Christ: Living Water for the Thirsty Soul
Since it is so broad, perhaps we can understand it through the lens of biblical theology.
Probably the most designated place in Scripture that ascribes God to be the all-satisfying source of divine delight in the Old Testament is in Jeremiah 2:13, when God was disgusted with Judah's apostasy in forsaking the all-satisfying God for broken cisterns that can hold no water.
The heart of this verse is when God refers Himself to be "the Fountain of living waters". Their sin was sacrilege and spiritually suicidal (End for which God Created the World) because when live-giving, all-satisfying, all-sustaining Living Water was at their disposal by the Fount, broken cisterns instead were their allurment. It is almost as if God is saying, "Don't you know who I am? I am the all-sustaining, all-surpassing, all-satisfying Fountain--the Living Water of your thristy souls! Drink! Drink from ME!
The fulness and reality of this Fount in Jeremiah 2:13 is realized necessarily and completely in Jesus Christ who is the thirst-quencher for the soul in John 4:9, 10. John (and Jesus) say it better than I do: "Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." In God alone there is an inexhaustible bounty of rich water for the soul that is fully realized in the Son, the Fount of Living Water.
Not only does John seek to propose Christ to be man's greatest need as water is a necessity for the replenishing and reviving of the body, but I think John adorns Christ to be the all-satisfying and all-sufficient Source of desire and bliss--Living Water for the soul. God doesn't merely give water--He in His Son is Living Water.
Let us ever drink from the Fountain! And now a hymn:
Let him who thirsts for heavenly joys,
Come unto Me, the Savior cries,
And drink at my spring-head;
Leave all your boasting self behind
For from the Saviour you shall find a glorious life indeed.
I come, O Lord, and thirst for thee
Some living water give to me,
Or I shall faint and die;
All other means my heart has tried,
All other streams are vain beside,
What flows from Calvary.
I long to taste the purple flood,
And feel the virtue of thy blood,
And gaze and tarry here;
So shall I sweetly sing and pray,
And serve thee kindly every day,
Without a guilty fear.
John Berridge (1716-1793)