Points of Contention

The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." (John 4:19-20)

I have been noticing all through this story that Jesus has treated this woman with the unexpected. He has steadfastly steered away from bringing up points of difference between them and has instead treated her with the most kindness possible. Even with full knowledge of her moral situation back at home He has never used His advantages over her to cause the slightest insinuations against her. He only stated the facts of her life as a means of highlighting how much He was not saying about her.

This is in stark contrast to the way most everyone I know including myself, might treat this woman. If they came upon a woman like this and had knowledge of her weak position, they would either exploit her and try to create a relationship with her for their own pleasure or they would feel compelled to point out her sins as a way of making themselves look better and to induce more guilt in her heart.

Many Christians take for granted that the way people are supposed to be led to repentance is by highlighting their sins, by exposing them and enforcing upon them a sense of enormous guilt until they are so afraid of punishment and wrath to come that in fear they turn to God for deliverance. This has been the standard approach in Christianity and in fact other major world religions as well for centuries. Fear has been the main approach for producing what people believe is obedience – conformance to a list of rules and moral standards. If people don't conform enough for our satisfaction we look for ways to make them feel more guilty because somehow we believe that guilt is the best way to induce repentance.

But what I have been learning to my amazement over the past few years is nearly exactly the opposite. Even though I was raised squarely in the middle of this kind of religion and being treated with this carrot and stick approach, I am learning that God actually relates to all of us very different than the way most of us treat each other in the name of Christ. And while there is certainly a lot of guilt and condemnation and fear present in our minds and hearts when we learn truth, it does not necessarily follow that those feelings are being placed there by God, imposed upon us to strong-arm us into succumbing to His authority through force. If that were true, then why didn't Jesus use that tactic when speaking with this woman who clearly could have been a prime candidate for reproof and correction?

But Jesus does not approach us with condemnation trying to induce fear of wrath to come as the means of attracting us to Himself. He does not need to, in spite of our false assumptions about Him. He is not looking to highlight everything we are doing wrong, all the ways in which we are out of sync with perfection and holiness. That can happen on its own. This is one of the most difficult things that my heart struggles to grasp about God. In spite of all that my mind has learned about His ways over the past few years it seems that my heart in some respects still reacts to Him based on very outdated and disproved theories about how God feels toward me.

What I see in this woman's response to Jesus at this point in the conversation is that she moves toward the more typical way that religious discussions are often carried on. She wants to bring up points of contention to get Jesus' opinion about them. That is the kind of debate that I am very familiar with for most of my life. When the subject of religion comes up it seems that the first questions out of our mouth concern the differences that we have with other people's opinions and beliefs. We want to know what makes them different instead of what we share in common.

Why do we do this? Or is the question itself even misleading? Is it simply because sin has wired us to be controversial from the get-go? Is our picture of God so rooted in conflict and fault-finding that it is inescapable to view religion in any other way? Obviously the world is filled with sharp divisions all based on differing opinions about what is true and what is necessary to get right with God. And I am certainly not saying that it is not important to know what is true. But why this knee-jerk bent toward focusing on what separates us from others instead of creating an atmosphere of attraction that will encourage bonds of sympathy and mutual respect?

I am personally hesitant to insist that this woman was only using this question as a means of sidestepping her personal discomfort that was stirred up by Jesus' revelations about her moral situation. While I certainly don't discount that idea, I sense that very possibly this woman really did have serious questions in her mind and heart about these things in religion that she wanted someone to address who was not already filled with prejudices and bigotry. And seeing that Jesus had just demonstrated that He was not going to exploit her or bring up things for the sake of controversy like nearly everyone else she had ever met, she may have felt that this was the chance of a lifetime to get some answers to questions that she did not trust anyone else to answer without undo bias.

If that is true, it also may imply that this woman was not so out of touch with religion as many around her might have supposed. And this is true many times in our lives as well. Many who are without formal education or marginalized and considered to be of no account when it comes to things of religion by those in positions of responsibility are sometimes very insightful in ways that may surprise even the most highly educated. But because few care enough to engage them in a serious conversation and actually listen to them with an open mind, they are left out of most discussions altogether and are generally considered as ignorant and irreligious and only in need of instruction.

But I think it is very possible that this woman may have pondered the difficult questions of controversy that swirled around her on religious topics and had chosen to view them from perspectives that were not popular either to her fellow Samaritans or to anyone else she knew. As a result she had largely kept her thoughts and opinions to herself maybe feeling that she might never meet anyone open-minded enough to actually listen to her without prejudice. But after being treated in such a surprising manner by this stranger whom she immediately sensed was both free of prejudices and also very insightful and caring about spiritual things, she decided to jump at the chance to see if He just might be able to help her with some of the most troubling issues in religion that seemed unsolvable in her mind.

Because of Jesus' kindness, gentleness and avoidance of bringing up controversy, He won the confidence and trust of this woman in only a few moments. He accomplished what we may take years to bring about because we fail to reflect the true Spirit of the Father who never uses force or condemnation to bring people to His love. This is yet another classic example of how Jesus related to hurting, frightened, wounded hearts in a way that allowed them to open up quickly and come to belief in Him with very little resistance.

