John chapter 4, we're reading the first 30 verses. Before you read, let's pray and seek the Lord's illumination. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to You now knowing that You are that living waters. You are the one who is the light of life. In Your light, Lord, we see light. And so we pray now that You would shine light upon us by the power of Your spirit. Awaken our dull hearts, open our deaf ears. Lord, give our eyes sight that we might behold wonders and truths from Your word, and not just understand them and know them, but believe them down in the depths of our being, that we might live by them. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. John chapter 4 verse 1 to 30. Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus Himself did not baptize, but only His disciples, He left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And He had to pass through Samaria. So He came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as He was from His journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 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 the 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." The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am He." Just then His disciples came back. They marveled that He was talking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you seek?" or "Why are you talking with her?" So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the town and were coming to Him. This is the word of the Lord. Well, our passage opens today with a scene that perhaps you would be familiar with. Have you ever experienced thirst? Perhaps you've been out in the garden or on the sports field or done some hard physical labor on a scorching hot day, and the sweat's running down your forehead and saturating your your shirt. The air is sucking the moisture out of your body as the hours pass, until finally you stop your activity and you find your mouth is parched, hungry, desperate for the cool, quenching taste of pure water. And you know that feeling when you're so thirsty and you wander over to where, to the shade where you've you've packed your water, and somehow after so much effort in the sun, that water just goes down so easily. Half a liter, a full liter, maybe more, as your body urges you to feed it more and more. This is what Jesus would have been feeling like, as we see there in verse six, after He's journeyed over to Samaria to Sychar, and He's wearied, sitting by the well in the sixth hour, noon time—the Jews measured the hours from the sunrise, so the sixth hour is noon—in the heat of the day, and He's thirsty. And this experience is something that we innately know. As I said, we creatures, we run on food and water. Without it, we crave and we thirst, even having a little, a slightly too small amount to drink during the day is enough to wake you up at night, isn't it? To drive you to wander through the house and find a glass to drink. And our passage today, Jesus taps into this innate human experience, this dependence and this need for constant water intake, and He unveils an underlying spiritual reality that this physical reality of thirst speaks to us of. And we see that in the, what I would argue is the central verses of this passage, in verse 13 and 14, where in His interactions with this Samaritan woman, Jesus says, "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." This is the central statement of Christ, and it is the basis of the reality that I want us to come to grips with today. The God who created us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is a fountain of living water. Friendship with Him, union with Him, being connected to Him by faith through the work of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, is the only way to have your soul and mind filled up and satisfied. Knowing God is what our physical thirst speaks to us of. Knowing God is the only thing that satisfies the thirsty soul. What clean, fresh water is to a thirsty man on a hot day after hard work in the sun, so is relationship, communion, connection with God to us, His creatures. That's the truth. And as we look at this text, we find Jesus communicating this truth in a three-part conversation with this woman. The first part is in verses 1 to 15, and it's all about water. But before we dig in a little bit to that, I want to just point out one remarkable thing about this particular scene. Notice that Jesus in this story is engaging with a Samaritan woman who is a serial divorcee at best, serial adulterer, or possibly even prostitute at worst. That's three strikes as far as any Jew is concerned. We saw the passage explained to us, John explains to us that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Samaritans were Israelites who were half-castes. They'd intermarried with other foreign tribes, they'd they'd developed a slightly corrupted form of worship. You see that in our passage itself, where the woman says, "Jesus, are we going to worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem like you Jews say?" You see, they developed their own worship on a separate mountain. They were outcasts from the Jewish community. They weren't worshipping God properly. They hadn't married properly. They have no dealings with them. They would travel purposefully around Samaria so they didn't have to come into contact with them. Not only that, but this woman is a woman. And Jewish men never engaged with women one on one. It's scandalous. Not only that, but this woman, as I said, is a serial divorcee at best. She's had five separate husbands, and the man she's now with, number six, is not even her husband. She is unclean. She's a sinner. And Jesus comes and He offers her living water. Did you notice as we read how willing He is to offer her this? You know, He comes and asks for a drink, and she kind of is like, "Ah, I don't know about that. Don't know why you're talking to me." And He says, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would ask Him, and He would give you living water." No caveats. No requirements, except for one. What's the requirement? Ask. Right? This is astonishing. You'd think He might say, "Look, you need to get your life sorted up a bit first. You need to come down to Jerusalem, you need to sort your worship out, you need to deal with this marriage situation that you're in, then you can come to me and I I might deal with you then." But no. That is not the Jesus of the gospels. That is not the Jesus we worship. He is a God who comes down and offers to half-cast, irreligious sinners, soul-quenching, life-giving water. Just come and ask. And this is the first thing I want you to realize today. Perhaps you're here and you sense in yourself a thirst. By the way, notice this woman didn't sense it yet. Maybe you don't even sense that thirst yet. But you might think, "Oh, I'm not sure if if Jesus will accept me. I'm not sure if I can come to Christ yet. I just need to sort this thing out in my life first." But no. The offer straight off the bat in this story, the first thing we see is whatever your situation is, I don't care how messed up your life is. I don't care how bad your past was. I don't care where you come from. I don't care what sort of church experiences you've had. Jesus says, "Come to Me and ask, and I will give you living water that will satisfy your soul." Come and ask. That's the only qualification. Come and ask Christ. Now, what does Jesus mean when He starts talking about this living water? You know, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water. The woman here is clearly confused. She's like, "Well, you don't have anything to draw from this well with. How are you going to get this living water?" But if we have read our Bible at all, we would understand that the language that Jesus is using here is not confusing. Jesus is picking up on a theme that is all throughout the Scriptures. We read one example of that in Psalm 36 this morning. Psalm 36:8-9 says, "They feast on the abundance of Your house," speaking about God, "and You give them drink from the river of Your delights, for with You is the fountain of life. In Your light, do we see light." There is, according to the Scriptures, in God a fountain of living water that satisfies the human soul. And Jesus is saying here, He's picking up on that language, and He's saying, "I can give you that connection back with God. I can give you access to the river of delights that comes from God. I can give you the ability to to have access to the fountain of life." This is, as I said, the central reality that each one of us in our deepest being needs to know God. And that is what full satisfaction looks like. That is not only full satisfaction, because food and drink are these these remarkable physical metaphors. Right, when you eat something, it doesn't just satisfy you. It sustains you. It enables you to to live life. It gives you strength. So not only do you feel pleasure and joy and peace after a nice meal, you're equipped to go on with life. That's what He's speaking about here. When He when He talks all through the Scriptures about how when you come to God and feast on Him and when you drink from His fountain, you'll be satisfied. He's talking about all of those components. We know this to be true because God illustrates it for us in one remarkable place. There's a a place in the Old Testament where Moses goes up on the mountain of Sinai, and Exodus 34:28 says this: "So he was there with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights. He neither ate bread," which is impressive but doable, "nor drank water." Neither ate bread nor drank water for 40 days and 40 nights. And you might be sitting there going, "Well, how on earth did you survive, Moses?" Well, he survived because he's in the presence of God. And the eating and the drinking that we do daily to sustain ourselves and to give us the energy to to press on to the next day is speaking to us of a greater reality that is a genuine reality. If you know God, if you're in His presence, He floods you with life. So these physical things are no longer necessary. I'm not encouraging you not to eat and drink. What I'm saying is, ultimately, in the new heavens and the new earth, when we're in the presence of God, I think these these realities transform, they change. Because knowing God is what sustains us, genuinely. It's an absolute truth. But this woman talking to Jesus, she clearly doesn't have access at at the moment to this living water. That's why Jesus is offering it to her. It's not the default situation of human beings to be communing with God, to know God, to be satisfied in our soul. And that's why when she actually asks, which is astonishing. Do you notice that in verse 15? She says, "Sir, give me this water." And she does this ask completely not understanding the situation. "I don't want to have to come back to this well, Jesus, so give me this water." She's still thinking physically. And yet Jesus still responds graciously to this request by leading her to the water. And He does that by pointing out that that she doesn't have it. He asks her a question. "Go and get your husband." And what He's doing here is He's putting His finger on the thing in her life that she was seeking to find satisfaction in. Her relationships with men, specifically. I don't know what kind of crazy woman thought that she'd find satisfaction in a man, but there you go. Jesus here is showing her you're going after broken cisterns. You're going after dry wells. You're trying to to satisfy the longings of your soul at a riverbed that's full of sand. That's what God was having a go at the Israelites in Jeremiah chapter 2 about. Did you notice that? He calls them out of Egypt, makes them His own, gives them His law, gives them fellowship with Him, brings them into a land of abundance where they would be able to walk with Him and know Him. And these