seeking joy

The 2017 CLS National Conference theme is Discovering Joy in the Law. Our devotionals will concentrate on the theme of "joy" through October.

Samaritan Woman at the Well (John 4:7-18)

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

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

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

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

The woman at the well had jumped from marriage to marriage and was in the middle of jumping again when she came across the Lord in her daily routine.

Jesus did not condemn her or lecture her; instead, he offered her everlasting water. 

If we are honest, we will admit that we are like the Samaritan woman. She sought happiness through relationships, and once that happiness wore out, she moved on to the next person.

Don't we do the same thing? We are seeking worldly joy from money, status, and power, among other things. Like the Samaritan woman, we are all looking for "joy" in the wrong places. 

We are made for permanent and lasting joy. And the source of that joy is the Lord. 

What are you pursuing that will only provide temporary happiness? After Jesus spoke about being the vine and us as the branches, he concluded by saying, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." (John 15:11)

True happiness - lasting joy - comes from seeking and knowing the Lord.

We should all spend a few minutes with the Lord over the next day or week, confessing our pursuit of earthly joys and asking that we focus on Him. Nothing else will do. And may all those watching you, who desire happiness, see the true source of your joy.

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