A Deeper Thirst

Dannah Gresh: Are you thirsty for more than what this world can give you? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth reminds us that only Jesus can satisfy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Have you ever come to the place where you received that gift for yourself? Where you realized the extent of your spiritual need and the brokenness of your relationship with God? When you came and said, "Lord, I'm not coming just as a victim because of what others have done to me, but I'm coming as a sinner to say I need your grace. Thank you for dying for me in my place. I now receive you as my Savior."

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, for May 25, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh.

This week we’ve been bringing you a classic series from Nancy called “Satisfying Our Thirst.” In this series, we’ve heard from women who were carrying around a lot of hurt and guilt from past relationships.

Andrea Griffith: You did it, you hid it, and you will never be rid of it.

Dannah: Nancy’s also invited us to identify places we look to for satisfaction besides Jesus.

Woman: I have taken the blessing of children (and I have six children) and I was using that as a substitute for Him.

Dannah: If you’ve missed any of the series, you can hear it by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com, or check it out on the Revive Our Hearts app.

Nancy’s about to pick up this teaching from John chapter 4. I’m going to read you the passage we’ve been studying.

He had to travel through Samaria;  so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

“Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.

“How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”

“Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”

Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”

“Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”

“I don’t have a husband,” she answered.

“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said.  “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

“Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.” (CSB)

That was from John chapter 4. Today, we'll see how Jesus interacted with a woman who had experienced genuine hurt and betrayal, just like the woman at the well we read about. But He didn't let her offer any excuses for her sin. Here's Nancy to tell us more.

Nancy: Several years ago I was teaching some Bible studies in my home for women about women of the Bible. I'll never forget when I taught about the woman at the well, the woman in John 4 that we've been looking at. At the close of that session, a woman came to me, she was new to the study. Her name is Valerie. She had big tears in her eyes and she said, "That woman you talked about tonight, that's me. I'm that woman!

Now I didn't know anything about Valerie at the time. I didn't know that she'd been through a series of failed and broken relationships. I didn't know about many of the hurts in her past; but I knew that here was a thirsty-hearted woman, just like that woman at the well. Valerie said to me, "All my life I've just been wanting to be loved. I've been looking for love." Now she'd been looking for love, as most of us do, in all the wrong places.

Before we finish today, I want to tell you what happened to Valerie, but I want us first to look at this matter of thirst. We've been seeing a woman who came to Jesus at the well who was thirsty. But the truth is that we're all thirsty. That thirst is God-created. We're thirsty for purpose in life, for meaning, for identity, for significance. We want to know, "Who am I? Why am I here?"

We're thirsty for love, for relationship, for acceptance, for intimacy. We want to know, "Who loves me? Who accepts me? Who cares? Do I matter to anybody?" We're thirsty for security. We want to have our basic needs met. We're thirsty for fulfillment, for happiness, for peace. We're thirsty for freedom. We want freedom from fear, freedom from guilt, freedom from bondage. We want emotional wholeness. Everyone has a thirsty heart.

There's an old song that says that over and over and over again, but it is so true. Everyone has a thirsty heart, and that thirst is put there by God.

Now the woman at the well that we've been looking at this week had three different levels of thirst, and you and I face the same three levels of thirst in our lives. First of all, there was the obvious level of her physical thirst. That's why she came to the well in the first place. She needed physical water. And we have physical needs. I've been talking about thirst long enough that maybe some of you are starting to get physically thirsty. But Jesus wanted this woman to see that she had two deeper levels of thirst that maybe she was not so aware of.

Not only was she physically thirsty, she was a woman who was emotionally thirsty. Here was a woman who had experienced deep, painful rejection. She had quite a history when it came to relationships and men and marriage. We don't know how these marriages had come about, we don't know why the marriages had been broken up; but we know that she'd had five marriages and now she was living in a relationship with a man who was not even her husband.

We do know that in those days it was not easy for a woman to divorce her husband. It was very easy for a man to divorce his wife. So it would be safe to assume that this is a woman who had been divorced five times at the hands of her husbands.