Israelites, they turn after other gods. They go and they start worshipping other other gods, other idols. And God says, "When you do that, what you're doing is you're turning away from this place of knowing Me, of fellowshipping with Me, of communing with Me where I will satisfy the longings of your heart, and you're going and you're trying to drink from broken wells, from bowls that are cracked, that just leak everywhere." Now, the things that we turn to to do this, because we all do this, this is the default situation of human humankind. We were born and we immediately seek to satisfy ourselves on things that never satisfy. And we do this in really two ways. They're related ways, but they're somewhat distinct. The first way is we seek to satisfy our soul in the good pleasures of life. You can it's possible that this woman, in the best case scenario, was seeking to do this. That she's just looking at marriage and going, "I want to find my satisfaction in marriage." And maybe she had, you know, a really bad husband the first one, and he left her, and so she married again, he left her, she married... it could have been something like that, where she's not kind of actively sinning in in going out and and being an adulterer, but she's just found herself in this situation where she keeps, this marriage keeps failing through no fault of her own. That's that's possible. I don't think it's probably what happened, but that's possible. And in that situation, she's still pursuing again and again and again this relationship, this good thing that God's made, this marriage, and she's trying to make it satisfy her. She's trying to make it be something that causes her to be complete. Right? We do that all the time. We take our work, which is a good thing. God created man, puts him in the garden, tells him to work, and we take our work and we and we make it everything. We're like, "Well, I'm defined by my work and I'm going to find all of my joy in my work." And then what do we find? Well, people cheat us on a deal, or I go and weed the garden and then the weeds grow again. Right? There's all these things in our work that cause it to not quite be as good as we thought it would be. We do that all through these, the the good things of life. Even if you think about it, food and drink do this same thing. We we dedicate ourselves to finding joy in food, gastronomic delights. And so we go and we feast on the the greatest things we can find, and all that happens is the next day we're hungry again. Right? It never actually does what it sets out and promises to do. But the the bigger way that we do this is that we actually pursue sinful things in order to satisfy ourselves. And this is probably what this woman's doing. She's probably an adulteress. And I say that fairly certainly because the man she's now with is not even her husband. She's given up on the whole marriage thing entirely. I'm not going to even bother now. Just go out and be with whoever I want to be with. And so she's now pursuing her lust. I'll do away with any any goodness about God. I'm going to just pursue these things out of my own sinful desires. And we do the same thing. You know, work's meant to create wealth, and we're like, "Well, I want the wealth, but I don't want to work." So I'll pursue that wealth through sinful means. I'll cheat, I'll lie, I'll gamble, I'll just unleash my greed to get the wealth that I want because I think the wealth's going to make me happy. I think the wealth is going to satisfy. We do this all over the place with wealth, with lust, with our own ego. You know, I need to be viewed as self-important, as important here. And so when someone challenges me, when someone puts me down, I'm going to just unleash my anger on them to ensure that I I come out of this on top, thinking that if I'm the the most important person in the room and I can prove it, then that'll, then everything will be okay. Everything will be fine then, I'll be happy. But I think, I think we can all testify, I think we can all say that in whenever we've gone after those pursuits in our life, at least in some instances, we've found that there's nothing at the end of it. Have you found that? Yeah? Well, it is. That's what Jesus is telling us here. And the thing is, even if you say to me, "Nope, I'm I'm running after what I want, and I'm getting it, and I'm happy," I can tell you that the reality is that it will still dry up. It's a leaky cistern, it's an empty well, and it will dry up at some point in your life or in the next. Because the end of sin is only death. The end of sin is only the wrath of God poured out on those who reject Him and separation from God's life-giving presence forever. That's that's the ultimate end of sin. So even if you live this life, and I've met, I've I've spoken to one, at least one person like this who he's doing whatever he wants, and he he assures me that it's all fine. Everything, he's all good. Even then, when you die, you will face judgment. And all the pleasures of this life, where where are they going to be when you die? Where are all the houses going to be? Where's all the prestige going to be when you die? It's gone. And all you're left with is standing before God, Him as your judge, saying to you, "What what do you have to show for your life?" And you will have nothing. You have nothing that gives you any standing before Him, any reason for Him to accept you into the joy of His presence forevermore. And you will be cast out, away from Him, into eternal torment. And that's Jesus's point here to this woman, and He's so wonderful, Jesus, because He's so able to put His finger on exactly the thing that it is for her. It might not be sex or marriage for you or relationships, it might be something else. But Jesus knows what it is. And I I pray that He'll put His finger on that for you today. That He'll identify that thing in your life that you're hungering after that will never satisfy your soul. And He puts His