If you knew the gift of God . . . you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. (John 4:10)
Expanded Passage: John 4:8-15
Children must learn to understand consequences. Conditional statements like, “If you do this, then this happens” safeguard them and help develop emotional maturity. Scripture uses many of the same if/then phrases to help parent us spiritually. Jesus said if the Samaritan woman knew “the gift of God,” (4:10) then she’d ask for and receive a “spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4:14).
We visited Jacob’s Well two thousand years later and drank the same cold, clear water. Afterward, walking in the desert of Mt. Gerizim, we were soon thirsty again. If you drink well water, then you will not quench your thirst for long. But the gift of God is not physical water. John 7:39 clarifies that streams of living water are a reference to the Holy Spirit. Isaiah used the same if/then phrasing: “If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,” then you will be “like a spring whose waters never fail” (58:10–11). The Samaritan woman was hungry for spiritual truth and Jesus spent time in conversation with her.
Jesus spent his ministry having if/then conversations. We can model his conversational evangelism, telling spiritually hungry people, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). That is the gift of God.
Have a spiritual conversation and allow the Holy Spirit to flow.
Priscilla Hammond is an ordained pastor and associate professor in the Benson School of Business at Southern Wesleyan University (SC).
© 2025 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
