John 4: The Woman at the Well

This passage illuminates the nature of Christ:  pursuit, passion, love, hope.

The Samaritan Woman isolated at the Well and her encounter with Jesus, the King of Kings was the first sermon I heard after a full year of God tugging on my heart to come to the Well of living water. (I went to church my whole life.) The questions I was asking Jesus for a few years began to illuminate in my mind and heart. Jesus was saying LOOK, I will answer, and you must be willing to listen! If you are truly seeking me you will find the answer! 

The journey to the “Well” for me was a wide path. The narrow one carved out for me by Christ was not even on my radar. I was blind to that road. Matthew 7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.”

The wide path was all I knew. For me, college was a great way to seek out  all that life could offer( a girlfriend, partying, friends, and freedom) those “wells” that everyone said were truly life giving  made you even more thirsty than the previous day. I was in a mundane existence believing I was doing what was needed to survive and thrive. All I could choose was the wide road on my own. 

In this story about Jesus, on a Thursday night in Main Hall at West Chester University, I heard his pursuit of this woman. I heard that Jesus walked out of his way and made the journey for this specific encounter. His path is narrow, purposeful, and designed with his loving and skilled hands. He also came to a woman who had to go get water alone because she was an outcast because of her life and the sin she lived in. The multiple husbands she had and now living out of wedlock made the other women avoid her. On top of that, she was a Samaritan and Jesus, a Jew, should never have talked with her! Jesus knowing her past and reputation went straight for her. The Son of God does not condemn just pursues us to justify us before God his Father in heaven.

As I sat listening to this unreal and impossible encounter I was over joyed and filled with peace, hope, and love. 

I wonder if the woman was asking questions and seeking after God. I believe she was because God chose that very hour to meet her and dialogue. Like me, she got what she asked for but she had more questions without truly listening to what was right in front of her. 

John 4:10

10 Jesus 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.”

For me this was a 4-month journey. A guy a few years older than me met me at the entrance and got me linked up with a few of his buddies. I began to go to a Monday night men’s bible study. I sat and listened to their study. The gift was in front of my eyes each day and week that passed but my heart was unwilling to accept the gift. I would constantly think at study, I know all of this and it makes sense. Then I would continue in the same cycle of living for myself.

In John 4, Verse 25-26 it says, 

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

I was the woman at the well who came face to face with Jesus and did not know it. As bright as the Sun, Christ came with an overflowing Well to offer and I went back with a day of water, tired, beat down, and hopeless. It was me asking questions, yet unwilling to listen to the answers. This lasted until I was 21 years old around Christmas time. I asked, sought, and found. Jesus faithful to his words. 

John 4:13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

At the end of the semester I went home and in prayer and crying out Jesus saved my soul and poured out the Holy Spirit to give me a new life in Jesus Christ. 

This verse was finally clear to me. The presence of Christ and his peace overflowed and from that day forward, things did not get easy but the overflow and abundance of Jesus was with me each day. 

23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Truth was now within me. I had a Spirit of life and no longer dead within. Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. This became my life verse, as my life was a new song of praise and worship to the Great I AM the Lord Almighty, Jesus Christ. 

John 4:28 The woman then left her water pot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, 29 “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” 30 Then they went out of the city and came to Him.

Just as the woman did, I left my water pot filled with absolutely nothing. Remnants of an old unfulfilled life. Still murky and dirty water. Never thirst quenching and always needing more. The pot was left dinged up, cracked, worthless. Maybe an animal would sip from it for a drink. As for me and my new life in Christ, I no longer needed to go to dead end wells. My Well was the Holy Spirit living within me to satisfy my Soul for the Hope of everlasting life in my Lord, Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Christ offers a new life that frees you to serve him and him alone. To Glorify God the father through his Son and his death on the Cross. To know His Son Jesus Christ and the greatest gift we could ever receive. Go to the Well of everlasting Love, Peace, and Hope. 

Amen!