John 4:1-26 (NIV)
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
10Jesus answered her, "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."
11"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
16He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
17"I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
25The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
26Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
Questions:
1. What is the living water Jesus is talking about?
2. Jesus knew her history and still talked to her. What do you need to bring before God that is preventing you from receiving this living water?(Talk to God. You don't have to answer here.) What is preventing you from telling others about this living water if you have already received it?
3. What does it mean to worship in Spirit and in truth?
2 comments:
Q1: The living water is the Holy Spirit, that first springs up in us and wells up strong, giving us joy and the desire to serve God after we become adopted as sons and daughters.
Q2: (It's pride that keeps us from getting that first dose of living water, or the regular follow-up refreshing when we need it--whether it is knowing what we need to take to God and pridefully refusing to go to Him with it, or whether it is pridefully refusing to examine our hearts and lives before Him regularly --even daily-- to know what we should be bringing to Him to wash away in order to refresh us.)
Q3: To worship God in Spirit and in truth means to understand who God is as He has revealed Himself to us in His Word, to understand our condition before Him in light of His holiness, and to understand and live out what He has asked us in His Word, approaching Him in agreement as to where we have fallen short and as to what we need to be forgiven of. This is an ongoing journey ... there is the original rebirth and the new, clear understanding of who God is, and what He calls us in Christ, and there the ongoing understanding and acknowledgement of what He wants from us in daily living. To worship in Spirit and in truth we have to be continuously aligned with God's view of what our heart's condition is, or our worshp becomes empty.
I thank God for His great mercy towards us!
If you are reading this and you thirst for something more in life, Jesus is the only one that can quench that thirst. You may have a big home and expensive cars but nothing will satisfy you like a relationship with Jesus. Shopping won't, alcohol won't not even drugs can satisfy that hole in your heart. Only Jesus. Just Jesus.
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