Indeed the Savior

"...we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world." (John 4:42)

True belief I suspect is going to produce evidence of the convictions seen in the confession of these people after their encounters with Jesus. There are plenty of beliefs running around purporting to be Christian and religious that are cheap imitations of real belief. But no matter how pious or religious they may appear or how right they may feel, unless they produce a heart change that results in a confession of this kind of faith directly in Jesus Himself it is likely that belief is a counterfeit.

I want a faith, a belief personally in Jesus and in the Father God, that I have heard for myself and not only from someone else. As good and effective and compelling as anyone's testimonies may be in attracting me to want to meet Jesus, I don't really have a saving faith until I have spent my own days interacting with Him myself and building an intimate relationship with Him for myself. I cannot have the experience of someone else no matter how desperately I want or try to do so. Too many of us have been conditioned to live our lives vicariously and because of that many people may have nearly lost their ability or awareness of how to live their own lives. What a sad condition this is producing in the world today, but it is one of the most effective ways that sin has divorced us from our Creator.

We were originally created in the image of God. That phrase has far more implications than we can realize now because of our lost capacity to know what God really is. Because of our unfamiliarity with what God is really like we don't know what we are supposed to be like either. And then as our minds and imaginations keep becoming more and more twisted by the lying representations of God through so may various ways in this world our views of God become so blackened and perverted that we are led to become either terrified of Him or feel that He is ineffective in our lives.

All of this massive damage inflicted and perpetuated on the human race is precisely the target of God's saving work focused in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Savior of the world. But then we have to quickly unpack the true meanings of many of the words we are using before their false assumed meanings again distort what we are trying to actually say. What is a Savior anyway? It is such an overused and misunderstood word that it really helps to step back and try to find a more objective, accurate definition for this term.

Most people today in the English-speaking world seldom use the term savior except in religious circles which creates the high potential of it becoming very isolated and obfuscated in its meaning. I looked up the root of this word from the Greek using Strong's extrapolation and this is the core meaning that I found:

...to save, i.e. deliver or protect (literally or figuratively): to heal, preserve, save (self), do well, be (make) whole.

Most of these terms in this definition betray the fact that there must be something which we need deliverance from, some danger that we need protection against, some damage that has already been inflicted on us or some disease that requires healing, some handicap that needs restoration. This is the context in which the word Savior must be viewed.

One of the best definitions for the word Savior can be found in the words of the angel when revealing to Jesus' earthly surrogate father what the true purpose and mission was for Jesus even before He was born.

"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21) Thus, in the very name given to call this unborn child that had for it's Father the very God of heaven Himself, the concept of Savior is fully incorporated. According to the angel the word Jesus and the word Savior should be considered synonymous.

Also in the words of this angel it become clear what it is that we need saving from, what we need protection and healing from – it is sin itself and all the effects that it is has caused in our lives and in our world. Again, sin is probably one of the most misunderstood words in the whole world in my opinion and is the root for more arguments, at least among Christians, than any other word. Our definition for what we think sin is forms the very foundation of nearly everything else we believe about salvation and about God. But of course that makes complete sense, because if we don't understand what our problem is we can't understand what God wants to do to deliver us from our problem.

I have spent many years pondering and learning and reconsidering and questioning the various assertions about what sin is and continue to seek to know heaven's view of this term. I have realized over the years that just because people may be able to string Bible verses together to supposedly prove their strong assertions about this subject that it does not necessarily prove that their assertions and definitions are in agreement with the Bible. I have seen many people try to impose their version of what sin is on others to support their doctrines about sanctification and perfection while in their spirit and attitude they are actually sinning themselves without realizing it. This is the amazing power of sin to deceive even the most religious.

But what I see in this verse is the kind of true conversion and authentic effects of a real encounter with God that deals with the real core problems of sin in our lives. These Samaritans were just like all other people in the world, religious or not. They were caught in the same trap of sin with no hope of escape outside of intervention on the part of their Creator and Redeemer. They needed a Savior to spring them from the trap of Satan, from all of the lies rooted into their psyche, from all the damage in their relationships with each other and with God. They, like all the Jews, all the Greeks, all the “barbarians” and everyone else living around the globe needed a savior, and when they encountered Jesus they instinctively knew from the deepest part of their hearts that this indeed was the genuine, authentic Savior that God had promised to send into the world to save them.

