Sitting Thus by the Well

and Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. (John 4:6)

I am often fascinated by little words and phrases that are commonly overlooked that contain surprising and sometimes significant items of great interest in the Bible. I suppose I could be accused of trying to read in more than what is there, but that is not my intention at all. However, I have noticed that a great deal of truth has been buried either in the way translations render a text or simply the common and superficial way in which most of us tend to read the Word.

When I read over this passage again this morning listening for God to talk to me through the Word in whatever way He chose, I saw this little word thus that seemed to be a bit odd compared to the way most of us would usually express ourselves. Unless I was physically showing someone how one sat while telling the story I wouldn't tend to use this word in the sentence this way. So I began to wonder what might be going on here.

I started out by checking various translations to see how they approached this and found that many of them simply ignored it and didn't put it in. But the KJV and the NASB, which are generally recognized as being a little more faithful to the original manuscripts, both used this odd phrasing. So I decided to look at the original Greek words and see what they might have to offer.

What seems to be emerging is that John is apparently trying to make a specific point that he doesn't want us to miss. The original words support the idea that Jesus was not just in the proximity of the well but seemed to be intentionally placing Himself either right on the well or at least so close to it that He simply could not be missed by anyone who might do anything related to that well. Of course it becomes quite obvious that He would want to do this when the rest of the story is looked at. But it is interesting that at the beginning of the story this little word sets up the context for what is to come.

This reminds me that nothing in Jesus life was coincidental. And while that might be easy for us to believe it also follows that anyone who is filled with the Spirit of Jesus will likewise realize that nothing in their life is coincidental either. Every encounter with other human beings becomes part of the choreography of God for their life so that God can use them as a channel through which to speak His love and demonstrate His grace to that person. And even though we may not know ahead of time how these encounters are supposed to happen, God still arranges them and then entrusts us with these opportunities to choose to listen to His Spirit and follow its promptings as to what to do and say.

I have to admit that I have noticed a few times that an encounter with some person is obviously arranged by God but that I seem impotent in the moment as to how to minister to them effectively. I find myself crying out to God to give me words but I also find a different spirit inside of me blocking me from being able to express real love, compassion or reveal the true Spirit of Jesus toward them. Instead, most of what I find for motives inside of me are self-centered, infected with religious pride and sadly deficient in true love and humility. In those moments I am embarrassed and chagrined that I do not have the baptism of the Holy Spirit that I so need to be used by God to effectively represent Him in that situation. I may have been placed near the well close enough to see the woman coming but my potential interactions with the woman are not nearly as full of hope and life-producing as what Jesus demonstrated in His encounter with her.

I do not want to remain in this frustrating condition. My heart wants to be used by the Spirit to bring life to others, not just talk about it and expostulate on it. I want to be a channel of hope, of healing, a reliable pipe or flexible tubing through which God can pump His passionate love into the lives of those starving for love like I am. That is the place I want to live, the person I want to be, but I have to confess that right now I am not there yet.

But God is not through with me yet either. I am learning enough about His heart to know that He wants me to be a clear channel for Him far more intensely than I want to. In fact, any desire on my part for this is coming from His Spirit in the first place and I am just responding to His promptings. As I continue to seek His face, to experience His love and grace in my own life and to encounter healing myself, then the tubing of my own soul that is so clogged with pain and fear and lies from my own past can become unplugged and His grace and love and truth can begin to flow through me much more freely to others.

And as that power begins to flow through me to others it will continue to cleanse my own heart and soul as it increases its flow through me. It will continue to purify the walls of my tubing like scouring the walls of my arteries removing the plaque and cholesterol that threatens to starve my own heart from life-giving blood. The blood and grace of Jesus that ministers to others through my testimony must be the very same grace that is saving and restoring my own heart.

