Blow the Dam: When You’re Suffering Divine Dehydration

Joshua Ryan Butler

6 min read ⭑

You’re going to die soon. I woke with the thought blaring in my head. It was freaky! I couldn’t get it out. Whose voice was it? God’s? The devil’s? My own subconscious’s? I wasn’t sure. I was on a retreat with our leadership team. What was intended to be rest was now flooded with fear. I wanted to discern the voice but felt a major block; I couldn’t make sense of it. Where do you go when you feel blocked from the life-giving presence of God?

We drove by Hoover Dam once on a family road trip. It’s massive! Nestled along the Colorado River, the dam is built smack dab in the southwestern desert, with enough concrete to pave a road from San Francisco to New York. It’s impressive, using arch-gravity technology and engineering techniques never tested before the dam’s construction in the 1930s. It was expensive — about a billion dollars in today’s terms — involving thousands of workers and costing almost one hundred lives. We were a few of the seven million tourists who visit every year.

I want you to do an imagination experiment with me . . .

Gonz DDL; Unsplash

Imagine you live downstream from Hoover Dam. Your once-glorious civilization was built on the Colorado River, with abundant agriculture and plenty of drinking water. There’s a reason ancient civilizations were built along rivers: Water brings life. Then these Hoover engineers came and blocked up your water supply, not allowing enough to get through. Crops shriveled. Citizens were thirsty. Your civilization began crumbling.

That’s a picture of our lives blocked from the presence of God. In John 7, we discover that we were made for abundant life in the glorious civilization of the kingdom of God. But sin is an obstacle — like a dam — cutting us off from the river of life. Yet Jesus has come to blow the dam. No, I’m not saying he’s an ecoterrorist (lol!). I’m saying he’s come to remove the barrier that’s blocking us from the presence of God so the river of life can rush back in again. I’ll share more about what happened with that voice I was hearing, but I have good news if you’re suffering from divine dehydration like I was: Jesus is a thirst quencher. He’s come to bring us water in the wilderness.

Bring Your Thirst

“On the last and greatest day of the festival,” John tells us, “Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.’” Which festival? It’s the Feast of Tents (or Tabernacles). This was like a national camping trip, where the people spent a week living in temporary booths (like tents) they constructed. Can you imagine your whole nation going camping together? They did this to remember their years in the wilderness, when they were a civilization with no river. When Israel left Egypt, there was no water in the desert.

They wanted to enter the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey (and water!). But because of their rebellion, they were cut off for thirty-eight years and couldn’t enter. The walls of Jericho were like Hoover Dam, blocking them from the river of life they were made for.

So they cried out, We’re thirsty! We’re going to die! We’ve got no water! They cried out and God answered: “Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.” God sustained his people on the way to their future home.

God hydrates his thirsty people.

God can give you water in the wilderness. Do you find yourself crying out, God, I’m gonna die out here? Maybe you’re grateful he got you out of Egypt: out of the relationship that was killing you, the addiction that enslaved you, the enemy’s lie that oppressed you. Yet you’ve still got to live in the wilderness of this fallen world, where loneliness leaves you exhausted, where chemotherapy shrivels your body, where you’re not sure how you’ll pay your water bill.

We’re not to the promised land yet. The land of milk and honey is coming, with streets of gold and a river of life. Yet on the way there, you can cry out to God with your thirst in the desert.

Jesus says he can bring you “living water.” That phrase was used to describe water that was moving.Rivers and streams looked alive, with energy and vibrancy. They brought vitality to the land, with abundant crops and fresh drinking water. Ponds and puddles, in contrast, were stagnant, collecting leaves, feces, and disease.

Still water was dead; moving water was alive.

It’s powerful to see a community receive clean water. My friend Katherine is a Kenyan leader bringing clean water to her region. She says, “Water is foundational for life.” It’s a foundation for health: Waterborne diseases are eradicated. For education: Hydrated kids can concentrate at school. For the economy: Villagers who formerly walked miles to get clean water have new time to invest.