finger on this thing in this woman's life, and she doesn't like it at all. She's she changes the subject immediately. She says, "I see you're a prophet. Now let's talk about worship." Okay, they've talked about water. God is the the fountain of living water. Jesus is putting it on offer for her if she would just but ask. They've talked about weddings and the emptiness of trying to find all your satisfaction in weddings, and now she says, "Let's talk about worship. Are we going to worship over there or over here?" And this is actually really important, and it's not disconnected. John is is presenting this story and He's presenting a whole picture because the question we should be asking now is, "Okay, Jesus, you're saying to me that God is a fountain of living water, that I find satisfaction for my soul in communion with Him. You're saying that the pleasures of this life and the sins that I run after are empty and dry and will never satisfy my soul. So how do I live in such a way that is in that is drinking continually from this life-giving stream?" Well, the answer is this conversation about worship. Because if you think about it, to commune with God is to be in His presence, isn't it? And the the question that she's asking is, "Where can I go to be in God's presence? Where should I worship God?" Because in the Jewish mind, before Jesus came and changed everything, you went to a place to be in God's presence. You went to the temple in Jerusalem, or in the case of the Samaritans, they'd made another temple, another place for worship on a different mountain, so they didn't have to go to Jerusalem. But either way, they're both seeking a place where they're in the presence of God. And if you can imagine you've, as a Jew, you're living your life, you don't have books, you you might have a a synagogue that you can go to from time to time, but to be in this, the place where God specially says He is present and communing with His people, you have to travel all the way to Jerusalem, and you might do that three times a year. And on those moments, during those times of the year, you would experience sacrifice where you would see, ah, all those things that I've done throughout this this last three or four months where I've I've broken God's law and I felt the the shame and the guilt that's associated with that, all of them are paid for as I see the sacrifice take place. And you would have singing as the sons of Korah, hopefully, are drawing you into worship, right, bringing you into the the presence of God with the the songs of the saints. And you would have, um, you would have all sorts of experiences there, wouldn't you? You'd have to quiet meditation, as you find a a corner in the temple that's hopefully quiet because Jesus kicked out all the the marketplace people, and you can think on God, and you can be in His presence like that. And you would have times of special prayer, corporate prayer and private prayer. Right, it's this moment of special engagement with God. And why would you do that? You would do that because you understand that the presence of God is the place you want to be. It's what's so important in life. And now, so when Jesus here is saying to this woman, she's saying, "Do we worship here or do we worship there?" And He says to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews, but the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth." What He's saying is absolutely remarkable. He's saying, "You don't worship God in this place or that place. You're going to worship God anywhere and everywhere." So how do you drink from this living water? You live in continual worship with God. That's the answer. Continual, Spirit-filled, Spirit-enabled, truthful, worshipful fellowship with God. Day by day, moment by moment, in the mundane, in the chaos, in the quiet, in the joys of life, you are walking with God. And what Jesus is saying is, "That's the river that I will give you access to. That's the fountain that I will give you access to." Unbounded, unending communion with God. Now, you might be wondering how can how can Jesus bring us into this? He's just spoken about how this woman is chasing after all these other pleasures. She's not chasing after God. He's put it on offer. He said, "I can give you this experience, this life of continual communion with God. But how can He connect the two? How can He take sinful, guilty people and bring them into fellowship with God?" Now, John actually loads up a few literary cues to help us connect some dots here. It's pretty cool. There's only one other time when the sixth hour is mentioned in John's gospel. And there's only one other time we find Jesus thirsty, needing a drink. It's at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In John chapter 19, Jesus is taken to the cross. We're told at about the sixth hour, and there, hanging on that cross, Jesus experienced the full brunt of the curse of sin. And that curse is the separation from the living waters. It's the hunger, it's the thirst. It's the removal from the felt experience of communion with God. And that's exactly what He suffered. The judgment due to sinners, but also the result of sin, a thirsting that will not be quenched. And in verse 28, we hear Him crying out, "I thirst." And those standing by gave Him not a thirst-quenching water, but sour, bitter vinegar to drink. You see, Jesus can satisfy our thirst. Jesus can bring us away from our hunting over here for a drink from idols and sins and the pleasures of this world. And He can bring us into loving, continual, Spirit-filled fellowship with God that satisfies every aspect of our soul because He experienced the judgment that we deserved. He experienced the thirst that we deserved on the cross. So that was paid for. The guilt that we owe is done away with. That's how He can be so bold to come up to a a Samaritan adulteress and say, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask Him, and He would give you