I love that. And I want to become like that myself. I want to allow Jesus to live in me so fully that my interactions with wounded hearts can likewise induce trust and confidence instead of fear and controversy. I want my conversations about religious points of conflict to reflect the true realities behind those issues as heaven sees them and in the spirit of Jesus. Then people will be drawn to want to know God better and be less afraid to come closer to Him to receive living water for themselves.

Relating to Shame

The woman answered and said, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You have correctly said, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly." The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet." (John 4:17-19)

Again and again I see things in the way Jesus treated people and related to them that reveals such a different attitude than that of most religious people. And here in these verses it shows up yet again in even in this story. In fact, in every response throughout this story Jesus acts unexpectedly from how I would expect to see someone respond in these kinds of circumstances.

First of all, Jesus affirms the woman for being honest even though it is quite clear that her honesty is a technical evasive maneuver to avoid facing her shame, pain and embarrassment. But instead of taking advantage of the situation to press home a sense of guilt for her messed up choices, He only chooses to stay with the affirmative while in full knowledge of her background.

But remember, Jesus is in the process of offering her living water. So everything He does and says is moving toward that accomplishment. And one thing that helps to encourage someone to drink water is to be aware of their thirst. So Jesus accurately but very politely reveals that He knows her situation already and yet still exhibits no trace of condemnation for her. He accepts her exactly the way she is.

This is very striking for me personally. I can remember intense assertions by my father that acceptance of someone living in sin was absolutely unthinkable. In his mind, to accept someone was to condone what they were doing and he never wanted to be seen as condoning sin in anyone's life. Therefore he usually gravitated more in the direction of feeling compelled to point out people's sins and trying to make them feel guilty instead of feeling any compulsion to show compassion and acceptance for them before there was any sign of repentance. His picture of God simply could not tolerate such a concept.

And of course that is the picture of God that was formed in my own mind and heart for many years. And though I soon came to doubt the validity of his preference for condemnation over acceptance of people, deep inside I have always struggled to perceive God as being willing to accept me and love me no matter how good or how bad my performance in life was. And while I came to accept that idea more and more with my mind over the years, my heart still has a difficult time believing that God accepts me unconditionally in love. It is something that goes strongly against the grain of the way my heart perceptions of reality have been wired from very early childhood.

Yet over and over I see Jesus relating to people radically different from the way I was taught both in the family and in the church. That is why I sit in amazement each time I come across a story like this where Jesus does what to me is the most unexpected and seemingly bizarre. But at the same time something stirs inside my heart that tells me that this approach is the genuine way to bring about an atmosphere of grace where hearts can begin to feel safe enough to come out into the light even though they may still be feeling shame, guilt and fear. I know that this is the way that I wish I could be treated.

I became curious about what kind of relationship this woman might have been having with the man she was with currently. So I looked up the Greek word behind what is here translated have when Jesus said the man whom you now have. I found that it could also be easily translated as the relationship that you now hold onto. That sounds very much like what today is becoming the most common kind of relationships that people are choosing as an alternative to marriage. They are living together but avoiding the commitments involved in promising an exclusive relationship in marriage to each other. They believe that it is a better alternative than marriage because they may think that there is less potential pain involved in their future. It also keeps their options more open and if they choose to move on to another relationship they hope that the pain will be less than if they have to go through a divorce.

Again, I want to perceive with my heart as well as my mind the example of how Jesus related to this woman knowing full well her choices and her situation socially, living with a man outside of marriage and having a long history of broken marriages in her past. It was not something He chose to probe her about or try to lay a guilt trip on her. I am sure that she felt plenty of guilt and had for a very long time. There were many people around her in life that would likely make sure to remind her of how ashamed she should feel about herself and what a worthless person she must be.

But Jesus avoided reinforcing all of those emotional baggage issues while still speaking the truth in love about the facts of her life. It was very important that she be aware that honesty about the truth in her situation needed to be present if she were to engage in participation of drinking from this new kind of water Jesus was eager to share with her.

I want to learn to see people in these kinds of circumstances just like Jesus saw this woman and related to her. I want to be purged of the knee-jerk reactions of condemnation or shame or anything else that is not in harmony with the compassion of Jesus while at the same time not avoiding accountability, to be true to a person's need for honesty. It is a very tricky thing to help a person be honest about their true condition and the results of their bad choices without conveying the slightest hint of condemnation. It takes a secure peace and confidence in the ability of the Holy Spirit to bring about conviction in God's way and in God's timing for a person to feel free to accept someone like this fully in love and create the atmosphere of freedom that will invite them into the rich and extravagant grace that God is generously offering them.

I love the response that this treatment by Jesus produced in the reaction seen in this woman's mind and heart. The first thing out of her mouth after this most startling revelation that Jesus knew all about her morbid past was, “Sir, I perceive You are a prophet!”