Our church partnered with a slum community called La Limonada. The church there had been crying out to God for clean water. When it arrived, the people were ecstatic: Local health skyrocketed; education improved; worship was emboldened. God answered their prayer.

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“You don’t need money for this living water. You don’t need to earn it or deserve it. All you need to do is bring your thirst to Jesus.”

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Katherine was right: Water is foundational for life. Jesus’s water is alive. “By this [living water] he meant the Spirit.” Christ’s Spirit isn’t stagnant; the Spirit is rushing to bring vitality and abundance to your life. Not only does God have life; he also is life — and shares his life with you by his Spirit. The Holy Spirit is foundational for life. Jesus wants to restore you to health, educate you in his wisdom and make your life fruitful — by reconnecting you with the presence of the living God.

You can build the civilization of your life on the river of his Spirit. You can be like the late Chris Farley’s Matt Foley (I live in a van down by the river!), making your home on the banks of God’s presence. When you plant the tree of your life there, his love, joy, peace, patience — and other fruit of the Spirit — come bursting off your branches. Even in the wilderness, God can make you fruitful.

All You Need Is Need

How do you get this water? “Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.’”Jesus is echoing Isaiah 55 here, where God cried out, Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

You don’t need money for this living water. You don’t need to earn it or deserve it. All you need to do is bring your thirst to Jesus. You might think, I’m not good enough for this water. I haven’t performed enough, worked hard enough, cleaned myself up enough. You don’t need to! It’s all about grace. The only requirement is thirst.

All you need is need.

It’s fascinating: Usually the thirsty cry out for water, yet here the Living Water cries out for the thirsty. That term “cried out” (krazō) comes from the sound of a raven’s cry: caw, caw! The association? To “cry out loudly with an urgent scream or shriek, using . . . ‘shouts that express deep emotion.’” That’s Jesus crying out gutturally for you. You may have thought Jesus is waiting for you to cry out to him, but he’s already been crying out for you. He’s on your side. The gospel isn’t about you going out to search for him; he’s already come to search for you. He descended to walk our dusty streets. He went to a cross to quench your thirst. He sprang up from the grave like a fountain to fill you to overflowing. God delights to give you his presence. Jesus rejoices to hydrate you. The Spirit loves to give you life.

You can come to the One who’s already come for you. Why don’t we come? Why don’t we bring our needs? The Isaiah 55 passage continues: “Why [do you] spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” God offers better stuff for free, but we’re spending our time and energy chasing other things. We don’t come to him, because we’re going to substitutes.

As a kid, I once ran inside thirsty. I’d been playing outside in the summer sun and was dehydrated. I flung open the fridge and saw a two-liter of Orange Crush soda. I filled up a large glass and crushed it. Still thirsty! I tried a glass of Pepsi. Still thirsty! A&W Root Beer. Still thirsty! My mom saw me confused and explained: Soda tastes good going down, but leaves you thirstier. You need water.

Are you running to things that just make you thirstier? Running to your Instagram feed to quench your thirst for human approval? Climbing the career ladder in your search for significance? Running to that relationship thinking, he looks like a cool drink of water! Yet he’s treating you badly and leaving you thirstier? This is like trying to hydrate on soda, coffee and Red Bull.

The substitutes taste good going down, but leave you thirstier.

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Joshua Ryan Butler is a teaching pastor with the Willamette family of churches in the Portland area and the author of five books, including his latest, God is On Your Side: How Jesus is For You When Everything Seems Against You.  Joshua and his wife, Holly, along with their three children, enjoy spending time with friends over great meals and exploring the scenic beauty of the Pacific Northwest. For more information, visit joshuaryanbutler.com and IG@joshuabutlerpdx

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Taken from God is On Your Side: How Jesus is For You When Everything Seems Against You by Joshua Ryan Butler. Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of Penguin Random House Christian Publishing Group.

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