And I can just imagine that when she was maybe a young girl that she had an arranged marriage, as most marriages were in those days. Maybe just as a young teenager her parents had arranged a marriage for her with a young man. And then came the day when they pledged their vows to each other. They established a covenant, and he promised to love her and to keep her permanently. We don't know what broke that marriage up, but we can speculate that maybe one day he came to her and according to the laws of the Jews, he didn't even have to have a good reason to divorce her. It could be just that he didn't like her cooking.

For whatever reason, apparently he came to her one day and he said, "I don't want to be married to you any longer." Now those of you who've been through a divorce know that there is probably nothing more painful in a woman's life than for her to hear the man who said he would love her forever say, "I don't love you anymore. I don't want to be your husband anymore. I divorce you."

In those days, a divorced woman was likely to stay divorced. That was an incredible social stigma to be divorced. But for some reason, the day came when another man said to her, "I want to be your husband." And for some reason she dared to believe that maybe this one was different. So she said, "I'll be your wife." And then came the day when he too said, "I don't love you anymore. I don't want to be married to you. I divorce you." And then a third and then a fourth and can you imagine the pain, the rejection, the wounds, the scars that this woman experienced thinking that she must not be attractive or lovable to anyone.

And by the time the sixth man came around, why get married? Let's just "shack up" together. She didn't even have the courage to say, "Let's make a commitment out of this." Because she realized that there was no such thing in her life as a commitment that stuck. So here was a woman who was emotionally rejected.

Now it also appears from this passage that she'd been rejected not only by men, but perhaps by other women. The suggestion is that she came to the well alone. Now, women in those days were a lot like women in these days. We don't like to do things alone. We like to do things in groups. We're social creatures.

When we do our chores or erands, we like to do them with someone else. Men aren't this way. When's the last time you heard a man say if you were out to dinner with some couples, "Excuse me. I'm going to the restroom. Would anyone like to go with me?" That's kind of a woman's thing to do that with other women.

And typically the women in those days would go to the well together with other women. And they typically would not go at noontime, at the heat of the day. They'd go early in the morning or later in the afternoon when it wasn't so hot out. So why did this woman come alone to that well at midday? I think it's likely that she had experienced deep rejection from other women. They talked about her. They talked behind her back. They didn't accept her. So I think here was a lonely, rejected, isolated woman, emotionally thirsty.

But this woman also had to see that she also had a thirst that went a level deeper than her emotional neediness. Jesus wanted her to see that at the core of her being was a spiritual thirst. And that the core issue of her life was not what others had done to her, it was not her woundedness, but it was her sinfulness. You say, "You mean it was her fault that all these marriages broke up?"

The Scripture doesn't tell us whose fault it was, and we don't really need to know. But we do know one thing and that is that that woman was a sinner as is every one of us women in this room. Regardless of what has been done to us, regardless of how rejected or wounded we may have been, the fact is we are also sinners, and we are separated from God. And this woman had to come to see that the core issue of her life, and it's the core issue of my life as well, is not my woundedness, it's not all the hurts of my past. And let me say Christ cares about my woundedness. But my core issue is my sinfulness.

Valerie came to me that night and she said, "I'm that woman. I've been looking for love in all the wrong places." She began to search out the Word of God. She was a religious woman. She was a churched woman. She'd been in church all her life. She knew a lot about Christ. But she'd never had a personal relationship with Him.

I still remember the night, it was several weeks after that first encounter. It was Easter week, actually, when we showed a video in our study on the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus. And at the close of that session that night, that woman said that she realized for the first time as she saw Jesus Christ on the cross (she'd seen that image many times in her church). But she said that that night it was different. That night as she saw Him on the cross, she realized He was not there for His sins. He was there for my sins. I'm the one who should have been on that cross. He died for me.

And she came to see that as painful as all the things that had been done to her were, that the core issue of her life was her relationship with God that was estranged because she was a sinner. And that night she came in repentance and in faith to the living Christ, no longer on the cross, but now raised, resurrected to give her new life and in humility and repentance and faith, she placed her trust in Jesus Christ to save her.