Somehow I don't think this was completely the evasive move that it might appear to be. Yes, she did want to change the subject with all sorts of overwhelming feelings flushing into her face in the moment. But the complete absence of criticism and condemnation on the part of Jesus must have caught her by great surprise. She responded with a term of respect for Him and an acknowledgement that His ability to see her past so easily affirmed in her mind the implications of the words He had already spoken. She was saying that He indeed must have a special connection with God.

I want my treatment of people to be able to elicit this kind of a response instead of fear and shame. Yes, people may feel shame and guilt because of what they have already experienced and even the self-condemnation they may try to blame on others. But I do not want my own life to be a source of additional condemnation for anyone whom God is trying to draw to Himself. I want to be a clean channel of pure grace, of unexpected and unconditional acceptance, of compassion and to be a source through which God can pour His feelings for sinners. I want to move past my own past and be transformed into a new creation in Christ Jesus. I want to become a magnet for God.

Go, Call, Come

The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw." He said to her, "Go, call your husband and come here." (John 4:15-16)

Jesus offered her living water. Even though she did not fully appreciate or comprehend just what this new kind of water was all about, she was interested enough to go ahead and ask for it. It sounded good. She could not see any negatives about it but only positives. If it had to do with physical thirst she could certainly see great advantages for her life to take Him up on His offer. If it had to do with something much more as she was beginning to suspect, it still sounded like an offer too good to pass up. Either way she was aware that she was thirsty. Even if this guy didn't know all the details of her life – which up to that point she felt safe enough in believing – she certainly felt a deep emotional emptiness similar to the intense thirst that a person felt after being out in the hot sun on a dry day without any water for some time.

So she framed her answer to make the most sense logically. Since she was not ready in the least to divulge to a total stranger the morbid details of her messed up life causing her emotional thirst, she decided to simply talk about the obvious physical advantages that some new kind of water might do for her and hope that the emotional benefits would be included without having to face her inward pain. So the two things that she listed as advantages as far as she could see immediately were not having to feel thirsty anymore while still staying hydrated and not having to expend all her energy repeatedly on an exhausting trip far out to this well at a most inconvenient time of the day.

Now here is where I find yet another curious turn in the way Jesus relates to her (and equally important to us) in His response. He again does not seem to address her words directly but takes yet another seeming detour causing yet more intensity in her thinking. He could have simply taken the straight-forward approach of explaining to her what this living water really was and how He was going to impart it to her, whatever that might have looked like. But instead He brings up the subject of a spouse and insists that she first go back home and invite her husband to get involved and then bring him all the way back out here to continue the discussion with Jesus while He waits for her out at the well.

Right here I want to take a little different tack from that which most teachers usually take when unpacking this story. I am fully aware that Jesus was using this as a means of opening her up to the very center of the deepest pain inside of her heart, the focal point that would highlight the reality of her much greater thirst. I am not trying to take away from the significance of the typical lessons associated with that line of thinking. But I also believe that much might be gained from considering that Jesus might have said something very similar to this if she actually had been married to the guy she was living with.

First of all I notice three distinct actions that Jesus required of her before He was ready to open up the spigot to give her a drink of this living water in full measure. He said to go, then to call and finally to come back to Him.

Secondly, I notice that He did not instruct her to go and call just anyone to come back with her. Jesus told her specifically to go to her own home (implied) and call her own husband before returning to receive this wonderful gift of living water from God.

Jesus is here laying out some very important principles that cannot be ignored by us today. It is not enough to just respond affirmatively to the offer of grace and forgiveness by God in order to live the abundant life that is called eternal life. Jesus is explaining some prerequisites that need to be complied with if we are really serious about being satisfied and filled with this new kind of living, joy-producing water of life. He seems to be saying here rather strongly that we cannot engage in enjoying this kind of water to satisfy our soul thirst alone. And even beyond that, the people that we need to get involved in participating with us, or at least that need to receive our genuine and honest invitation to do so, need to be the ones who are the closest to us, our spouses, our family and often those who may be the very ones who are the biggest source of emotional pain in our lives.

In this case, the woman immediately advises Jesus somewhat evasively that she does not have a husband – which was technically correct. I can really relate to this woman in this respect. I grew up cultivating great skill in giving technically correct answers to people for questions that I really didn't want to reveal the full truth about. At the same time my conscience would mercilessly torture me if I told an outright lie so I learned to become very adept at saying things in such a way that would satisfy people's probing questions while in fact misleading them to assume something different than what was actually the facts. In that way I could feel that it was not my fault what they concluded because it was their assumptions and their own failure to find out all the facts, while at the same time I felt justified that I had not told an outright lie. Such is the amazing dexterity of legalism in the human heart.

But again, that is farther on in this story, though not much. I still want to more carefully consider this important aspect of Jesus requiring her to go get somebody else involved before He was willing to reveal to her what this living water was all about.

This really resonates with many things that God has been teaching me over the past few years. There seems to be a lot of importance and emphasis on community that God places within the gospel and in His Word. While we certainly need a lot of healing and reconciliation for our individual relationships with God, He never allows us to remain in isolated intimacy with Him for very long before He requires us to get someone else involved. And most often that someone else is going to be the very ones who are the source of some of our deepest hurts.