I am currently listening to some recorded sermons by Bill Liversidge which are along the same lines as what I have been talking about here. My heart is waking up even more as I hear incredible stories of miracles and changed lives through his ministry. People are waking up to the real truth about God and are responding to the call to be baptized by the Holy Spirit the way God intended us to be. This is not a call to emotionalism or ecstasy but a call to complete humility and submission, to be used by God in any way He desires. The fruit seen in the lives of those who are responding thus is sometimes startling but always inspiring. They are suddenly becoming involved in ministry to the hearts and lives of all sorts of people around them in ways far more effective than they ever imagined possible before. But the common thread through all of these stories is that it is the power of God working through people's lives, not plans that they have come up with and then asked God to bless and make successful.

Father, You know my heart far better than I do. You are in the process of showing me more and more of the obstacles that still prevent You from using me very effectively to channel Your blessings to others. I again give You permission to flush out my pipes, to cleanse me from all resistance, to soften my heart much more and to heal all the damage and weakness inside of my soul so that You can use me much more efficiently and effectively.

Father, most of all I want to learn how to receive Your love as a real healing and cleansing element deep into the darkness and fears that still permeate my own heart. You told me this morning that one of the most effective ways to receive love is to express gratitude for it even when I don't feel like it. That is an act of faith that takes hold of the unseen and unfelt and turns it into reality that can be seen and felt. Thank-you for that reminder and keep working in my life without giving up. I know You never give up as long as there is any hope of response and I praise You for that because that is just what You are like.

I choose to trust my complete life to You today. I ask for Your protection, to surround me with Your grace, to make me much more aware of Your passionate and unconditional love for me. Clean out my ears and give me Your eye salve so that I can see life from heaven's perspective. I trust you to do all of this because I ask it in the name and authority of Your Son who gave His life to give me this privilege.

Is God True?

I am still attracted to this compelling phrase in John 3:33, God is true. I know that on the intellectual religious level this is a no-brainer. But I also know in my heart that this is the core issue at the very center of the war going on over every one of our souls. It is one thing to say with our mouth and think we believe with our mind that God is true, but when it comes right down to it, when things are going wrong, when our feelings are deeply hurt, when we are wounded at a very deep level, it is those times when that belief comes into very serious question and experiences enormous stress.

For two times now I have listed things here that I see in this passage that are presented as to what is true about God. It is true that Jesus and all who receive His testimony speak the words of God. It is true that God gives the Spirit without measure, that God loves the Son along with all humanity that has been redeemed by the Son. It is true that all things for our good are available because everything has been given to the Son and we are His special interest. It is true that as we believe in the Son that we have eternal life right now.

But then, if I am honest and am willing to acknowledge the emotions I feel stirring around in my heart when I think about these statements I have to admit that most of them do not resonate deeply within me as really true in my experience. If I get past the “right” answers that I know I am supposed to say to be religiously correct and admit what my gut-level reactions think about these things, then I realize that not all of my heart yet believes these stated truths.

Yes, I know that I have been taught to overlook those feelings in the name of faith. I am “supposed” to focus on the truth no matter how I feel, and there is certainly a great deal of truth in that statement. However there is also a subtle error in the implications that are often inferred in those admonitions that has caused millions of people to become hopelessly discouraged and finally give up on trying to be a Christian. It is assumed from these assertions that we are supposed to repress any feelings of unbelief and pretend that we believe even when our heart is not buying it. This way of trying to believe is very widespread among Christians but I believe it is actually a counterfeit of real faith and belief.

I am coming to realize that it is impossible for me to believe fully with my heart unless I am first willing to get bluntly honest about what is already in there. I am convinced that God never intends for us to repress anything that is in our heart; that would be to encourage hypocrisy and God is not into that kind of religion. God already knows fully what is in our hearts but He needs us to be honest about what is in there before He can receive permission from us to access our heart and then transform those doubts into real faith.

This is not to imply that we should go around expressing our unbelief to everyone around us. It is one thing to get honest before God and ourself about the doubt, unbelief and evil in our own heart and face it squarely confessing it to God, and it is something else entirely different to use our influence and public expressions to spread our darkness around to others causing them to become discouraged. Other human beings were never the ones designated to confess our darkness to, that is the role that Jesus came to fill. But if we don't learn the importance of getting real about what is inside of us in a very deliberate and intentional way before ourselves and before God, I don't believe it is possible to make significant progress in spiritual maturity.

