that night. It stopped. God met me, and Jesus provided not just conviction of sin but the promise of hope.

We see from this passage that Jesus is not just saving this woman from something, her sin, but he's saving her to something. He saved her to tell others about him. If Jesus saved you, then you share it. He didn't need to coach her up and say, "Okay. This is how you go and share about me." No. He just said, "Hey, this is who I am. Now what are you going to do with it?"

Watch how she responds. Verse 28. This is one of my favorite parts of this entire passage. "The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village, telling everyone, 'Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could he possibly be the Messiah?' So the people came streaming from the village to see him."

  1. His purpose. Did you catch that? She left the one thing she thought was going to quench her thirst. Why? Because this woman was discovering a purpose she was made for. She came to this well trying to be filled physically. She didn't realize her spiritual and emotional dehydration, and God points it out. He says, "No, you don't just need physical water; you need spiritual water." Jesus changes her life and begins to change her purpose.

The Bible goes on record to say that this woman was the first convert in Samaria, and it led to a mighty move of God among the Gentiles in that town. Verse 39: "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, 'He told me all that I ever did.'" Don't miss this. Your purpose and my purpose in life is to know Jesus and to make him known. That's it. If you don't leave with anything else, leave with this purpose: you are called to know Jesus and to make him known.

Every promise God gives us comes prepackaged with a purpose. I'm thankful that God didn't just save me from my sin. He saved me to go out with this incredible purpose, that wherever I go, whether I'm a young adult pastor full time or whether I'm a husband of Cathy and a dad of three kids or whether I'm going out to a restaurant or I'm going to a coffee shop or I'm going to buy clothes (for me, it's probably shoes)… Wherever I go, I am just proclaiming who Christ is.

This is your purpose. Listen. You just share what you know. I think sometimes we overcomplicate this thing. We're like, "Man, what do you mean? I don't know about that. That seems weird." It's not. I'm just telling you, ever since my junior year in college, I've opened this book, I've gathered around with some men, and I've just said, "Hey, based on what we're reading here, what's God calling us to do? Okay. Great. He's calling us to go serve? All right. I'm going to go serve.

He's calling me to be all in with the church and become a church member and be a part of that body of Christ, because his church is his hands, his feet, his eyes, his mouth, his ears? Okay. I'm going to go all in with church. Okay. He's calling me to repent of sin, do a turning from sin and a turning to him? Okay. I'm going to constantly repent of sin. When sin is in my life, I'm going to confess that to him. I'm going to confess that to my trusted brothers. Oh, he's calling me to go share the gospel? Okay. I'm going to do that."

Just the other day, I'm like, "I have to go get a fade. Who knows a barber? Okay. You know a barber? Okay. I'm going to go to the barbershop." So, I come across this barber, BJ. I'm like, "What's up, BJ? I heard you're the best in town, bro." He's like, "Well, that's kind." I'm like, "No, for real. I heard athletes fly you out. And my boy over here is paying for it, so we're good."

So we're sitting here talking. BJ has Michael Jordan days up on the TV. You know, the dynasty days. We're talking basketball. We're talking Dallas Mavericks, Luka Dončić… We're just talking basketball, because that's the season of life we're in. Go Mavs. I'm like, "Mavs are the best, bro. I think Luka Dončić might be the best ever. That might be a stretch, but bear with me."

"No, Michael Jordan is the GOAT."

"Okay, cool. We're on the same page."

We're just talking life, and I look at him and just say, "Hey, bro. I'm downshifting now, but before I leave… You hooked me up. I love it. Thank you. If you were to die tonight, where would you go, heaven or hell?" He looks at me with all sincerity and says, "I'd go to heaven." I said, "Can I ask you one more question?" He's like, "Sure." I was like, "Why?" He said, "Because I'm a good person." I said, "Hey, thank you for your honesty. You know, I thought that for 22 years of my life."

I said, "BJ, if you could get to heaven by being a good person, what was the point of Jesus dying on the cross?" He looks at me. He's like, "Man, you got me." I said, "I'm not here to get you. I'm here just to share the hope that lies within me. Seriously, bro. If you're saying, 'I can get to heaven by my good works,' you're basically saying, 'I don't need Jesus,' and you're taking away from what he did for you on the cross. You're stealing glory from him and placing glory on yourself. Do you understand that?"