This is the point where we instantly and reactively begin to feel a great deal of resistance. This woman could very easily at this point have ended the discussion with Jesus, considering Him to be out of place in His probing questions into her personal affairs. She very easily could have told Him to mind His own business at this point, filled up her water containers and gone back home. Many people would have done that very thing and many of us in essence do that to God quite often. We tend to view God's requirement to get someone else involved in our healing process who has hurt us deeply, as too offensive for us to obey His voice implicitly. But if we resist too long, we open ourselves up to the deceptive power of the enemy and we will become blinded once again to the true nature of the Man who is offering us freedom, hope and water that will really satisfy our hearts.

How often we take the easy route when this most painful issue is raised in our own lives. We begin to reason that we know better than God, that He doesn't really understand the depth of our pain or the impossibility of that other person ever changing. We begin to rationalize and come up with alternatives that sound much less threatening to us and Satan is eagerly supplying our minds with all sorts of plausible ways that might would work much better than the straight road Jesus is pointing out.

At this point I have to ask myself these questions:

Am I willing to accept the painful truth that if I want freedom from the painful thirst that racks my soul that I am going to have to face those who have hurt me the most?

Am I willing to trust the heart of this Stranger enough to believe that His approach to experiencing the satisfaction of living water springing up to eternal life will work, even though it requires me to get my spouse involved when that spouse may not even be interested in my getting healed?

Maybe God is asking me to go and call an abusive father before I come back to Jesus to continue this process.

Maybe He is asking me to call some other person who has wounded me deeply – it matters not how impossible it may seem to us.

The real question here is not whether I can figure out if His plan is realistic or not, the real issue is whether I am ready to trust His methods and words to me even though they sound intimidating or even impossible. Am I willing to really trust His heart when the fear of reliving some pain suddenly threatens me.

What if the person God is asking me to face is already dead? At first that might sound less threatening until you realize that many people feel very trapped after an abusive parent has died without their finding resolution to that enormous tension in their heart. I know of people who are very tempted to feel despair and hopelessness when the idea of emotional healing comes up in relation to a deceased abuser. But God is not stymied by the obstacle of even death. He simply says to us – go, call and come back to Me. He can handle it if we are willing to let Him.

If I am willing to trust His heart more than my own rationalizations, then I will begin to see a small path open up before me just enough to know what step to take next. I seldom if ever, will be able to see how it is all going to work out in the end – but that is never our responsibility. Ours is to trust and obey and that is not very popular in religion today. We want to experience healing but we want to do it alone without the messiness of getting other offensive people involved. We want to have an exciting love affair with Jesus and feel good feelings during worship services, but we pull back in protest when God asks us to go invite our abusers to come out into the light and participate in receiving healing with us.

Yes, many of us would like for our abusers or those who have hurt us deeply to be exposed in the light. But from what motive? We think they should experience the pain and shame that we have endured for so long. But that is not what God is asking of us here. He simply says to go and invite them and leave the rest up to Him.

Jesus did not say that she could not come back if her husband refused to come with her. But He did imply that if she was serious about getting this living water that could give her everything she longed for in life that she first needed to face the man (or men) who likely may have caused her the most pain. If she was willing to travel that path then Jesus could be trusted to keep His word and deliver on His promises.

Did she take Jesus seriously and do what He asked of her? Obviously not instantly. She became very nervous when Jesus brought up her personal situation and tried to change the subject. But when she finally came to believe in Him and chose to trust His heart, the Word says that she went back home so enthusiastically that she ended up telling all the men of the town about this living water project, not just the guy she was shacked up with. Jesus' words were not wasted with her. Even though she had to have some more discussion before she was ready to respond to His request, she did end up doing what He asked of her after all.

Who in my life is Jesus asking me to invite to be involved as part of my own healing? I realize that community in God's eyes is essential for growth, maturing and transformation as well as healing. This is becoming more and more clear to those who are studying God's ways and His Word. I know that I need much more genuine community interaction in my own life so that I can grow more effectively and heal more deeply. It can be frightening at first to realize that many who end up in the family of God were once abusers and wicked people themselves. But God brought healing to them just as He does for the victims of their abuse. I pray for willingness to obey when Jesus asks me to face those who have hurt me most deeply and see them through the eyes of Jesus instead of the eyes of fear. And I want to quite resisting trusting His heart and instead rest in the reality that He really does care about me.

Evasive Answers

Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst." (John 4:13-14)

This woman had just asked Jesus a question about His ability to support His claim of being able to provide some new kind of water. She had asked Him if He was greater that her people's ancestor Jacob who had proven his worth (at least as far as they were concerned) by digging this much-needed well and then putting it to good use providing for his family, his livestock and even those generations who would come after him.

Jacob had not just talked about providing water, he did what it took to produce it. This stranger was claiming to have some sort of water but so far had done nothing that would lead her to believe that He could deliver on His claim. This woman had good reason to question His claim for she had known too many people who had made promises that didn't deliver. She was certainly interested in the idea of knowing more about this thing called “living water”, but so far there was not enough information to make His words credible.