This brings up yet another seriously misunderstood term in religion, the word saved. Today I hear many people talk about being saved with implied meanings that have much more to do with a future entry into paradise than it has much to do with our present situation and our own character right here and now. Christians talk about 'getting saved' in a way that seems to somehow imply that if a person just says a few (magic) words or performs some routine or incantations that suddenly their future destiny is irreversibly locked into an eternity of bliss no matter what choices they may make thereafter.

This kind of logic terribly distorts the true meaning of salvation. Jesus did not come to earth to create some magical formula to induct people into heaven without involving their own on-going freedom to choose the direction of their lives. If we viewed marriage the way we viewed 'getting saved' we might have a lot fewer divorces but that would not guarantee that people would be happier. The word 'saved' is not some sort of irrevocable lock that forces us to live in heaven based on one point in time in our life but has everything to do with an ongoing relationship with a Person who offers to take up residence inside of our hearts and transform our characters from the inside out. This allows us to once again begin to enjoy the true freedoms that we were originally created to enjoy.

Jesus did not come to offer us a trap into which we might step to carry us into heaven largely unchanged. This is not supported anywhere in Scriptures and must be carefully challenged in our thinking. This is a counterfeit of the assurance God desires us to enjoy. God values freedom of choice above anything else in our lives, for without full freedom – ongoing freedom for all of eternity – to turn away from Him there is no real option to love Him the way that true love must happen. If there is no freedom to choose not to love God – or anyone else for that matter, then there really is no freedom to love and love under those conditions is only a mirage. So in order for us to really have the opportunity to enter into the kind of love relationship with God that He desires for us and that we were created to thrive in, we must always have the freedom to choose our own destiny at all times.

This may frighten many people at first, but God has something far better for us than an arrangement of 'being saved' that excludes our freedom to turn away from loving Him. His kind of salvation – the core of what the word Savior is all about – is based on the process of healing, transforming, liberating, restoring us to our original design and purpose. (see Luke 4:18, 19) And this is accomplished not vicariously by Jesus taking our place in living a righteous life but by actually living inside of us and shaping our own characters into His image once again. (Gen. 1:26; 2:7) This is radically different than the kind of salvation often taught by evangelical Christianity today.

As we more clearly comprehend the implications and opportunities offered us by God in the real version of salvation and what He really wants to do in our lives as a personal Savior to save us from sin, we realize the importance of why the angel said that Jesus was sent to save us from our sins, not leaving us in our sins. When we realize that sin is not the outward violations that we do against each other and God but is really our broken connection with the only Source of life in the universe, and that brokenness produces these symptoms, then we can better understand what a Savior wants to do for us. Our Savior was sent to reconnect our hearts with the only hope and life-source – our Father in heaven, and only that can restore us to wholeness. Jesus becomes our umbilical cord through which the life of the Father can once again flow into our broken, withered, diseased souls and bring healing and life once again to our hearts and cause us to thrive and become more and more alive.

In closing I would like to share some of the inspiration along this line from My Utmost for today.

His Birth in Me. “Of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). Just as Our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a ‘Bethlehem’ for the Son of God? I cannot enter into the realm of the Kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth. “Ye must be born again.” This is not a command, it is a foundation fact. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me.

Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI : Discovery House Publishers, 1993, c1935, S. December 25

I want to know much more – no, more than that – I want to experience more deeply at the heart level much more of what it really means to have a living Savior who is given to save me from my sins. He has been faithful all of my life and has been doing that to the extent that I have let Him. Yet the deceitfulness of sin has caused me to often resist His saving work in me all too much and I want Him to expose those deceptions and to release me from all of my own resistance against His saving love for me. I now again give Him unlimited permission to do whatever He needs to do to transform me, to save me, to heal me, to prepare me to more effectively testify to His power and grace to save even people who are stuck in sin like me.

Deeper Belief

So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. Many more believed because of His word; and they were saying to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world." (John 4:40-42)

There is so much here that I am loathe to move on to the next story. I just have to spend a little more time milking this passage for more sweetness, more nourishment, more heart truth. I see so many things that I want to ponder and dwell on and experience myself just in these three verses that I don't hardly know where to begin. I suppose I could start by just listing quickly several things that jump out and grab my attention.

The Samaritans came to Jesus. They didn't wait for Him to come to them and He didn't impose Himself on them against their will. He first captured the heart of a woman whom they likely had despised or scorned up to this point and used her to be His introduction to everyone else.

