This last November, Jesse and I had the awesome opportunity to spend nine days in Israel on a study tour.

We fully immersed ourselves in the experience. We walked knee-deep through water in underground tunnels, dressed up in ancient costumes, and ate a lot of dates, olives, and pita bread. I even hugged a goat! As one of our group leaders put it, seeing the Bible in “3D” is something I’ll never forget.

Pic by Sayla Brown

I can’t wait to season my writing with descriptions of the streets where Jesus walked, the valleys where David fought, and the quiet revelations of the Spirit when I stopped and meditated at the different sights. My prayer is that this experience I had strikes a chord with whatever you’re going through. Even though I couldn’t take all of you with me on this trip, I’d like to think that through these words you can experience some of it too.

The first day of our trip we saw a replica of what an ancient mikveh or “ritual bath” might have looked like in ancient times. These were often 200-gallon tanks of water with one set of stairs going in and another going out. Mikvehs had to be connected to a source of running water (such as a spring or river) because Jewish people used to ritually clean themselves before entering the temple or synagogue. To them, moving water meant living water. Entering the bath represented death and leaving it represented entering a new life. Mayim chayim, “living water,” where sins are forgiven and everything is left behind. Death to life.

When Jesus tells the Samaritan women in John 4:10 “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water,” he’s implying that he can absolve people from sin. He moves us from death to life. He is living, moving, active water that cleanses us from everything that makes us feel broken. He is our eternal mikveh.

How empowering is it to realize that we have access to living water? We can find complete forgiveness anywhere. Anytime. No ritual needed.

pic by Sayla Brown

God’s mercy is actively moving through you if you follow him. And guess what? It splashes onto others around you. It fills your cup continually and overflows it. It washes away impurities and nourishes your roots so you can grow. It sustains you through life.

After learning about mikvehs and what the phrase living water meant to a Jewish audience, we put headlamps on and climbed down slippery steps into a large underground cavern. Rotting clay burned our nostrils. Our tour guide had led us into an ancient water cistern.
We turned out all our headlamps and read Jeremiah 2:13. The words of the Lord echoed off the soft clay walls surrounding us:

“For my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jer 2:13)

I felt overwhelmed in that moment, standing in a dark cave, coming face to face with how generous and abundant God’s gift of life is. All the interesting facts I’d learned that day about Hebrew history, phrases, and customs came together into one very personal revelation: God brings me from death to life. I don’t have to trust in underground wells where dirty water sits in its own filth to provide sustenance for me (a direct contrast to mikvehs with running water).
My heart is continually being made clean, whole, and new through Jesus. This looks like praying for forgiveness when I’m made aware of sin. This means reminding myself that his mercies are “new every morning” (Lam 3:22¬−23). It means not basing my identity on what I do, say, or accomplish, but that I’m a daughter of a God who has the power to bring us from death to life.

After reading Jeremiah 2:13 out loud in the cave, we had a short prayer time. My father-in-law asked me to close the prayer, and my voice trembled when I spoke. Not because I was nervous, but because I had a deeper, richer picture of what God’s living water meant.
I realized in that moment that God has promised so much more for me and you than stagnancy.
He has promised us life.

John 7:38
“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'”

(Israel Pt 2 coming next!)

Sea of Galilee at Sunset. Pic by Sayla Brown