But Jesus did not respond like many of us might do. He did not answer her question directly as we often feel compelled to do. We often feel that if we are to be truthful that we need to answer every question directly. We sometimes feel that people who don't answer plainly and directly to questioning are trying to hide something, or maybe are engaging in deception of some sort, or are trying to be evasive. So we end up falling into the trap of getting mired into an argument or stirring up a lot of prejudice far too early in our conversations with people when it might be much better to have a different perspective on how to relate to questions.

Instead of just saying to her, “Yes, I am greater than your father Jacob”, which would of course have created instant feelings of resentment and incredulity in her mind, He instead pointed out something that seemed rather obvious but that she had not even been thinking about. He drew her attention to the fact that even though we come over and over again to whatever source we are relying on to provide us with water, and no matter how deeply we drink or how satisfying it feels when we do, we inevitably always end up getting thirsty again and having to do it all over again.

This is such an obvious fact that we almost scoff at the idea of anyone even trying to use it as a valid part of a discussion. I mean, after all, of course people get thirsty again after drinking water. That is just life after all, isn't it? It has always been this way and always will be this way. This is the way the world works. If you want to satisfy thirst you have to take measures to drink something after all. But don't ever expect to find something that will permanently eliminate your need for water. That is a ridiculous idea. Who ever heard of water that could extinguish your thirst forever?

But this was actually the very compelling response Jesus gave to the original question posed by the woman. Instead of laying claim to greatness, Jesus induced yet another question in her mind and begins to arouse her heart to even more curiosity as to what the potential might really be here. This comment creates the implication that this new kind of water has properties that simply cannot be found in the water she is familiar with. And that is exactly what Jesus wanted her to begin thinking. He was drawing her outside the box of normal thinking and assumptions about life. He wanted her to challenge her own paradigms and make her begin to ask questions herself before He was ready to offer her what He had. She needed to become more conscious of her own thirst for the real kind of water before she would be prepared to receive it.

When Jesus said that this new water would turn into an internal well that would produce eternal life, she began to sense that He was talking about much more than the kind of water she was used to dealing with. We have no way of knowing, but I also wonder if some of her internal fears did not revolve around her relationship with God and her own future for eternity. Later in the conversation she wanted to know some answers to questions that apparently she had been thinking about herself. People don't usually just think about these things unless they are serious about wanting to know the truth and concerned about their future. Jesus knew this because of the Spirit's presence in His heart and He was drawing her out in the very areas where she felt most vulnerable and the most thirsty spiritually.

Jesus was clearly steering the conversation away from getting a drink for Himself and into things that would make her feel very nervous talking about. But He was also building trust in her heart not only with His words but even more so with the look on His face, the demeanor and body language she could clearly read and the atmosphere that surrounded Him in His spirit. She could sense that He genuinely cared about her heart, that He had no desire to take advantage of her and that He might be worthy of trust. Because of this she was willing to move very quickly from deep suspicion to amazing and implicit trust in His few words to her in just a few minutes.

Jesus was in effect beginning to entice her heart with a taste of the very water He was telling her about. God's passion is to draw out our hearts in a response of love and devotion to Him. But we sometimes mistakenly think that the affections that we reserve for a spouse or lover have no place in our relationship with God. This is yet another one of the devastating lies of the enemy who wants to wound the heart of God as deeply as possible. God wants our deepest affections and all of our affections of every kind. He is the only one who can be trusted with these affections fully. When we believe that some feelings are better not expressed toward God, that they are somehow contaminated or perverted by sin, then we are believing lies that still keep us from enjoying the sweet intimacy with our Creator that He longs for us to experience.

But that is the next part of this story. Right now I wanted to just focus on the fact that Jesus, instead of responding directly to her challenge of His value and ability, simply continued to dialog with her from a position of confidence and love without being affected by her skepticism. He always looks past the outward fears, suspicions and misconceptions and moves toward dealing directly with the heart issues.

I like that about God. I find it so reassuring to know that God is not judging me based on my questioning, my misconceptions, my fears or my distorted views of Him that keep me at a distance or afraid of Him. He is always in pursuit of my affections and is constantly working to disarm my defenses based on the lies about Him placed in my mind and heart by our common enemy. He is always seeking to expose those lies and replace them with truth. And as I embrace that truth about God and experience it for myself, my resistance to His presence and work in my life lessens and I can draw closer and closer into harmony with His ways and His emotions and His purity.

Father, I too desperately want to drink of this living water that You are offering. I don't want to just talk about it, I want to experience it fully, gloriously, exuberantly, joyfully. That may appear very strange to those who have known me a long time, but I want to eject those fears and to throw myself into Your arms and trust you implicitly like this woman did apparently so easily as she discovered how much You loved her. Heal me of all my fears and draw me into Your heart today. Make me an excited messenger of what You can do in the hearts of all who will come under Your influence of grace and love.