Jesus said to this woman at the well, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is speaking to you, you would have asked him and he would have given you eternal life."

That night, Valerie came to Jesus. She asked Him for that gift. Her life has not been all easy since that moment. Her problems have not all been solved. She has some problems now she didn't have back then. But there is now within her a well of water springing up to eternal life. And it began when she was willing to identify the spiritual thirst and need of her life that can only be solved through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have you ever come to the place where you received that gift for yourself? Where you realized the extent of your spiritual need and the brokenness of your relationship with God? When you came and said, "Lord, I'm not coming just as a victim because of what others have done to me, but I'm coming as a sinner to say I need your grace. Thank you for dying for me in my place. I now receive you as my Savior."

"Surely this is the Savior of the world" those people said in Samaria. And surely today He wants to be your Savior.

Father, there may be another Valerie in this room today. And I pray for some woman who is religious, but who doesn't know Jesus, that this would be the day of salvation. And Lord, help us all to see that the core issue of our lives is not our woundedness, but it's our sinfulness. And to realize that only in Christ, in Him crucified and risen again, lies the hope for us to be restored and to experience living water that truly lastingly satisfies. Thank you for Jesus. May we drink deeply of Him this day. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, telling the stories of two women: one, the woman at the well from John chapter 4, the other, Nancy’s friend Valerie.

Nancy first delivered that timeless message in 2002. And since that time, one of those two women has visited Revive Our Hearts for a recording session. And I’m sure you’ve figured out that it’s not the woman at the well. Here’s Valerie, adding more to the story Nancy told us today.

Nancy: Valerie came to a Bible study that I was teaching in my home for women in the community. Do you remember the first time you came?

Valerie: I was invited by another lady. She invited me to come to a Bible study, and I thought Nancy was married. (laughter)

Nancy: Do you remember what we were teaching on when you first came?

Valerie: When I first came, you were teaching in John and all the women of the Bible.

Nancy: And the one we were on that week was the woman at the well.

Valerie: The woman at the well.

Nancy: As we got to know each other better, I got to know more of your story. You told me about how you’d been through a series of broken relationships and you were searching for love. “I just wanted to find love.” But you hadn’t found what you needed. And the Lord started working in your heart. You started coming for several weeks.

Valerie: I had studied the woman at the well in so many different Bible studies and from different ministers. I never lived with anybody, but I was searching. I was married fourteen years and had three children. Two are now in their fifties, and I have nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. But I thought I needed somebody in my life.

I will share this with you now because I’ve talked to my daughter about it. Jesus Christ is my husband. I never had the wedding that a lot of people wanted, but I’m going to wear a wedding dress at the day I die. I’m going to be Jesus’ bride.

Nancy: Amen.

Valerie: That’s where I’m at.

Nancy: And it was a process the Lord took you through. Even in that study, there were several weeks . . . I remember Easter week we took a break from the normal study and we showed the Jesus film. Do you remember that day?

Valerie: Yes. You handed it out. Back then it was VCRs.

Nancy: Right.

Valerie: You handed them out and you left in a hurry that night because you were going to Toledo to a conference there. Nancy Dunning and I met in Nancy’s study, and I just lost it.

Nancy: After we had watched the movie . . .

Valerie: After you had left, I got the video and went home and watched it during the Easter week. I accepted Christ in a whole different way!

Nancy: And I watched over those next weeks and months as the Lord transformed this woman’s life. She got in the Word. She’d been churched but hadn’t really been in the Word for herself. She began to grow in her faith. She was at the time, I don’t know if you still do this, but she was a hair dresser. And you know hair dressers . . .

Valerie: I still work two days a week.

Nancy: She talked to people, and she started talking to everything that moved—clients, customers, whomever, she was telling them about Jesus. And I don’t know how many people over the years you have shared Christ with.

Valerie’s humble. She’s always telling me like, “I don’t know so much about the Bible,” or “I’m not so good at this,” but she’s been in our community as beautiful reflection of Christ. I’ve watched you grow. You drop me a note every once in a while and just talk how real Christ still is to you.