I also believe that there is a time for confessing our faults to others if it is in the context of pursuing God publicly as well as privately. But what is important is the reason and the spirit behind what we are saying – that is the most important thing in developing true spirituality. We have had far too much emphasis on cultivating a culture of religious people who can spit out the right answers to all of these issues but who are out of touch with what is really going on at the heart level. This is part of the deception of sin that has infiltrated religion and stripped it of most of its power to change and save us. It is because we are not being honest about what is going on at the deepest levels within our hearts and souls that we are so frustrated with the seeming powerlessness of the Word of God.

So I believe that it simply is not enough for me to “say” that all of these things in this list are true. That may be a “profession of faith”, but it is not a real confession of belief. When my heart secretly believes one thing and my head insists that I believe “the truth”, then in reality I am making myself a double-minded man and should not expect to receive anything from God according to James. And in the words that I find right here in John 3, I will also not be able to see life and furthermore I will discover that the wrath of God abides on me. (I discussed at length this issue of the wrath of God in my last post)

Frankly I am tired of living life with subconscious wrath underlying many of the things that I do or feel. While it has been thoroughly hidden rather well for many years I am coming to realize that it has not gone away anywhere but is still abiding deep inside my heart. To say that wrath abides in me is really a rather accurate description now that I think about it, even though it is not obvious to most others and often even to myself. Over the past few years I have become more and more aware of this deeply hidden reservoir of wrath inside of me that has never been dealt with and over the past few months it has become exposed much more than it has been in years.

But that is really good in a way, even though it doesn't feel like it at all. I realize that until I get real about what is deep in my own heart and admit it to God that He can't do what He wants to do to heal me of these deep wounds that fuel this cauldron of inner wrath. And while I don't need to allow this inner wrath to spill out all over other people who may trigger its outbursts, I do have to face it squarely from the inside and be willing to come into alignment with what the Holy Spirit wants to reveal to me about myself. For I believe that one of the most important things in life is for each person to become completely honest about their inner reality in order for them to be able to give God permission to take them through a process of healing and restoration to a much better reality that they have never experienced before.

Having said all of that, I also need to affirm the truth that confessing the words of God as truth even though my heart may not presently believe them is also vitally important. If all I talk and think about is the problems and lies embedded in my heart, then I will only create an atmosphere of deeper darkness and will not be able to find hope. Just as important as getting real about what is inside of me I need to keep pumping the real truth about reality and especially about God into the atmosphere surrounding my soul. For one of the strongest principles of reality that is unavoidable is that whatever I focus on very long is what I become. By beholding I become changed.

So there seems to be a dual task for me as far as I can see it right now. There is need to come clean about what is inside and stop repressing the truth that the Spirit continually seeks to expose about my true condition. But my condition is not definitive of my identity and that is extremely important to differentiate. My sinful, unbelieving condition may be real and need to be faced honestly, but I must never allow my awareness of my sinful condition and the presence of my sinful nature to keep me from embracing the incredible truth that God has given me an identity in Christ that is totally different from the faults and sinful desires that I find within me. This is the part that confuses many people including myself, but is the point that I must come to understand more plainly if I want to dispel the darkness of discouragement.

So in addition to confessing to God and to myself the things that get stirred up from the nasty mud in my soul, I also need to flood my inner containers with the real truth as it is in Jesus. It is light that dispels darkness. When I am willing to admit that darkness is in the rooms of my mind and heart, then I can seek God to bring His light of love and truth into those dark, frightening places within me and bring about healing and wholeness where there is now fear and shame and hatred.

As I see more clearly in this passage, for my testimony to authentically affirm that God is true I need to have my heart more deeply healed in the areas where it does not feel like confirming the truths that I read here. It is only as my heart begins to honestly affirm these truths and testify to the healing, restoring work of God deep within my own soul that my external testimony will take on the ability to add my own seal to this fact. It is as my own double-mindedness is dissolved into congruity and consistency between what my head believes and what my heart feels that my testimony will take on real impact. This is what gives real authenticity and power to the testimony of those are are filled with and led by the Spirit of God. And this is the life that I pursue and want to experience fully.