Looking For A Great Man

"You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?" (John 4:12)

Evidently, in this woman's mind, the proof of the greatness of Jacob was somehow demonstrated by not only his ability to dig a good well but to provide satisfaction for the needs of his family and even his livestock. What she seems to be trying to say her is that Jacob proved himself to be a good provider, a real man, because he did a good job of looking out for his family and all that was dependent on him for sustenance.

This was in contrast to the words of Jesus who appeared to her to be quite helpless in this capacity. She made it a point of noting that His claim to be able to provide water for her could not readily be substantiated. He obviously didn't even have the wherewithal to get water out of a well that was already in place, much less dig a well Himself. And of course, everyone knew that if you wanted to get water you needed to dig into the ground far enough to get it. And the difference between a good well and one not so desirable was a well that was dug very deep so that when the water level dropped in times of dryness that there would still be plenty of water in the well, even if people had to use a longer rope to reach it.

So what was this Man really trying to claim for Himself? Was He trying to make braggadocios claims to impress her by claiming that He could give her some kind of new “water” called living water? She was getting used to picking up on the attempts by men to impress women with outlandish claims that they could not deliver on. So was this yet another man looking to impress a woman by stretching things far beyond reasonability?

In her challenge to Jesus this woman was following the logic that most all of us use, the logic based on outward evidence and physical realities as we perceive them. She was looking for proof that this Man could deliver on his promises. She had already known too many men who failed to deliver what she really needed. She was not going to be a pushover this time. She had not been born yesterday and she was ready to demand more than just promising words if yet another man was going to try to impress her, especially since this man was a Jew.

We all tend to believe that the things that will bring us satisfaction are the things that make us feel good physically and that meet our bodily needs and desires. When God comes along and alerts us to the fact that we have far more important needs and cravings that are rooted in a different dimension, we often at first try to discount them or deny that we actually feel them. We are afraid of being exposed, of having our true vulnerabilities made public, of having our souls revealed to the light of reality, for that is where our greatest pains reside.

This woman's life had already proven that she had some very deep desires that were quite unsatisfied. But she was certainly not keen to talk about those things for she considered them too shameful and too painful for public discussion, especially with a man. She knew that she had deeper thirsts than just for the water from Jacob's well, but she had also been hurt and taken advantage of by men too many times to easily trust yet another man, a suspicious stranger who suddenly begins talking about very personal things that people just don't talk about right off the bat.

Maybe she had fantasized about what the ideal man would look like for her life, the one who might really meet her deepest desires, the one who might satisfy the deepest longings of her soul. As she thought about the life of Jacob, one of the common ancestors that the Samaritans shared with the Jews, she saw in him someone she could identify with. This was a man who had made a lot of bad choices but still kept trying to do what was right, a man who provided for his large family even though he had been tricked into marrying two sisters who ended up deeply jealous of each other. This was a man who kept on pursuing a relationship with God even through many setbacks and difficulties.

This woman may have admired the fact that Jacob had worked hard to overcome the many difficulties that had come his way, had done everything possible to overcome negative circumstances and tried to make his family happy as far as he was able. She may have thought that if she could just find a man who had the integrity that Jacob displayed and could marry him that life would finally be worth living. If she could just find the right man she could really thrive and flourish and feel genuinely happy. She might even be willing to share this man with another woman if necessary if only the man had the character that she saw in Jacob.

But maybe there just weren't any men left like Jacob. Maybe the human race had just sunk too low to produce anyone who had the strong ethics and tenacity that Jacob displayed in the face of repeated difficulties. By the time she was in her sixth relationship with a man she had pretty much given up ever being able to find a man anything close to Jacob's caliber and so she was ready to just live in survival mode from here on out. Her reputation by this time was covered with humiliation and shame from her unsuccessful attempts to find the ideal man. She had become a social pariah and instead of a life of thriving she was now only surviving.

But Jesus knew this woman's heart long before He even arrived in Samaria. Her situation was the very reason that He had stopped here at this well and was the very reason that God had arranged all the circumstances that brought these two together at this place and time. Men look on the outward appearances but God looks at the heart. And knowing her heart, God was intent on introducing her to the real object of her desires which could never be found in a human man like she had thought. The only human who could really sympathize and understand her heart and fill her life with the satisfaction and joy that she longed for so deeply was the man who was in fact God Himself. And this man was ready to offer her the gift of Himself, His love, His compassion, His understanding, His kindness, His acceptance and His provisions. Yes indeed, He really was greater that her ancestor Jacob.

This Man was in fact the desire of Jacob's heart himself. This was the Man who had shown up to impart to Jacob the deepest longing of his own heart, the love that he had longed for and sought for so hard all of his life. But when this Man showed up to give Jacob a hug and reassure him of heaven's forgiveness and love for him, Jacob mistook the initial touch as an act of aggression and turned in fear and terror to fight off this Man all night long. What Jacob was really fighting against was not just a stranger in the night who aroused his worst fears, but Jacob was really fighting with his own internal distorted notions of how God felt about him.