Valerie: Yeah, I thank this woman for that, and I do share still. I let people open the door. I don’t push it. But when they open the door I’m there to talk about my Lord and my Jesus. And still the young people today . . . Like I said, I have nine grandchildren, four married, and they have children. Now I’m working by example. That’s the main thing that I find, is to live my life.

I am a prayer warrior. I get phone calls all the time. I pray a lot for different people who need it. But my daughter shared with me, “Your mother,” which was her grandmom, my mother, “she prayed for all of us, and now you’ve been praying for all your grandchildren.” And I do. They’re not perfect, and I’m not perfect, but it’s a journey.

Nancy: I remember, too, when you watched that video what you shared with me later was particularly . . . because you knew a background about Jesus and about the cross. But I remember you saying it was once you came to that part about the crucifixion where the realization came to Valerie that she should’ve been on that cross.

Valerie: Yes.

Nancy: She should’ve died for sins, but Jesus had done that for her. And that really was a turning point for you.

Valerie: It is. It still is. So many people that see the cross, wear the cross, probably have seen The Passion, they still don’t get it. But I get it!

Nancy: You do. You do. I love you so much.

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth talking with a woman named Valerie who underwent a radical transformation. If you’ve ever doubted that God can change a life, I hope Valerie’s story will remind you to keep spreading the good news that Jesus satisfies.

That’s one of the crucial messages Revive Our Hearts wants to share with women all over the world—that only through Christ will you experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness. And we love hearing stories of how God has used this ministry to speak truth into their lives.

A woman named Laura wrote to us saying,

I want to thank you for your ministry and impact. As a single woman in my mid-twenties, you helped me gain a biblical perspective of womanhood and grow in my personal walk with the Lord. Then later in my twenties and into my early thirties, your ministry continued to help me be satisfied in Christ and trust His plan for my life as the longing to not be alone grew stronger. I knew that whatever happened, I would be okay, because I was never really alone. 

Isn’t that great? Laura went on to tell us that, then at the age of thirty-two, God brought an amazing man into her life, and they were married not long after. Like anyone transitioning into a new season, she struggled with some adjustments of leaving her hometown, her church, her family, friends, job and more.

Laura found herself being selfish in her marriage, saying, “I didn’t show grace and stop to consider that he too was going through adjustments and learning how to be a husband.” She started listening to as many Revive Our Hearts programs about marriage as she could. She writes:

We obviously still frustrate and misunderstand each other; but we are learning patience, grace, forgiveness, and ultimately, to rely on God’s strength. I don’t think we would be where we are in our marriage if it weren’t for the teachings of Revive Our Hearts.

Wow, praise the Lord for the ways He’s worked in Laura’s life through this ministry. When you donate to Revive Our Hearts, you’re helping women just like Laura, in every season of life, to find true satisfaction and strength in Christ. 

This month, as we come to the end of our fiscal year, you can have the privilege of investing in what our God will do through Revive Our Hearts in the coming ministry year. Your much-needed support will help us continue producing life-transforming teaching through our podcasts, broadcasts, and biblical resources. When you give by May 3 to help us reach our goal of $828,000, you’ll receive a couple resources as our way of showing you our appreciation. First is volume one of (Un)remarkable: Ten Ordinary Women Who Impacted Their World for Christ. Then you’ll also get a digital copy of volume 2. These resources are full of stories of unremarkable women who made a big difference through ordinary faith—women such as Amy Carmichael, Florence Nightingale, and Elisabeth Elliot. 

With your gift of any amount to Revive Our Hearts, you’re investing in extraordinary work. We couldn’t do what we do without the generosity of friends like you. If you have already given to help meet this important need, thank you, thank you. But if you have yet to do so, or the Lord puts it on your heart to give again, would you consider giving today?

Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Be sure to request your (Un)remarkable resources. That number is 1-800-569-5959.

Do you have a thirsty heart? We’ll be talking about the idols that tempt us to seek satisfaction in places other than Christ, tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts. Please be back!

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is helping you live in freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the NIV84 unless otherwise noted.

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