Living Water

A six-week small group series. Each week walks through one section of the Expanded teaching in order, pairing an Old Testament passage with a New Testament passage so the group reads more deeply into the same ground the teaching covers. Plan for about an hour: read both passages aloud together, then work through the questions as a group. Want to go deeper on your own between weeks? Read the Teaching or Expanded version alongside this study.

Week 1 — The Well at Noon

This week sets the scene: a woman avoiding her town, and a Savior who walks straight into the one region most people avoided. We will read one more well story first, from the Old Testament, about another woman who found God's provision in an unlikely, desperate moment, before turning to the well at Sychar.

Read together: Genesis 21:14-19

Hagar is cast out, alone in the wilderness with her son, certain they are both about to die of thirst. God does not create a well out of nothing. He opens her eyes to see the well that was there all along. Sometimes the provision is not new — it is a matter of finally seeing what was already close by.

Discuss

• Hagar's well was already there; she simply couldn't see it until God opened her eyes. Has that ever been true for you with something God provided?
• What does it mean that God meets Hagar specifically in a moment of being cast out and overlooked by everyone else?
• Hagar had already tried to solve her own crisis by walking as far from her son as she could bear, so she would not watch him die. What does it look like when we try to manage a crisis alone instead of crying out to God first?

Read together: John 4:1-15

Centuries later, another outsider — a woman, a Samaritan, someone the culture would have overlooked the same way it overlooked Hagar — meets the same God at a well, in the same kind of unlikely moment.

Discuss

• Why do you think this woman came to the well alone, at noon, instead of in the morning with the other women?
• Jesus crosses a real social and religious barrier to have this conversation. Where do you find yourself avoiding people or places out of discomfort, the way the rest of Samaria avoided the Jews?
• What does it mean that Jesus offers the gift before she even asks for it?
• This whole conversation only happens because Jesus chose to travel through Samaria rather than around it. What barrier might God be asking you to walk through rather than around this season?

Week 2 — Water That Runs Out

Every well eventually runs dry. This week names the cisterns we dig instead of going to the spring, reading the Old Testament warning first and then Jesus' own words about what never runs dry.

Read together: Jeremiah 2:11-13

Discuss

• What is a "cistern" you have dug in your own life at some point — something you hoped would satisfy that eventually cracked?
• Why do you think Jeremiah calls forsaking God and digging a cistern two separate sins, rather than one?
• A cistern can look perfectly fine on the outside while it is cracked underneath, and the owner may not know until the day they reach for water and find none. Is there a "cistern" in your life you have not yet realized is already cracked?

Read together: John 4:13-15

Discuss

• What is the difference between managing thirst and never being thirsty again?
• The woman still asks for the water mostly to avoid more trips to the well — a practical reason, not yet a spiritual one. Have you ever come to God for a practical reason and found something much bigger than what you asked for?
• Jesus does not correct her practical, half-understood request. He simply keeps offering more. Where has God met you at the level of a small, practical ask and then given you far more than you knew to request?

Week 3 — Rivers, Not a Trickle

This week moves from a personal spring to something bigger — rivers flowing out, and what that water actually is. We will read the Old Testament invitation first, then the New Testament moment where Jesus stands and declares Himself its fulfillment.

Read together: Isaiah 55:1-3

Isaiah's invitation is centuries older than the well at Sychar, but it is the same offer: no money, no worthiness required, just thirst and a willingness to come.

Discuss

• Isaiah's invitation costs nothing but requires actual thirst. Why is admitting thirst sometimes the hardest part?
• What does it mean to you that this invitation was standing open for hundreds of years before Jesus ever stood at that well or that festival?
• Isaiah says to "buy" wine and milk without money and without cost — a deliberate contradiction. Why do you think Scripture uses that paradox instead of simply saying the water is free?

Read together: John 7:37-39

Discuss

• Why do you think Jesus says "rivers" rather than a single spring — what does that add to the picture?
• What would it look like this week to let living water flow outward from you toward someone else, rather than staying contained?
• Jesus makes this declaration publicly, in a loud voice, on the festival's last and greatest day — not privately or quietly. Why might a public, bold declaration matter here rather than a quiet aside?

Week 4 — Known Fully, Not Turned Away

This week sits with the moment Jesus names her history plainly — and she does not leave. We will start with the Psalms, where the same honest thirst is voiced directly to God, and then return to the well.

Read together: Psalm 42:1-6

Discuss

• Psalm 42 says the soul "pants" for God, using the same picture as a physically desperate animal. When was a time you felt that kind of thirst most honestly?
• The psalmist is also honest about feeling downcast in this same psalm. Why do you think honest thirst and honest struggle so often show up together in Scripture?
• Psalm 42 ends with the psalmist preaching to his own soul: "Put your hope in God." What would it look like for you to preach hope to your own soul this week, rather than just describing the thirst?

Read together: John 4:16-19

Discuss

• Jesus exposes her past without cruelty, and she stays in the conversation instead of leaving. What makes it possible to stay honest with God about something you would rather hide?
• How does it change the way you read this passage, knowing Jesus offered her water before He named her history?
• She answers Jesus' question with a half-truth — "I have no husband" — and He gently completes the full truth without shaming her for the omission. How does grace, rather than exposure alone, change the way you are able to hear a hard truth about yourself?

Week 5 — Worship Without Walls

This week widens the picture beyond the well to what true worship actually is. We will read an Old Testament passage about what God actually looks at, before hearing Jesus redefine worship itself.

Read together: 1 Samuel 16:6-7

Discuss

• Samuel almost anoints the wrong brother because he is looking at outward appearance. Where do you find yourself measuring "the right place" or "the right way" to approach God by outward things instead of the heart?
• Even Samuel, a prophet, needed God to correct his first instinct. What does that tell you about how easily even mature faith can default to outward appearance over the heart?

Read together: John 4:19-26

Discuss

• The woman brings up a religious debate about the right place to worship. Why do you think Jesus redirects the conversation instead of settling that debate directly?
• What does "worship in spirit and truth" look like practically, outside of a church building?
• Does anything in your own life function like "the right mountain" — a place or condition you think has to be right before real worship can happen?
• Jesus says the Father is actively "seeking" this kind of worshiper, not simply waiting for one to show up. What does it change to think of God as seeking you out in worship, rather than you having to find the right approach to Him?

Week 6 — From Shame to Sent

The final week traces what happens after she drinks: the jar left behind, and a whole town changed. We will read an Old Testament picture of what it looks like to carry good news, and then watch it happen in real time in Samaria.

Read together: Isaiah 52:7-10

Discuss

• Isaiah calls the feet of a messenger "beautiful" simply because of what they carry. What does that tell you about how God sees the person who tells someone else the good news, regardless of how ordinary that person feels?
• The passage says these feet "proclaim peace" and "proclaim salvation" in the same breath. Why do you think good news and peace are so tightly linked in this picture?

Read together: John 4:27-42

Discuss

• Why do you think John includes the detail that she left her water jar behind?
• Her testimony leads an entire town to Jesus, and then the town says they now believe for themselves, not just because of her. What is the difference between those two kinds of faith?
• As this study ends: where is your own "water jar" — something you have been carrying that living water might free you to set down?
• Looking back over all six weeks, which picture has stuck with you most: Hagar's eyes being opened, the cracked cistern, rivers flowing outward, being known fully and not turned away, worship without walls, or the water jar left behind?

Closing prayer, together

Lord, thank You for the living water only You can give. Let Your Spirit be a spring in us that never runs dry. Teach us to worship You in spirit and truth, and send us out, like her, to tell others where we found You. Amen.