John 4: The Spring Jesus Opened in You Is Still There

Introduction

That evening, the Église Évangélique Libre d'Onex welcomes Stéphane, a longtime friend of Pastor Laurent, who introduces him as a "minister of the Gospel." Stéphane has been the pastor of several parishes, in the Jura and then in Genève. Today he sits on the administrative council of his municipality, "a church without a steeple," and has just joined the chaplaincy team of a hospital in Genève. He laughs about it himself: "I don't even know how to talk to believers anymore."

He also spent a little over two years traveling through the 45 municipalities of the canton of Genève to pray for the authorities, the schools and the local associations, and to call in each one "a place of the presence of Jesus," wherever two or three gather.

His message starts from two verses. Psalm 87:7: "All my springs are in you." And the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman in John 4:14: "but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." His conviction fits in one sentence: if Jesus has ever touched your life, there is a spring in you, and that spring is still there.

Message Outline

1. What Jesus Puts in Your Life Is in Motion

Stéphane points out a movement in John 4:14: the water Jesus gives becomes a spring, and that spring flows up to eternal life.
The same movement appears in other parables, such as the smallest of them: a seed placed in the soil that grows by itself, first the stalk, then the ear, then the grain (Mark 4:26-28).
"Everything Jesus puts in our life is meant to expand."
If Jesus has touched your life, that movement began inside you. No matter what you have gone through since, no matter where you are tonight, a spring has been opened.

2. A Spring Is Hard to Block

When he first arrived in Genève, Stéphane took his children to the banks of the Allondon to build dams: one stone, then another, sand, mud. You think you have done it, and then the water goes around to the right, to the left, or over the top.
"It is very hard to block a flow of water." It is not impossible, he adds, but above all it is very hard to block the flow of God in a person's life.
When Jesus gave you a glass of water, that water was his life. Placed in you, that glass of water became a spring meant to keep expanding.

3. Two Kinds of Wells: the Spring and the Reservoir

Jesus is sitting at Jacob's well. The text mentions the word well several times, but the Greek uses two different words, which English does not show.
In verse 6, the word used refers to a well fed by a spring: you dig, and the water flows.
The other kind of well is a reservoir. Stéphane gives the example of Les Baux-de-Provence, a citadel with no spring, where cisterns were dug in the hope that a little rain would fill them. In a reservoir, there is sometimes water, and sometimes it runs short.
When the Samaritan woman asks Jesus whether he is greater than Jacob, "our father who gave us the well," she uses the word for a reservoir. For her, it is "a hole, no more and no less, with water in it."
In Revelation, that same word refers to the shaft of the abyss, a place without life (Revelation 9:1-2).
Jesus speaks of the other kind of well: a spring of living water. It is the word we find when the Lamb guides his people to springs of waters of life (Revelation 7:17) and when God promises: "I will give freely to him who is thirsty from the spring of the water of life" (Revelation 21:6).

4. May God Open Your Eyes to the Well He Has Placed in You

Everything comes from Jesus: he gives this spring, he gives this water, and this water is his own life. You no longer need to go back to the reservoir where "sometimes there is water, sometimes there isn't, sometimes it is fresh and sometimes it is frankly muddy."
Hagar, driven out into the desert with her son Ishmael, thought she would die. God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water (Genesis 21:19). Stéphane notes that the Septuagint speaks of a well of living water.
Stéphane prays that God will open our eyes to realize that he has installed a well of life in our hearts. This is the work of Jesus' salvation.
God's desire is for every life to grow. He has a hope of growth for us. Hence this half-joking remark: telling a believer you have not seen in ten or fifteen years "you haven't changed" is not necessarily a compliment.

5. Tired of Always Coming Back to the Same Thing

The Samaritan woman understood: "The woman said to him, 'Sir, give me this water, so that I don't get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw'" (John 4:15).
Reading between the lines, she always came back to the same thing: five husbands, and the man she has now is not her husband (John 4:18).
Stéphane tells of a woman who once asked him to read her forehead: "Is 'hit me' written on it?" She kept ending up with men who beat her. That is an extreme case, he says, but all of us sometimes feel we are returning to the same place.
To have a breakthrough, we need this spring that takes us further. "It doesn't matter whether you have a big mouth or a small mouth, it is not the sip that counts, it is the water."

6. The Spring Is Still There

Through circumstances, choices or the hardships of life, the spring can lose some of its force. From the outside, sometimes you no longer notice it.
A Zurich speaker heard years ago had passed on this advice from his spiritual father: "If you want to understand spiritual things, you first have to understand natural things." Now, a spring does not move. "I have never seen a spring with legs."
It may be buried under tons of rock, "the Salève may have fallen on top of it," but it is still there. What God has put in your life has not "run off."
You may no longer recognize the enthusiasm and passion of the past. If you compared yourself to a fruit tree, you would say there is not much fruit left. But the one who put this spring in you sees it, and he tells you it is still there.
Dead leaves, dead branches, or rocks and mud that came down from the mountain may have blocked it. Some of these things do not even come from you: they fell on you.

7. Come to Him, He Holds Nothing Against You

If you have never been connected to this spring, if you are thirsty and you say "Lord, I am sick of going around in circles, of always coming back to this reservoir," Stéphane invites you to give your life to Jesus, the only one who can quench your thirst and truly change your life.
For those who have already experienced the new birth, the spring is there, but it may need to be cleared and to find life again.
"The Lord holds nothing against you. He does not accuse. He simply says 'Come to me.' That's all."
The message ends with a time of prayer and thanksgiving, that the Spirit may blow again on this spring and rekindle "something that burns inside you."

Key Takeaways

The water Jesus gives is his own life. It does not stay a glass of water: it becomes in you a spring that flows up to eternal life.
The reservoir gives water now and then; the spring flows. Jesus does not offer you a cistern, he offers you a spring of living water.
A spring does not move. It can be blocked or weakened, but what God has put in you is still there.
It is not the size of the sip that counts, it is the water.
The Lord does not accuse and holds nothing against you. He simply says: "Come to me."

Personal Application

To which "reservoir" do you still go back to quench your thirst, even though it gives you water only now and then?
Is there a situation in your life where you feel you keep returning to the same place?
What dead leaves, what branches or what rocks have blocked the spring Jesus opened in you?
Do you remember the day you told Jesus "I am thirsty"? What keeps you from telling him again today?
Do you dare to believe that the spring is still there, even if you no longer see it and no longer feel it?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between Jacob's well and the spring Jesus talks about?

The preacher explains that the Greek text of John 4 uses two words. In verse 6, Jacob's well is a spring that flows. When the Samaritan woman speaks of the well, she uses the word for a reservoir, a cistern where there is sometimes water and sometimes none. Jesus, for his part, promises a spring that flows up to eternal life.

What does "the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water" mean?

For Stéphane, there is a movement in John 4:14: a glass of water becomes a spring, and that spring flows up to eternal life. This water is the very life of Jesus. The day you met him, he opened a spring in you, meant to grow like the seed that produces by itself the stalk, the ear and the grain.

Can the spring God has placed in me disappear?

The preacher says that a spring does not move. It can lose some of its force, or be hidden under dead leaves, branches or rocks, but it is still there. The Lord holds nothing against you and does not accuse you: he simply says "Come to me," so that his Spirit may blow again on this spring.