This is always the case with us. It is the many lies about God, both obvious and subtle that keeps us from easily coming to Him to receive the nurture and love, the healing and wholeness that we so long for. And everyone of us are immersed in many more lies about God than we can ever imagine. The most religious among us are often the ones who have the most lies but are in more ignorance that what they believe is not really true. This is why Jesus found it much easier to connect with the open sinners than with the religious leaders of His day, because the flagrant sinners did not have so much baggage to let go of in their minds about what God was like. They were not so firmly entrenched in false pictures of God encased by religious pride and self-righteousness. And while they certainly still had many false notions about God's attitude towards sinners, many of those ideas were pushed on them by the religious instructors and were more easily dispelled when the presence of Jesus revealed the real truth about God's forgiveness, compassion and kindness toward all men.

Just so, this woman may have been considered by society to be a more open sinner using their standards of measurement. But what they failed to discern was that many of her “sins” were actually attempts by her heart to find the real love that only God could provide, a love that would satisfy her deepest longings. She, like the many other “open” sinners that Jesus hung out with so often, were actually much easier to reach and responded more quickly because they were already more honest and open about what was the real condition of their heart. They had chosen to turn away from the fake life of pretended religion and piety and pursue whatever it took to satisfy the longings of their souls. This often led them into socially unacceptable choices and elicited condemnation on them from the religiously pious. But in God's eyes they were much closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than were most of the religious and those who claimed to be the most righteous.

Sometimes I have been a little envious of those who, in the eyes of the church, have gone out and really sinned it up big. Not because I just wanted to “enjoy” the pleasures of sin and then get back into the arms of grace before the game was over, but because it seemed almost easier for open sinners to comprehend and appreciate the grace and goodness of God than it was for a person who had grown up viewed as a religious kid and had been relatively socially correct all of his life. I sometimes calculated how much of a risk it might be to just go off the deep end so to speak and really sin it up big, and then return to be forgiven so that I could better appreciate God's love for me.

But I was repeatedly assured by people who had come in from that side that it was not worth it. And besides, my own mind was too afraid that, knowing what I know about how the devil works, I would end up losing my own life before I had a chance to return to repentance. On top of that, since repentance is a gift of God and not something a person can work up on their own, I might lose my capacity to repent in the process of “living it up” and then my whole experiment would prove to be a catastrophic failure. So even though that doorway into the kingdom seemed so much more desirable and reliable and effective, I decided early on that I was going to have to take a different route and try to find out the real truth about God without indulging in all the pleasures of sin that many others were choosing around me. I would have to blaze what looked like a much harder trail – the route of finding a genuine and dynamic experience with God from the starting point of a confirmed Pharisee. This route seems much less documented and far less glamorous than the door that the open sinners use to enter into grace. But I decided that for me it seemed to be the right thing to do, to search for God without throwing out everything I already had learned.

I knew that much of the religion that I had was riddled with serious flaws and misleading information. But instead of throwing it all out and coming from a completely different direction, I decided to try to sort through everything I believed and ask God to show me what was really valid and what was false. This has been an ongoing process for many years now, but I have to say that it has not been without much good fruit. Instead of a dramatic conversion event however, like as seen in the experience of this woman of Sychar, my experience has been one of incremental growth, creeping awareness and sometimes an almost imperceptible deepening of my appreciation of God's real character.

I am still sometimes tempted to be jealous of those who have dramatic conversion stories that make for spell-binding television shows or compelling testimony sessions. But God is leading me down a different path. I want to be able to appreciate and affirm those who come to God through the dramatic ways, but I also want to appreciate the struggles of those who like me are being drawn to God through the long slow way. Is my approach more stable than others? That is not for me to decide or judge. God is the one who is responsible for drawing all unto Himself and whatever means is most effective in the long run is what He is going to use with each person.

But the same lessons need to be learned about God whether one is coming on the slow road or is on the fast track. I am coming to believe that the bottom line is that we are all in great need of releasing the lies about God from our hearts and allowing the real truth about Him, the good news of the real gospel to fill our souls with hope and love and joy. And the closer we get to knowing the real God of heaven at the heart level, the more we are going to find ourselves in close fellowship and love with each other. Like the spokes on a wheel, the closer we get to God the closer we inevitably come to each other.

Jacob's Water

"You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?" Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again;" (John 4:12-13)

I think back over the stories of Jacob that I have heard all of my life. I think about my own identification particularly with Jacob's wrestle with the heavenly messenger that revolved around him struggling to deal with his own sense of identity and worth. He had grappled with others all of his life to achieve a sense of value and belonging but with very little satisfaction. He had often used deception and manipulation to try to get his way, to achieve his desires and even to capture a feeling of being accepted by God. But each time it always came back to haunt him.

In the above verses Jesus contrasts Jacob's kind of water with His own offer of water that genuinely satisfies. Jacob's whole life was marked with a desperate search for acceptance and love. But much of the time he could not escape the ever-present feelings of disappointment, isolation and frustrated desires. His bad choices put him into long-term situations that caused him a great deal of emotional and spiritual pain for many years. He was forced to run for his life from his twin brother because of his trickery and thereby was never able to see his very dear mother again before her death. His penchant for deceptions was reciprocated back on him by his uncle who seemed even more adept at deceiving and tricking people for his advantage. Because of this Jacob ended up with two wives who were intensely jealous of each other for the rest of their lives. This caused a great deal of tension and misery in Jacob's family which extended for generations.