He's like, "Yeah, bro. That makes sense." I'm like, "Hey, dude, here's the problem. We can't do enough to get to God. The Bible says we've been saved by grace through faith, not of ourselves. It's a gift from God so that no man may boast. If you and I could get to heaven based on our good works or our church attendance, then we would surely boast about it. That's kind of like what you did, man." He's like, "Yeah, I know. I did. I was boasting about my good works."

I said, "You're stealing glory away from the God who created you. Everything in us, bro… There's a part in all of us…God has hardwired it…where we want to connect back to our Creator, because this world is broken. You can't get away from that. Everywhere you look…the news you turn on, the headlines you read on social media…there's brokenness all around us."

I said, "Jesus came to give us hope for that brokenness, and what you do with Jesus… You ask him to forgive you of your sins. You place your trust in what he has done for you, not what you do for yourself. The Bible says he'll save you. He'll forgive you of all sin. We don't work for our salvation, bro, but we sure as heck work from it. I'm not sharing this gospel with you because I have to, bro. I'm sharing it because it's welling up in me. I can't. Every time I look at somebody, I'm like, 'Bro, there's an eternity there.'"

He's like, "I've got questions." I said, "I don't have all of the answers, but let's continue to talk." So we are. I said, "Bro, you're my barber. Let's do this." I said, "I don't know if I can afford coming every week…unless you're trying to give me a discount." So, we're in this conversation. I think sometimes we overcomplicate what it looks like to follow Jesus and know him and make him known.

As I close, I want to go back to the start of the message. We're sitting there. We're dehydrated. We're lacking water, and this is no joke. I was thinking this was the end. I looked at Cathy and said, "Well, baby, it has been a good five months." We started arguing. We started fighting. We started blaming each other. We can't go anymore. We're just exhausted to the point of, "Hey, either God sends someone to help us or… I need some water."

It's getting dark, and we see people walking down the canyon. They stop, because they're like, "We haven't seen anybody walking back up." I'm like, "Well, yeah. No duh. We probably should have stayed down there, but we don't have a hotel." They're like, "Are you okay?" We're like, "No, we're not okay." In that moment they said, "Hey, we have water, and we have some snacks. We even have a cool towel. Do you want it?" We're like, "Yeah."

Do you know what we wanted the most in that moment? Just water. We just started crushing water. I share that with you because that's a picture of what God wants you to do when you wake up tomorrow morning or when you go out to eat tonight. They saw a need, and they had the thing that would help the need. The need was dehydration, and they had the water.

I'm speaking to you, Christian, tonight. You have the supplies. You have the message of Christ. There are going to be people you come across who are thirsty. Not for water, per se. They might be. Give them water. But more so, they're going to be thirsty spiritually, emotionally, and they're trying everything underneath the sun trying to fulfill that need. It can only be fulfilled by what Christ has done for them.

So, when you wake up and go to your office at Deloitte, or wherever you work tomorrow morning, you're going to come across thirsty people, and my charge to you tonight is just share what you know. In your kindness and the love God has poured out on your life, just ask good questions. Show them that you care. How unloving would that couple have had to be to notice we were struggling with dehydration, they had water, and not share that water? That would be pretty unloving if they just passed us by.

That's a picture of some of us today. We keep passing people by. We have the hope from this book. We have the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, and we're just not sharing it. We're not even attempting to build bridges to the people we're coming across in this life. So, my charge for you tonight is that you would see God's pursuit of you. He's after you. You would see his promise. He's promising living water, a water that will always quench your thirst, and he's inviting you into the greatest purpose you could ever have: to know your Creator and to make him known through the person of Jesus.

Acts 20:24 says, "But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God." Tonight, I'm asking, I'm pleading, I'm begging you: Don't waste your life. Don't miss out on opportunities, because there's nothing that's going to fulfill you like what we talked about tonight. Let me pray that you would.

Father, I pray that you would help us see not just with our physical eyes but with our spiritual eyes that you're the only one who can satisfy. God, I know people come into this place tonight, and they're drinking from the wrong wells. They're doing the same thing over and over and over, thinking it's going to lead to change, thinking it's going to lead to fulfillment, thinking it's going to lead to satisfaction. That's really the definition of insanity.

So, for those who aren't drinking from the well of Christ, would you call them to drink from that well tonight? Those who are and have drunk from the well of Christ, would they go and share that with the people around them for your glory, for our joy, and for the world's good? It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.