God is True

He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:33-36)

As I returned to these verses this morning and remembered what I meditated on yesterday about them, I realized that I completely missed saying the main point that caused me to begin writing. The list of things contained in the last few verses I made yesterday are all points of truth that are affirmed by each person who receives the testimony of Jesus and all who relay that testimony to others.

What also seems to be the case here is that John is summarizing this chapter and re-covering the main points that he wants us to remember. He is reminding us of how we need to change our concept of God based on the revelations that Jesus came to give us and that are recorded here.

The real truth about God seen in John 3 is that:

• Jesus was sent by the Father to speak the words of God to us.

• God (both the Father and Jesus) gives the Spirit without measure; they are not stingy.

• God loves Jesus (no surprise there) and just as much loves all of us partly because Christ took all of humanity into Himself through His act of redemption (the truly amazing part).

• There is no lack of resources on God's part to accomplish all that He wants to do in and through Jesus and by extension in us. Everything has been put into the hands of Jesus, humanity's new representative and head. Therefore, all who believe and embrace their position and privilege as being in Christ and allow Christ to abide in them also have all resources at their disposal anytime Christ in them moves them to ask for them.

• Any person now who believes these things, who entrusts His life to God's Son as the designated link between our hearts and God's heart, can and will experience eternal life now.

The rest of the verse simply states the truth of reality for any who refuse to believe the incredibly good news of what God is like and what He offers for us to embrace. The only way we can have life is to be in connection with the only Source of life, there is no other option. And even though we continue to experience life here while rejecting God's offer, we are living on grace alone while storing up wrath inside our hearts that is already beginning the work of death inside of us. When our rejection is finally matured and we have sealed our own hearts forever from being able to respond to this grace, then the wrath inside will finish its work of pain and bitterness and we will suffer the second death forever.

Why is this called the wrath of God here? Is it really true that God finally runs out of love and patience and gets mad and punishes those who reject His love by burning them and torturing them? Is this the kind of God that we are supposed to love and embrace?

I praise and thank God that I have come to see that these notions are some of the most diabolical lies of the enemy of God and are patently false. What I am seeing however is that one of the reasons this wrath is called the wrath of God is because it is composed of what we originally were given by God. What I am coming to understand more clearly is that the pure and unconditional love and grace that is always offered to us by God can be corrupted inside of us, distorted, contaminated and amalgamated into what in the end can only be described as wrath. That is an amazing process of morphing from something so pure and powerful to something so deadly and powerful, but that is in fact what really happens.

Sin is the catalyst that causes the power of God's love poured out into our hearts to be contaminated by the lies we refuse to let go of. By clinging to lies about God in the face of revelations of the real truth about Him, we turn the truth of God into a lie within ourselves and the force of His love becomes the force of what now has become bitterness and wrath. This is the sad and amazing power that sin has, to transform something perfectly good into something that destroys us. But the real truth is that when we reject love with our hearts then our own choices so harden our hearts that they eventually become incapable of receiving and giving love. Then when we come into the presence of the Source of irresistible love in the day of final revelation and judgment, our hardened hearts can only experience torture, anguish, fear and bitterness because of our lost capacity to process that love. All of this coalesces into what we know of as wrath, the outbursts of rage resulting from our awareness of our hopeless and lost condition as we realize we have done it to ourselves.

This wrath will be expressed in violence against others around us and particularly towards those who knowingly assisted in our deceptions and misled us about the true character of God. The religious people who professed to know the truth about God and yet used their position and influence over us for their own advantage or pleasure will be the prime recipients of the wrath of all those who they led deeper into deception. And finally, Satan himself will be the greatest target of all the wrath of humanity on that day when it will be fully exposed the terrible work that all of his lies have accomplished in ruining the hearts of those whom God wanted to heal and draw to Himself. (see Isaiah 14:12-21)

The focal point of the great battle we are involved in between Christ and Satan is all around what we choose to believe about the character and attitudes of God. Satan has completely filled our world with myriads of lies about God and wants to completely snuff out any and all truth about Him by replacing it all with his version of reality. But God has sent His own Son into the world to revive the real truth about God that had nearly become extinct 2000 years ago and again is in danger of the same.

