Week 1: The Real Craving
John 4:1–26
Every one of us is thirsty. The problem is that we keep turning to things that were never able to satisfy us in the first place.
I just started a 6-week series with the young adults at my church called “Better Than Sex: Finding What You Truly Crave.” I am going to update/revise my teaching notes and post it here with the hope that you find it helpful.
This week, we’re going to start with one simple question:
What are you really craving?
Every One of Us Is Thirsty
The Bible has a lot to say about the challenging issues facing our culture, and the church shouldn’t be afraid to talk about them. One of those subjects we probably don’t talk about enough is sexuality.
That’s why we’re spending six weeks looking honestly at what the Bible says about sex, sexuality, relationships, desire, temptation, and the gospel.
But before we say anything about sex, we need to go deeper.
What is underneath our sexual desires? What are we really looking for?
John 4 gives us a fascinating picture of a woman who was looking for something that she couldn’t seem to find. She was thirsty.
And so are we.
The problem is that we often try to satisfy our thirst with things that were never designed to satisfy us. Jesus offers something completely different.
He offers living water.
The Scandal of Jesus at the Well
John 4 tells us about Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman. To understand how remarkable this encounter was, we need to understand something about the relationship between Jews and Samaritans.
After Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC, much of the population was deported and replaced with people from other conquered territories. Over time, the people living in the region became ethnically and religiously mixed. The Jews regarded the Samaritans as religiously compromised, and there was deep hostility between the two groups.
Many Jews would take a longer route around Samaria rather than travel through it.
Jesus went straight through it.
And then He stopped at a well and began talking with a Samaritan woman.
This was remarkable. Jesus was crossing ethnic, religious, social, and gender boundaries to engage with someone most respectable Jewish people would have avoided.
But Jesus wasn’t finished. He was about to expose the deepest thirst in this woman’s soul.
What Is “Living Water”?
Jesus tells the woman:
“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.”
—John 4:13–14, ESV
What does Jesus mean by “living water”? Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus uses similar language when He invites thirsty people to come to Him and drink. John explains that Jesus was speaking about the Holy Spirit (John 7:37–39).
The living water points to the life that God gives through His Spirit. Jesus is the giver of the living water, and the living water satisfies something that physical water never can.
It satisfies the deepest longings of the human heart.
But before Jesus gives this woman the living water, He puts His finger on the broken places in her life.
The Danger of Drinking From Broken Wells
Jesus asks the woman to call her husband. She tells Him that she doesn’t have a husband. Jesus responds by telling her that she has had five husbands and that the man she is currently living with is not her husband.
Jesus isn’t bringing up her past to humiliate her. He is showing her that He knows her completely. And He wants her to see that the relationships she has been pursuing cannot give her what her soul ultimately needs.
This is one of the great problems with sin:
We look to created things to give us what only the Creator can provide.
Sex is a good gift from God. From the beginning, God designed sexual intimacy to exist within the covenant of marriage between a husband and wife.
The problem isn’t that we have desires. The problem is that we can take legitimate desires and pursue them in illegitimate ways—or ask them to satisfy a hunger they were never designed to satisfy.
We start drinking from a broken well. And broken wells don’t satisfy.
The Massive Danger of Ongoing Sin
Sin promises satisfaction. But sin always overpromises and underdelivers.
First, sin produces shame and guilt. David describes his experience with unconfessed sin in Psalm 32:
“For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”
—Psalm 32:3–4, ESV
There is a heaviness that comes with hiding sin. We may be able to hide our sin from other people, but we cannot hide it from God.
Second, sin can cause us to become spiritually stuck. Hebrews 3:12–13 warns us about “the deceitfulness of sin.” Sin doesn’t usually announce, “I’m going to destroy your relationship with God.” Instead, it says, This will make you happy. This will make you feel better. You deserve this.
But the longer we listen to sin, the harder our hearts can become.
Third, our sin affects other people. Paul writes, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals’” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Our spiritual lives are never completely private. What we love, what we pursue, and how we live eventually affects the people around us.
And that’s why the answer isn’t simply, “Try harder.”
We need something better.
Only Jesus Has What Your Soul Craves
Jesus tells the woman:
“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.”
—John 4:13–14, ESV
Our souls are thirsty. And we spend enormous amounts of energy trying to satisfy that thirst.
We look for satisfaction in sex, pornography, dating, relationships, social media, food, money, shopping, work, achievement, entertainment, approval, and control.
None of these things is necessarily evil in itself. But none of them can bear the weight of being our ultimate source of satisfaction.
Only Jesus can do that.
Our Hearts Are Restless Until They Rest in God
I’ve recently been reading about Augustine of Hippo, one of the most influential Christian thinkers in history.
Augustine wasn’t always a Christian. He spent years pursuing pleasure, relationships, status, intellectual achievement, and philosophy. He had a mistress for more than a decade and fathered a son outside of marriage. His mother, Monica, prayed for his conversion for years.
Eventually Augustine came to a point of deep spiritual anguish. One day, while sitting in a garden, he heard what sounded like a child’s voice saying, “Take up and read.” He picked up Paul’s writings and read a passage calling him to turn away from sinful desires and put on Christ.
Augustine eventually found what he had been looking for. He famously wrote:
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
That’s the heart of John 4.