In a very significant way, these problems describe the effects of a life lived depending on one's self instead of surrendering the life totally to God's ways and will. Even though Jacob was passionate in his pursuit of God, the ways in which he went about trying to be accepted by God usually ended up creating serious problems for himself.

I believe that Jesus may have had some of this in mind as He spoke to this woman who was herself caught up in a similar kind of life, looking for love and acceptance but trapped in methods, traditions and a religion that failed to bring about a deep sense of value and satisfaction that her heart so longed for. She, like so many of us, was depending on repeatedly coming to Jacob's well and drinking Jacob's water and employing Jacob's kind of search for a way to thrive while also experiencing the same kinds of frustrations and disappointments that Jacob experienced.

Jacob's water represents man-made religion that appears to be authentic. It talks about God, it relies on information about God and truth and it is sometimes even passionate in its pursuit of wanting to be accepted by God. But still it fails to bring the kind of peace into the life that is so necessary for our hearts to feel satisfied and whole. It is the kind of religion that most of us are all too familiar with but that does not really connect us effectively with the heart of God like we were designed for.

Jesus came to this world to reveal to us a new kind of water that addresses the deepest longings of our souls. As He described this new living water coming from a curious description of a well that is found inside the heart, placed there with our consent through the kindness and miracle power of a loving Father, this woman began to sense her own deep craving for this kind of water that she had unconsciously been looking for all of her life. While she may not have fully understood all the metaphors or their full implications, she sensed that whatever it was that this man was describing to her met perfectly the longings deep in her heart that she had never been able to give proper expression to herself. She began to realize that Jesus was truly exposing her own deep thirst that she had never been able to satisfy through her religion or through any of her repeated intimate relationships with men.

Jacob's water is still very popular today in every church and is found in every religion.

Jesus' water is still a standing offer to anyone who is finally ready to turn away from the wells that simply cannot satisfy the soul. God calls these wells “broken cisterns” by comparison to what He has to offer.

Jacob's water promises to make us feel good, to make us appear good, to maybe even bring us into conformity to God's will and find us acceptance with Him through complex systems of belief or some level of personal performance and achievements.

Jesus' water is radically different from the inherent assumptions found in Jacob's wells. Jesus' water is the very gift of Himself living inside our hearts producing joy, acceptance and deep satisfaction that can never be found in performance-based religion or emotional relationships with other people or even things. Jesus water produces living fruit in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Jacob's water cannot satisfy the thirst of our heart for very long if at all. It can bring us pleasure for awhile or cause us to think that we are right with God through religious ceremonies or intellectual arguments. But Jacob's wells only produce water that is at best temporary and we keep having to come back again and again seeking to fill up the deepest cravings of our heart only to have our heart soon feel empty once again.

The reality of Jesus' water is something that very few people appreciate properly. I know that I am far from completely understanding and immersing myself in this living water. I can really identify with Jacob in his desperate search for feeling valued and loved and cherished as he wrestled with the very One who had come to give him exactly what he was longing for.

The good news is that Jacob finally got it. After fighting through the night with his own distorted, confused feelings about God, he discovered that the One he thought was out to hurt him was actually the One he had been searching for all of his life. He came to realize that the person he was fighting was the only one who had the ability and capacity along with the eagerness to bring him the blessing he had been chasing for so many years.

Jesus accepted this woman's claim to be a descendant of Jacob. He could see in her the same patterns of longing for God but being repeatedly frustrated in her attempts to find love and acceptance. She was drinking Jacob's kind of water and getting the same results that Jacob had gotten centuries before her.

Jacob as last learned to turn away from his own methods of digging here and there for the kind of water that failed to satisfy his deepest heart longings. He discovered that his only hope was to cling in full dependence on the only One who had what he craved the most and who loved him the most. He began to realize that the kind of satisfaction he really wanted could not be found in religious performance or blessing rituals but in clinging tenaciously to the One who was the blessing Himself. He began to realize that the kind of love that really ravishes the heart could never be found in the arms of a beautiful woman but had to be experienced in the embrace of the One the one who had created all women to begin with, yet the very one he was fighting against.

The same opportunity was being offered to this woman of Sychar. She had sought to find acceptance, value and love in the arms of one man after another only to discover that there was no one who could satisfy effectively the deep cravings of her heart. Marriage after marriage had fallen apart until she was willing to simply live in a loose relationship with a man outside of this formality. Maybe she had given up ever finding real love after going through six different men. But amazingly the seventh Man she encountered turned out to be the very God who had created her heart and the only one who could satisfy the longings He had put in there to start with. Only He could offer her the kind of water that Jacob's well had repeatedly failed to satisfy. Only He had the ability to take up residence deep inside of her and produce the joy and peace that she had looked for in all her other relationships. Jesus was offering her the gift of Himself, to be that well of water dwelling in her heart to produce new living water that would very quickly splash out and attract many others to taste of this wonderful resource.