But God will never allow the truth of Himself to vanish from the earth completely, though Satan is hell-bent on accomplishing just that. God is bringing about a revival in the hearts of all who are listening to Him personally right now – today. The light of the real truths about God is becoming brighter and is irrepressible even though it is fiercely attacked and discredited. And even though prophecy predicts that there may be a short time just before the end when there will be a massive slaughter launched by evil men that will bring about horrific scenes that we cannot now even imagine, there will still be preserved through it all at least a small remnant of people who will then perfectly reflect the character of God to the world through their steadfast allegiance to Him.

But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death. (Revelation 12:11 NRSV)

Though the truth about God will be severely challenged it will never become extinct. In the final outcome the real truth about God will prevail and all those who have opposed it will find that their resistance to it has become the very liability that will destroy them instead of those whom they have persecuted and killed. Physical death imposed on God's loyal people is not the death to be feared. But the death that extinguishes one's life for all of eternity because of resistance to the truth about life is the death to be avoided at all costs. And the way to avoid this final death is to accept the truth about God described in these verses and allow the Spirit of God to infuse us with the very life of God.

Eternal Life

For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:34-36)

I noticed something more here this morning. A pattern of sorts is emerging yet again. There is a list here of things or privileges or abilities that describe the Son.

He speaks the words of God

He has the Spirit without measure

He enjoys the love of the Father

He has all things in His hand so He lacks no resources

Now here is the stunning truth that most of us struggle to believe.

If we believe (abide and obey), then in Christ we have all of this ourselves.

This is called eternal life.

This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. (John 17:3)

In the Hebrew way of thinking, both the word believe and obey were all wrapped up into one concept. Even though the Pharisees were becoming experts at professing religion without having it change their hearts, the original word that in this text is translated one time as believe and the next time is used as obey, is actually the same word. This is the kind of belief that is so rooted in the heart that the actions, choices and life that flows out is consistent with what we really believe and is congruent with it.

Eternal life is often confused to be the life that the saved will live in the future for all ages. But in Jesus' mind eternal life was something very different than that. He viewed eternal life as a vital relationship with the Source of life, not a time period with no end. That is why He repeatedly talked about having eternal life right now. Because any of us can begin to enjoy the eternal life that God is eager for us to experience right now if we will just allow our hearts to believe and embrace the real truth about how He feels toward us and accept the work of the Spirit in us to transform us into becoming like Him.

The New Testament is full of unappreciated expositions on what it really means to be in Christ. Many of them are so stunning that we usually tend to discount them or try to explain them into meaning something different. But when we begin to really grasp and take hold of this seriously and personally we will discover to our utter amazement that we too will speak the words of God, that we will have the Spirit without measure, that the Father is lavishing His love on us personally and that all things are now in our hands because Christ is living within us. This is the very essence and description of what eternal life is all about right here and now.

To not participate in this eternal life is to turn away from life itself. So instead of having the life of Jesus as a living spring welling up inside of us as Jesus talks about in the next chapter, we will find that inside we are containers of wrath as referred to in Romans 2. It all hinges on our personal choice as to what we will do with the offer of real salvation and grace that has been provided for us through Jesus. It is vital that we search and hunger to experience the real thing, that we are not content with the often mistaken descriptions of grace and salvation promoted by popular religions today but that we dig to find out the real truth as it is in Jesus and as revealed in the Word of God.

If we are willing to open our hearts in total honesty before God and ask Him to teach us and heal us, He is faithful to respond to that prayer and to arrange circumstances and employ all of heaven to bring us into a saving and secure relationship with Him. Everything hinges on our choices, how we respond to the offers of mercy, love and reconciliation that are offered to us by Jesus. God wants more than anything to bring us into close fellowship with Himself and His heart. The free choice remains ours to make each day. He never forces us because that would eliminate our ability to love Him.

I will not send away anyone who comes to me. (John 6:37 BBE)