Living Water

This past week was an experience. Our team went to a Zambian village named Mapena about 45 minutes away from our host city of Livingstone. We had the opportunity to spend 4 days and nights within the village next to a local community school. During our time in the village we had ministry opportunities such as: teaching youth ages 12-18 what the Bible says about sex (yes, that was a first), painting the exterior of one of the school buildings, playing soccer, volleyball, and netball with the youth, walking through and praying for the village, and sitting down and having conversations with the local villagers about their life and Jesus Christ. On Friday we took a 4 mile walk to one of the nearby villages and visited a preschool that Africa 4 Jesus has partnered with. We sang Bible songs, gave lessons on God’s love, Zaccheus, and David and Goliath, and played games like hot potato and giraffe-giraffe-crocodile (our African version of duck-duck-goose). It was truly a blessing to spend time with children and youth of all ages and to show the love of Christ in a multitude of ways. On Saturday we returned to Livingstone and met with the other Passport team in Zambia and traveled to Victoria Falls. It was an amazing experience to see the work of God’s hands through His creation and how He shows us His beauty and magnitude through the Falls. I also bungee jumped off a bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe overlooking the Falls! On Sunday we went to church in the morning and then attended a youth fellowship hour in the afternoon and had the opportunity to minister to about 200 high schoolers through songs, poems, and I gave a short challenge about choosing joy from James 1:2-4.

This week God has been teaching me what it means to find complete and full satisfaction in Him through Jesus Christ. In John 4:7-18 it says:

“A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

God has been showing me through this passage that only true and complete satisfaction can come through a relationship with Jesus Christ and Christ alone. Jesus offers the woman water that will allow her to never thirst again. The woman was thinking of physical water, but Jesus was speaking of spiritual water. Jesus was offering her a spiritual relationship with the Father through Him and through Him she would find eternal satisfaction. He further shows this by asking her to get her husband. However, the woman had already 5 husbands and was currently in a relationship with a man that was not her husband. This woman was trying to find satisfaction in relationships with men, a water that will never satisfy. Jesus shows that nothing in this world such as relationships, alcohol, drugs, money, or possessions can satisfy. Only a true relationship with Him can satisfy the soul.

This passage has been especially applicable to myself when it comes to joy. As I shared last week, I struggle with symptoms of bipolar depression but God has shown me that true joy and satisfaction is possible through and only through a relationship with Jesus Christ. On Sunday the pastor preached about recovery and restoration through Christ. First we must surrender everything to God and then seclude ourselves in Him to begin restoration. God convicted me to surrender everything: the hurt, the pain, the loneliness, the depression to Him and to ask for a spirit of restoration through the Holy Spirit. Praise God that true joy and satisfaction can truly be enjoyed through Him!

Please continue to pray for my team, my hosts, and me as we head into our last week of ministry. This week we will be working with local schools and orphanages within Livingstone. Please pray that God will continue to work through my team to show the love of Christ and disciple those we come in contact with!

Soli Deo Gloria