You know what? We’re all thirsty people, but have you ever thought about what you’re thirsty for?”

Matt Heard: You know what? We’re all thirsty people, but have you ever thought about what you’re thirsty for? Let’s talk about it on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life. We’re here to let you know that because of what Jesus has done, God will never be angry at you again. Steve invited our friend, Matt Heard to do the teaching this week. Matt is a speaker, teacher, writer, pastor, coach, and the founder of a ministry called THRIVE.

Matt Heard: Thank you Matthew. It is a delight to be able to be here with you guys. I’m looking forward to journeying through the week and before we begin, let’s acknowledge something. I’m not the real teacher here. And I think you guys know that. So, let’s talk to him for a minute. Jesus. I want to thank you for every person within the sound of my voice. I want to thank you for your authorship of each of our lives, the way that you’re enough for whatever we’re dealing with today. And you’re wanting to speak into our journeys right now, not to equip us on the religiosity front, but to enable us to authentically grapple with our need for you and your sufficiency in the midst of that need. We want to thank you that, what you’ve authored for this week is something that’s according to what you’ve been intending for since the beginning of time, which is kind of mind blowing. But we’re going to listen together in this unique way, gathered together by technology. So, we’re asking that you speak into our lives and I’m praying this in the name of the one who is way and truth, but also life. I’m really looking forward to journeying with you guys this week, as we’re going to walk alongside a woman that lived about 2000 years ago. You’re familiar with her, and so am I, but we might be too familiar. She lived in a place called Samaria, and Samaria was a region in ancient Israel that was bordered on the north by region called the Galilee and on the south by a region called Judea and the Jews in Judea and the Galilee looked at the Samaritans with a real sense of derision and judgementalness. I know that’s a shocker to you that religious people would do that, but they didn’t like how they felt the Samaritans had become mixed breed. They referred to them as compromisers. And so, the Samaritans had a bit of a complex as it was. And this woman, she lived in a village called Sychar and she had longings, just like all of us do. Longings for security and for significance, for intimacy, it was a real thirsty aspect of her life. And in her culture and in her day, she felt like one of the best ways to quench that thirst, to address it was through men and marriage. So, she got married. Now, none of us like to be failures at anything. And we certainly don’t go into a marriage thinking we’re going to fail, but hers did. We don’t know the cultural situation. We don’t know why the marriage didn’t last, but it didn’t. So, she tried again and again and again and again, and after five failed marriages. Whether the husband died or the husband cast her out, or whether she left, we don’t know. But bottom line, she had kind of given up on the institution of marriage, but she still was looking to men to address that soul thirst that she had. Now, what that did to her in the community, remember this is not 21st century Hollywood, it’s first century middle east. So, it ostracized her. And there were a number of ramifications of that, one of them was simply when she did her daily chores. And one of those significant daily chores that everybody had to do in that day is go to the village well, and she’d go in the middle of the day when it was blistering hot, nobody else went, they usually went early morning or early evening, but the reason she went in the middle of the day is because nobody else was there. And so, she didn’t have to endure the smirks or the judgements, the sarcasm, the gossip. And as she was headed out to the outside of town and approaching the well for her daily routine, she was bummed out to say the least, that she realized she wasn’t going to be alone. As you got a little bit closer, she was bummed out even more because she saw that it was a man who was there by the well, and a little bit further, her heart sank even further because she saw that he was a Jew. So, she was pretty shocked when he spoke to her. Now, if you’ve got a Bible nearby, why don’t you grab it, John, fourth gospel, chapter four. And if you don’t have a Bible with you, I’m going to read it through and don’t put it on autopilot. You know, what we do is often we hear people reading, if there’s anything that’s important that I’m saying right now, it’s going to be contained as I’m reading this passage, verse five John chapter four.

