One of the reasons Jesus came to earth is so we will never thirst again.  In John 4 verses 13-14 Jesus tells a Samaritan woman that “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 give him will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  Earlier in the chapter we are told Jesus was traveling through Samaria and was tired from a long walk.  He wearily sat beside the well around noontime.  Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water and he asked her to please give him a drink.  As she drew him water they began to converse.  During their conversation, Jesus asks her to go and get her husband.  The woman replied she didn’t have a husband.  In verses 17-18 Jesus answers her “You’re right!  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!”  The Samaritan woman was looking for men to give her only what Jesus could give her and she came up empty.  Five husbands, nor the current man in her life could not give her what only Jesus could.  And we do the same. When we look to man to give us what only Jesus can, it will never satisfy, and will never be enough. 

There are four things we look to people for, that only Jesus can give us.  They are security, acceptance, identity and purpose.  We seek these things through a variety of arenas.  Work, ministry, our looks, power, status, appearing super-spiritual, and friends to name a few.  We are most prone to seek them in our marriage relationships.  And its a lose, lose proposition.  No human can sustain our feeling secure or accepted.  No human can sustain in us our true identity, or a holy purpose.  Because, as wonderful as our spouse may be, every marriage is comprised of two sinners.  Jesus is our only place of true safety in this fallen world.  Only Jesus accepts us perfectly at all times.  Any identity we place on ourselves outside of being a beloved child of God, will fail us.  Any purpose outside of living to accomplish God’s purpose for our life will sorely disappoint us. 

Dave and I will be married for 40 years this August.  During our marriage I’ve put a lot of pressure on Dave by looking to him to make me feel secure.  By secure, I mean, to make me feel like I’m lovable.  I’ve struggled with insecurity my entire life.  Feeling “not good enough”.  Like there’s something so wrong about me that eventually I would be rejected and not loved by those closest to me. As a teenager I developed the dream that I would get married and the perfect love of my spouse would make me feel good enough about myself to finally be lovable.  As wonderful as Dave is, he could not sustain perfect love for me.  As I could not sustain perfect love for him.  With all the love he gave me, it was not enough love.  It could never be enough love, to make me feel lovable and I was always thirsty for more.  My insatiable thirst for more and more of Dave’s love put an incredible amount of pressure on both Dave and our marriage.   Eventually life has a way of rescuing us from ourselves and our un-holy dreams.

Those are the best of times and the worst of times.  It is during those times our un-holy dreams die, but like a seed, they fall into the ground, and the holy dream is sown, is able to take root and begins to grow inside us. 

Thankfully, my dream of Dave’s perfect love making me feel good enough about myself to feel lovable is being replaced by a holy dream.  A dream that is destined to succeed.  My new dream is that I drink enough of Jesus’ perfect love until it wells up like a bubbling spring inside me. That I’ll know deep within that it’s his being good enough that makes me lovable, not my being good enough.  That Jesus’ perfect love will continually fill me so I never thirst again for a substitute love to give me what only his can.