After they heard the woman's compelling testimony (largely from the attitude she was exuding far more than the words she spoke) and then met Him initially for themselves they were convinced enough to feel the need to invite Him to come into their fellowship, into their community, into their increased trust. Again, it was the people of the town who asked Jesus to come stay with them, not the other way around. They had enough compelling reasons, enough hunger and evidence that this man had something that could truly satisfy that hunger that they wanted more of Him. As a result they were willing to open their homes and their community and extend hospitality to Him and see if He was for real, if He was as compelling as the woman's testimony seemed to indicate.

But I wish I knew what was going on in relation to the disciples throughout this story. They are not mentioned at all after their clueless appearance in the middle of the story, they just sink out of sight as the “ever after happy ending” is put on the story. But they most likely had to come into town for two days along with Jesus. And when that happened how did things go with them and their interactions with these 'hated' Samaritans? They must have felt very uncomfortable having to eat and sleep and hang out with people that they had never dared associate with before. I would love to have seen how all of that transpired.

I am immersing myself in the book of John for some very specific reasons of the heart. One of the main reasons is to absorb the real meaning of the word 'belief'. This experience is central to having a saving, transforming relationship with God and it is vital that I get much deeper than the typical religious assumptions about this word. It is something I must have for myself and understand much more if I am to have the intimate connection with God that is so necessary for living with Him for eternity. Every story I have studied so far in this book at least touches on this word and this one again exposes more of what it must really mean. I want to be sure to spend enough time and open my heart sufficiently to not miss what God wants to teach and train me about what it really means to believe.

Belief is far more than just an intellectual assent or logical grasp of some externally proven fact of truth. That much has become clear to me. The kind of belief that John wants us to experience goes far deeper into the core of our being, our very heart and soul. It was the kind of belief for these people that became spontaneous, open and genuine. They didn't seem to allow the prejudices of the disciples or the fact that Jesus was a Jew and that most Jews hated them interfere with their belief. In fact, their words to the woman are very insightful to help me know more about this thing called belief.

We have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.

Another thing that I notice here is the mention of two seemingly distinct aspects of how they came into their belief. I would like to know more about this because it might be helpful in my own journey of belief. They said that they heard for themselves and then besides that they now knew for themselves what it was that they believed about Jesus. That seems very significant.

Paul amplifies this need for a hearing to take place before this kind of believing and knowing can happen in a person's life. But again, I believe that this kind of hearing is not just listening to words that someone may be saying but is more along the line of hearing with the heart as well as the ears. I have spent countless years hearing the Word of God spoken to me but have seldom experienced the results that are supposed to occur from hearing. That has baffled and frustrated me many times and is why I am here looking for the kind of hearing that will produce real faith and belief in my own heart.

Likewise, the kind of knowing that is referred to here is very much a knowing of the heart, an understanding in intimacy to some degree, a bonding with another heart and in this case a bond with the very heart of God Himself. And this kind of knowing cannot happen in a group of people such as in this story without a parallel bonding and knowing springing up between all the people involved in this kind of encounter with God.

So it must have been inevitable that as a result of this mass conversion and revival in this Samaritan town that a great deal of real community must have begun to happen in a way that had never been there before. I can't imagine that the woman in this story was ever looked upon the same way that she had been before this day by the rest of the townspeople. She was now considered a valuable and cherished part of their family, even honored because of her willingness to do whatever it took to get their attention drawn to a Man who changed their own lives as much as He had theirs.

Their words expressing what it was that they now believed are still rolling around in my mind to find real connection. They said, this One is indeed the Savior of the world. What was in their minds, what was their conceptual grasp of what this word Savior meant to them? It is easy to insert our own assumptions and definitions of this word into the story, but they did not have the New Testament to read, they did not have the lengthy expositions by Paul to meditate on concerning the work of Jesus for this earth or even the gospels; they only had limited access to the Old Testament writings and that was even in the context of living outside the privileges enjoyed by the Jews. So what connected in their minds when they said with such confidence that this man fit perfectly what they conceived of as being the genuine Messiah or Savior of the world?

I have to say I suspect that this statement did not come so much as a result of Jesus fitting into some preconceived ideas about the Messiah that they had previously, but came as a result of what their hearts were feeling and experiencing as they were transformed by His presence among them. Yes, they heard His wonderful words that brought life and hope and joy to their souls, but the results of experiencing His presence with them for two whole days likely cannot be put into words of any kind. It is a belief that is only described superficially with statements that belie a much deeper level of belief just as the mass of an iceburg is largely out of sight except for the very tip.