So Jesus came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 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.) And the Samaritan woman said to him, “You’re a Jew and I’m a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) And Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is, it 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?” And Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I 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 won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Now you’re already sensing a theme here. And the theme is soul thirst. Now I’ve heard this passage talked about a lot. A lot of people think the reason that John included this passage is to teach us how to have dialogue with unbelievers because Jesus developed a conversation with a woman, established common ground, all that. There are great principles in that. That’s all good to look at, but going deeper, this passage that we’re going to be camped in all week is about sehnsucht. Some of you will think I just sneezed, I didn’t. It’s a German word. I learned it from CS Lewis. It’s a word that’s nuanced, it’s powerful. It means longing, yearning, ache, desire, heart hunger, soul thirst. I mean, the list goes on and on, bottom line sehnsucht is what Lewis referred to regarding that thirst that’s in all of us, it’s a thirst for more than just surviving. And Lewis actually talked about how sehnsucht had accompanied him, his whole life. He remembers back when he was about six years old and his family moved to a big spacious house on the outskirts of Belfast, Ireland. It was called The Libero House. And if you’re a CS Lewis fan, you know, it is by the nickname, Little Lea. And he said, from the house and the grounds around it, I could see the Castlereagh Hills in the distance. And he said they became a symbol for something in my journey. They would evoke something in me that they wouldn’t satisfy. They taught me longing and sehnsucht. And he said it was my sehnsucht that accompanied me throughout my journey. He left the church shortly after that, he became an atheist. And, but then that began, the ice began to thaw and from atheism, he went down a dark path of the occult and sensuality. And he was trying to address his sehnsucht, but he said his sehnsucht stayed with him, as he began to come out of that darkness, and to adeism, theism, and then his final embrace of Biblical Christianity. And he said, throughout it, my sehnsucht accompanied me and kept bringing it back. Now, when I talk about longings, I’m not referring to, my desire to be an NBA basketball player or a concert pianist, or CEO of a company. I’m talking about stuff that we all share together. Things like significance and identity and love, intimacy, dignity, security, meaning acceptance, purpose, Shalom, wholeness, impact, connection, destiny, influence. We all have a thirst for belonging, for joy, for goodness, truth, beauty, justice, triumph, freedom resolution. I mean, the list goes on and on. And you might not hear much about those words in church, but Hollywood knows about those words. In fact, every movie that has ever impacted you, I mean, other than maybe Dumb and Dumber has sehnsucht, it has those longings that it’s tapping. And it’s not just movies, music. I’ve actually got a playlist on my phone and the title of it, is sehnsucht. And it is hours of songs that are tapping various longings. One of the songs on there, I mean, it’s just brilliant lyrics. John Mayer has a song called Something’s Missing, and his chorus is.

Something’s missing and I don’t know how to fix it. Something’s missing and I don’t know what it is. No I don’t know what it is.

That’s kind of where that woman at that well was, is she had something missing and she thought she knew how to fill that longing, how to quench that thirst. And Jesus said, if you only knew, you’d ask me. So, you know what we’re going to do this week? We’re going to ask him. We’ll come to him with our thirst. And let’s see what he says about us, identifying our loneliness and making sure that we’re grappling with them underneath the illumination and the truth of the word of God. And as a result, I hope you thrive today.

Matthew Porter:
Thanks Matt. That was pastor and author, matt Heard teaching us today and he will be here all week.. So, we hope you’ll join us again tomorrow. Well, today is the first day of November. So, you know what that means. Christmas decorations throughout every store and it’s too early, right? Like, let’s do Thanksgiving first. Well, I guess we’re getting in an early start as well because we have a really cool booklet that will help you prepare for the Christmas season. It’s a newly reprinted collection of Steve’s writing, some familiar, some not as familiar. And it’s all in the real meaning of Christmas, the incarnation of God in Christ. The booklet also includes Scripture and devotional questions, to help you quietly focus and reflect on the impact of Christ’s coming. Listen, get it now in order to have it in time for December, just call 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] and ask for that booklet. If you’d like to mail your request, send it to

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