We were made for God.
And until we find our satisfaction in Him, we will continue searching for something else to fill the ache inside us.
What Water Have You Been Drinking?
Here’s the question I want you to wrestle with this week:
What water have you been drinking?
What do you turn to when you’re lonely? When you’re bored? When you’re stressed? After rejection? After a bad day? When you’re anxious, angry, or exhausted? When you’re alone at night? When you’re scrolling on your phone?
We all have triggers. And if we aren’t careful, those triggers can send us running back to the same broken wells.
So don’t just ask, “What am I doing?”
Ask the deeper question:
“What am I hoping this will give me?”
Maybe it’s comfort. Maybe it’s acceptance. Maybe it’s control. Maybe it’s escape. Maybe it’s intimacy. Maybe it’s pleasure. Maybe it’s significance. Maybe it’s relief.
Once you identify the behavior, go one level deeper and identify the craving underneath it.
If Jesus Satisfies Us, Why Do We Still Sin?
This raises an important question. If Jesus really satisfies our souls, why do Christians still sin?
Because becoming a Christian doesn’t mean every sinful desire immediately disappears.
Paul describes the ongoing battle in Galatians 5:17:
“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.”
There is a battle taking place within us.
The Christian life isn’t about pretending that temptation doesn’t exist. It’s about learning to turn away from the things that promise satisfaction and turn toward the One who actually satisfies.
And that means we need more than willpower.
We need a greater love. We need a greater pleasure. We need Jesus.
As John Piper puts it:
“The fight of faith is a fight to feast on the beauty of Christ, so that the taste of sin is broken by the superior taste of the glory of God.”
That’s what we’re after—not merely removing something, but replacing it with something infinitely better.
The Scandalous Grace of Jesus
Now go back to the woman at the well.
Think about what Jesus knew about her: five previous marriages, a current relationship outside of marriage, a complicated past, and a complicated present.
And yet Jesus deliberately sought her out.
He knew everything about her. He knew her past. He knew her sin. He knew her shame.
And He still went looking for her.
That’s the scandal of grace.
Jesus doesn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up before He comes to us. He comes to us in our brokenness and offers us something we could never provide for ourselves.
Forgiveness. New life. The Holy Spirit. And Himself.
The woman came to the well looking for water.
She encountered the Savior.
Don’t Just Hear It. Do It.
It’s possible to read this article, agree with everything I’ve written, and then go right back to living exactly the same way.
So don’t do that.
Take an hour this week. Get alone with God. Open John 4. Then work through these four steps.
1. Recognize Your Triggers
Before you can change what you run to, you have to notice when you run.
When am I most likely to return to my broken well?
- When I’m lonely
- When I’m bored
- When I’m stressed
- After rejection
- After a bad day
- When I’m anxious
- When I’m angry
- When I’m exhausted
- When I’m alone at night
- When I’m scrolling on my phone
What is your biggest trigger?
2. Name What You’re Really Craving
When that trigger hits, what do I usually run to?
Sex or pornography? Dating or relationships? Social media? Food? Money or shopping? Work or achievement? Entertainment or gaming? Approval from others? Control?
Then ask the more important question:
What am I hoping that thing will give me?
Don’t stop at the behavior. Go underneath it. What is your heart actually looking for?
3. Replace, Don’t Just Remove
Jesus doesn’t simply tell us to stop drinking from the wrong well.
He offers living water.
Willpower alone won’t carry you. You need somewhere real to turn when the craving hits.
Try this:
STOP → NAME IT → TURN TO JESUS
STOP. Don’t immediately give in to the craving.
NAME IT. Ask yourself, What am I really wanting right now, underneath this desire?
TURN TO JESUS. Ask Him to satisfy what you’re really looking for.
Then pray. Ask God to decrease your affections for the things that have captured your heart and to enlarge your affections for Him.
Worship Jesus. Read Scripture about who He is. Sing worship songs. Thank Him for what He has done for you.
Don’t expect this to happen overnight. Your heart may have become desensitized to the beauty and glory of God through years of pursuing other things. Learning to treasure Jesus again may take time.
But keep going.
4. Don’t Fight Alone
You probably won’t win this battle in isolation.
You need someone who knows you well enough to ask hard questions—and who actually will ask them.
Choose someone you trust and say:
“Will you ask me sometime this week how I’m doing with this?”
Don’t underestimate the power of bringing something hidden into the light.
Sin thrives in secrecy. Community brings accountability, prayer, encouragement, and grace.
Your Commitment This Week
Take a few minutes and write down your answers:
What am I really craving?
What is my biggest trigger?
When that trigger comes, I will STOP, NAME IT, and turn to:
Who is the person I will talk to, and when will I talk to them?
Remember
“Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.” —John 4:14
Jesus doesn’t merely tell us to stop drinking from broken wells.
He offers us living water.
So here’s the question I want you to carry with you this week:
What do you need to let go of—and what would it look like to turn to Jesus instead?
Your deepest craving is pointing somewhere.
The question is whether you’ll keep trying to satisfy it with something that can never satisfy—or whether you’ll come to Jesus and drink deeply from the living water He offers.
Jesus is better.
MichaelWallenmeyer.com 