This is the kind of belief that I crave to experience myself as I continue to encounter His presence.

Beyond Personal Testimony

Many more believed because of His word. (John 4:41)

Yesterday I spent some time thinking about the effectiveness of a person's testimony who has encountered Jesus like this woman at the well did. The results of her extremely short presentation upon returning to town were astounding at the least. The Bible says that many people believed on Jesus because of her testimony. Many of us crave to have that kind of influence with others, to be able to speak and act and have an atmosphere around us that will create that kind of interest and magnetism for Jesus.

But there is much more in this passage that is so important on this point. It notes that when these many came out to the well to check out this amazing man who could apparently read minds and hearts as this woman had testified and who potentially might be the Messiah of the world, they were evidently impressed enough that they invited Him to spend some extended time with them. They wanted to know for themselves if the implications of this woman's testimony was true or not. And indeed they found out that He was much more than they might have expected.

But this verse tells me something very significant about the contrast between my witness about Jesus, as important as that is in God's plan, and the testimonies that come directly from Jesus Himself about what God is really like and what His desires for me are. According to this verse, not only did those who initially believed from the woman's testimony enter into a much deeper level of belief after being exposed directly to Jesus for themselves, but many more who had not yet believed entered into belief as well.

I find the implications of this fact very compelling and instructive. For one thing, it in no way deters from the importance of our need to share with others what God has done for us personally and is doing right now. God does not intend to cut us out of the loop when it comes to spreading salvation to others by our testimonies. That is very clear all throughout the Scriptures. Yet as powerful and compelling as our witness may be to attract even thousands of people to come to know Jesus, there is simply no substitute for the vital need of each person to have their own personal encounter with Jesus individually and to spend time getting to know Him for themselves.

This is too often overlooked in evangelism today. Oh, we talk about coming to know Jesus or believe in Him, but as I have watched the methods and the focus of most evangelistic programs it seems to always take the track of teaching people to know facts about the Bible or to instruct them more along the line of a set of doctrines than it does to train people to learn how to listen to and daily encounter Jesus for themselves. As a result I have seen many people come to join a church believing that this was all that was necessary to be a Christian and be saved – unless it might be to try to clean up their life a bit more and conform to the social expectations of the subculture they have now joined.

Very sadly, it seems that with all of our talk about coming to know Jesus we have substituted converting to a set of beliefs as the definition behind that phrase. This becomes apparent when people find themselves trying to figure out why they even joined the church in the first place after attending for a few months. They initially were very excited by the discovery of new truths and facts about the Bible and were convicted that they needed to adjust their belief system accordingly. But then as life happens and they find that they are still ill-equipped to deal with the habits and emotions that still handicap or trip them up, they begin to look around for reasons why they still don't feel real peace and an abiding joy in the Christian life.

Most of popular Christianity is based on either a system of facts and doctrines carefully hammered out by predecessors from some group of people or denomination, or it is based on a number of emotionally-charged activities that make us feel good inside while we are together with other Christians but leaves us feeling vulnerable when we are alone and facing temptations. Either way we are tempted to doubt the validity of this whole idea of being a vibrant Christian and either give up and go back to our old ways of living or begin to subscribe to all sorts of programs, seminars, self-improvement concepts and discipline-inducing regimens.

I am not saying there is no place for many of these things. I have benefited greatly from the deeply ingrained habits of daily devotions that were instilled into me from childhood by my parents. I have been kept out of a great deal of trouble and misery by the stringent rules under which I grew up and the restrictions imposed on me by those in authority.

But it was not until many years later that I began to realize that even with all the trappings of Christianity firmly in place in my life that made me a good-looking conservative to all those who knew me, that I really had no clue as to what it meant to actually know Jesus for myself. As I occasionally heard people who did know Him (precious few people I am sad to say) speak of Him with endearing terms like they would someone they had truly fallen in love with or like a loving Daddy, I was left feeling both desperate and confused. From my upbringing on the conservative side of Christianity emotions had never been allowed to be much of a part of my religion. Emotions were viewed mostly with suspicion, as something dangerous. So to be a good religious person most of my attention was focused on learning all the right answers and filling my mind with truths – which was almost exclusively intellectual truth alone.

