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Written by Kate Powell
The longer you sit with the words of Jesus, the more you realize—He’s not just offering helpful advice.
He’s offering an entirely different way to live.
There’s the way of the world… and then there’s the way of Jesus. There are many ways to live in this world… but only one leads to a life that actually fills you.
Sometimes we can even come to the Bible like we are reading a self-help book. And while self-help books can be resourceful, they are often filled with tactics to do and practices to perform. They focus on what we can produce, fix, or improve.
But these books’ main focus is on the reader/user being the one who generates the outcome. “Just make these few changes and you will live a better happier life.”
The pressure is all on us to figure it out, do the thing well, and therefore I am promised a better life If I just follow these steps…
The problem is, anything that doesn’t point us to the source of life runs a huge risk of failing or at the very least, stressing us out completely.
Jesus doesn’t offer us a list of strategies to manage our lives better. He offers us Himself.
Throughout Scripture, He uses metaphors and stories to describe His way of life. And as we lean into His red letters, a pattern begins to emerge:
His way doesn’t drain you—it fills you.
It brings freedom from striving, rest in the middle of chaos, and a peace that isn’t tied to your circumstances, but anchored in Him.
Many of us are living like drains—constantly emptying, constantly striving, constantly running dry.
But Jesus invites us to become something entirely different.
Not a drain… but a fountain.
Let’s dive into the gospel of John to discover what it could look like to navigate life as a fountain instead of a drain.
When we open the Gospel of John, he actually tells us his purpose for writing. In John 20:31, he says:
“These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.”
When John says, “these are written,” he’s referring to everything he has recorded—the teachings, the miracles, and the personal encounters with Jesus throughout the book.
For 20 chapters, John is intentionally highlighting all things Jesus… with one goal:
That you would believe—and have life in His name. Not just information. Not just inspiration. But LIFE.
John isn’t simply documenting what Jesus did—he’s revealing who Jesus is, so that you can experience a completely different way to live.
A fuller way. A better way. The way of Jesus.
If the goal is life in His name…then we have to ask the question,
“What kind of life is Jesus actually offering?”
Because it’s not surface-level. It’s not temporary. And it’s not self-generated.
Jesus defines it for us in John 7:37–39.
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, “From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.”
The Apostle John mentions the last day of the festival to be “great” and the most important. This was the Feast of Tabernacles which was a celebration that was observed where the priests brought water from the Pool of Siloam to pour out from a golden pitcher on the altar to remind everyone of how God miraculously provided for a thirsty Israel in the wilderness.
But on the last and eighth day, there was no pouring out of water. There was no feast.
Jesus wanted to signify that this was the last time Jesus would spend in Jerusalem before the Passover of His death. This was the last time He would speak to many of them before His crucifixion.
Then, Jesus gives us an incredible invitation. He says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.”
Jesus identifies with the condition of the human heart. He sees the pain, the weakness, the exhaustion.
It’s like when someone has been dealing with awful symptoms but doesn’t have a diagnosis and then finally, it gets named. There’s a strange kind of relief in simply knowing what you’re facing.
In the same way, Jesus is recognizing that something is missing. He is not only calling out to those who are worn out; he is acknowledging that there is a “lack of.”
Notice what Jesus says to do after he identifies his audience. Jesus says to “Come to me.” That means I’m not going to a place. I’m not going to a book. I’m not even going to a routine. I’m going to a person.
There is a deeply relational reality here. I’m not going to church. Not to my spouse. Not even to my Bible as an end in itself.
I’m going to Jesus. Because Jesus is the source of life. He is the source of nourishment.
Recently, I went to my church’s women’s retreat. We had a guest speaker—an author who teaches journaling the Word of God as a spiritual practice. It was fascinating to see how she connected the metaphors in Scripture and helped us process our lives through the truth of God.
But in the very first session, she did something simple… and unexpected.
She invited us to just sit. To be still in the presence of God. To listen for His voice. Then she set a timer.
Thirty-five women sat in complete silence for four full minutes.
Afterward, we broke into small groups to share what we experienced. For some, the four minutes flew by. For others, it felt like the longest four minutes of their lives.
But almost everyone said the same thing:
It was the most calm and peaceful they had felt in a long time.
One woman said, “I don’t think I’ve ever done that.” She shared that she talks to God often—but usually while she’s moving, doing, multitasking. She was surprised at how calm her spirit became just by being still.
And in that quiet moment, she sensed God say to her,
“I delight in you.”
She came out of that brief encounter with craving more.
As followers of Jesus, we must get increasingly comfortable in learning how to sit still in the presence of God with the expectation to experience Him and hear him speak to us!
Jesus continues on to say,
“Rivers of living water will flow from their innermost being.”
“Innermost being” translates to “belly, womb, or stomach.”
Jesus wasn’t just talking about something coming into you. He was talking about something flowing out of you, too. Which means, you were never meant to live like a drain. A drain is always emptying, always giving, but never being filled back up. It runs dry. It gets exhausted.
But Jesus is saying, you’re not a drain, you’re a fountain. You become channels of a continuous flowing river. Not a drop. Not a trickle. Rivers.
It’s not just about receiving from Him; it’s about being so filled by Him that it overflows.
He satisfies your thirst, and then that satisfaction doesn’t stay contained, it spills out into the people around you. So now you’re not striving to pour out what you don’t have- you’re simply living from what He’s already poured in.
Because when you come to Jesus, you don’t just get filled—you begin to flow. In verse 39, Scripture continues:
“But this He said in reference to the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Jesus is describing the person of the Holy Spirit as an internal, overflowing source of life, a constant nourishment, and a constant refreshment.
This outflowing life and abundance comes in and through the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. This speaks of an experience that belongs to those believing in Him.
So, my friend—the one I mentioned earlier—shared that in those four minutes of silence, she felt an internal peace and stillness she hadn’texperienced in months.
What she was sensing was the gentle stirring—the movement—of the presence of the Holy Spirit within her.
And when those four minutes were over, she walked away feeling noticeably different… lighter, calmer, and more at peace than when she went in.
Brothers and sisters, in just three versus, Jesus tells us that the Lord’s desire for us is to come to Him, believe in Him, and be filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit so that His life doesn’t just fill us—but overflows from us like rivers, turning us from empty drains into life-giving fountains.
So, every morning when I wake up and I feel the pressure and the demands of the day, I am breathing deeply and soaking in this truth for my life and soaking in the reality that I am a daughter to my Heavenly Father, a sister to Jesus Christ and a temple and dwelling place of the Holy spirit of the living God.
The pressure is removed from me to have a great day. I don’t have to manufacture my decisions on my own. I can relax back into the person and the work of the Holy Spirit as he rushes in with living waters to renew me, to rejuvenate me, to restore me from a well that never runs dry. As he rushes in with his love, his wisdom, his discernment, and his direction.
I want to encourage you: wherever you feel dry, overwhelmed, or spiritually exhausted, come to Jesus. Open your heart. Allow the Spirit to fill you, and watch how His living waters flow not just into your life, but through you, to refresh others.