living waters." That's the gift of God. Free and full forgiveness, reconciliation with Him, and the ability to commune with Him continually. Now, this sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Anyone here not want to live in communion with God, in continual fellowship with Him, that satisfies all the hungers of our soul? But the Christian life doesn't always feel like your thirst has been quenched. Sometimes it feels dry. Sometimes it feels like you're far from God. You can't see Him satisfying what you feel like you need. Now, this experience is not unusual. I think it's very interesting to think about how the Psalmist speaks of these things. It's all through the Psalms, but think for a moment about Psalm 42. In Psalm 42, the Psalmist, the sons of Korah, say, "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?" You hear it, you see those themes of being in God's presence and having your thirst satisfied? But this the Psalmist here is saying, "I'm thirsty." And they then go on to say through the rest of the Psalm, "My tears have been my food day and night. They say to me all day long, 'Where is your God?' Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? My soul is cast down within me." Do you hear it? Is this guy full? Not at all. He's thirsting, he's he's in despair, he's cast down. But what does he know? He knows that the Lord is the one who can quench this thirst. And he tells himself this. He teaches himself this and he cries out to God to come and give him that renewed sense of communion and fellowship and joy that he once knew. He tells himself, "Go to God. Hope in God." And he calls God, "Come down, be with me. Let me know your presence." And you see this all through the Psalms. Some of the Psalms, like say Psalm 46, are full of someone who knows what it is. He he's in good standing with the Lord. He's he's feeling the experience. He says, "The Lord is my strength and my refuge. Therefore, I will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains are moved into the heart of the sea." He's a he's a man who knows what it means to find satisfaction in God and not the pleasures of life. He's saying, "My whole life could fall apart. My marriage could fail. I could lose my job. I could be hungry on the streets and it wouldn't matter because God is my refuge and my strength." That's a mountaintop experience. Right? And then you read other Psalms like Psalm 88, which has nothing good in it. It's all black, it's all dark, it's all despair, but there's one thing even the Psalmist in Psalm 88 knows. He's crying out to God about this situation. The thing I want you to understand is this: God is a fountain of living waters. You come to Him and He promises to satisfy. Your experience of that will vary. Some days will be dry, some days will not. But the Christian is never satisfied by a dry experience of God. The Psalmist was never satisfied. He hungered and he thirsted and he sought the Lord that he might know his presence. An illustration that may help is is that of of marriage, ironically. Those who are married, think of the the moment in your marriage, a moment in your marriage when you have felt the love and the peace and the unity and the joy that comes from that close, personal relationship. Right? The best you've ever experienced. Now, is every day like that? Not at all, right? But the thing that sets good marriages apart from bad marriages is that in a good marriage, a couple never settles for the bad days. They never go, "Oh, you know what, my my husband, he's done something against me. He said something that I just really hurt, and now it feels like there's a brokenness and there's a disunity. Ah, well. I won't, that's just how it is." That's not good, is it? That's not a good marriage. A good marriage is where you go, "Ah, there's brokenness, there's disunity here. There's a bit of discord. I'm not feeling the love. I'm going to pursue the love." Right? That's what makes a good marriage good. That's what you should do, if you're not already. And that's exactly how a Christian should live. I've sinned this week. I've grieved the Spirit, and so I feel far from God, but I know that I can come back to Him. And that's the beauty of a marriage, right? A marriage is a stable place that you can always seek the love in. It's exactly what Christ is offering here. Full and free offer. Come, come, come, I will satisfy your thirst. Yes, I know that you'll sin. I know that you'll get distracted. I know that you'll feel despondent. I know that you're weak, but you can always come. Come, come, come, and seek me. And know that one day I will make this all new. And I will bring you into perfect fellowship with the Lord. And you will know what it is to have your soul satisfied. That's my prayer for all of us today. That you would hear the cry of Jesus Christ, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would ask Him and He would give you living water that wells up to eternal life." Let's come to Him this week, for the rest of our lives. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we confess that we, like this woman, have gone astray. We've sought after the things of this world and after our own sinful desires. And, Lord, we know from Your word, and we know from our own experience that these things are empty. We pray, Lord, that You would press that truth deep on us so that at the moment of temptation, we we resist it, knowing that it is a dry spring. And Lord, we praise You and we thank You that You are a God who pursues Your people. You pursued this Samaritan woman, and You pursue each one of us even now, and you call us to come into Your presence through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and You work in us by Your Spirit so that we might know what it is to walk with You day by day. Oh, for a closer walk with you. Oh, to know the joy of Your presence. Father, work in us, we pray. Make us hunger and thirst after You. In Jesus' name, Amen.