Again, it is extremely important to have one's experience with God based on truthful facts about God, about the Bible and about how life is supposed to work. But the real problem is that an intellectual religion based on facts alone is helpless when facing temptations designed to exploit the emptiness of the soul and take advantage of emotions that clamor for satisfaction that cannot be suppressed. It does little good to try to repress the God-instilled emotions that are supposed to be a part of our experience because they appear to be a liability to looking like a good Christian. Emotions are simply indicators of what is going on at a much deeper level and to ignore them or repress them is very hazardous at best.

Because of this unbalanced approach to spirituality I found myself ill-equipped to meet many situations and made many mistakes as a result. Scars have been incurred from these experiences that now create problems of their own and I have to trust God do deal with all of this mess. But the most important thing for me was the awakening of my mind and heart to realize that unless I came to know and follow Jesus personally above anyone else's authority in my life that everything I did and believed in was pointless and powerless to save me.

It is a very long story that I will not go into now. But I thank God that He began to speak to my heart directly as I was reading a book about the life of Christ during my devotions. He began to challenge me to listen to what He had to say about Himself through His Spirit that contradicted many things that I had assumed about Him based on my previous training. It became a crisis of belief and identity for me and I had to make a conscious decision to let go of my grip on all of my past to give permission for God to introduce Himself to me His way. I finally chose to give Him that permission, to reveal Himself to me even if it meant losing everything I thought about religion from the past that made up my sense of identity, and He has been faithful ever since to keep showing me more and more about Himself at the personal level.

My life has been deeply influenced at times by the testimonies of others who have encountered Jesus personally and have been radically transformed by His love. That has been and still is an important part of my experience and I thank God for all of those testimonies. But I also realize that I cannot receive the vital life that my soul needs by just receiving it vicariously through the experiences of others. No matter how electrifying someone's testimony may be or even how exciting some worship service may make me feel, unless I have my own personal on-going connection with Jesus and remain accountable to the convictions of His Spirit within me, no amount of religious appearances will be of any real value in my life. They will only tend to deceive me into thinking I am something that I am actually not.

I enjoy very much the inspiration that comes from hearing the testimonies of those whose lives have been changed by the power of God in their lives. My own heart resonates many times with stories of their experiences and God's Spirit often uses things they say to bring more light or conviction to me as well. But unless I am willing to keep moving and growing in my own personal, intimate relationship with Jesus that continuously invades deeper and deeper into the painful recesses of my own memories and brings healing to the parts of me beyond my intellect and logic, I do not have a religion that is authentic as far as heaven is concerned. And even more importantly, if my religion does not cause me to relinquish selfishness, die to self and become filled with God's passionate love in service to others, then my religion is mainly a mirage.

Listening to the testimonies of others can indeed produce belief in Jesus. This story brings that out very clearly. I want my own testimonies to be part of that dynamic in this world. But much more than that, I want to spend time every day getting to know Jesus for myself and being transformed by that encounter. I also want to be better at helping others come to realize the vital importance of doing the same for themselves. Many people sense that there is something much deeper needed in their Christian life than what they currently have but they don't know how to do it. They have never been trained to think for themselves in religion because they have only been taught to reflect what others have told them to believe.

If the people from the town in this story had only based their beliefs about Jesus on the testimony of this woman the story would have ended quite differently. If their experience had been based on the interactions they may have had with Jesus' disciples when they passed through town to buy food even less would have happened. But they chose to invite Him home themselves and to get to know Him personally. Someone's compelling personal testimony jump-started this whole chain of events, but unless they had come to know Him for themselves many would not have truly believed in Him like they needed to in order to experience salvation.

Father, teach us how to know You personally, intimately, passionately, vulnerably. Invade our hearts with You love, Your compassion, Your grace and kindness and presence. Show us Your face today where we can see all the things we need to know about You and Your feelings for us. Reveal Yourself to our hearts in a radically new way today and bind us to Your heart.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. (Romans 8:14 NRSV)

Their Word - His Word

From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified.... Many more believed because of His word; (John 4:39-41)

I never cease to be amazed at the infinite flow of new insights that God can bring out of any passage. I am amazed over and over – but no longer surprised very often. Since I first started the practice of reading God's Word inductively I have learned that there is no bottom to the depth of His wisdom and no limit to what the Spirit is willing to impart. The limitations that we so often perceive in our study of the Word is usually due to our lack of patience, our lack of willingness to stay put long enough to perceive more, our unwillingness to lay aside preconceived opinions and our dullness of heart that prevents us from hearing the voice of the Spirit more clearly.

Over the past few years I have been learning to meditate more intentionally and to expect the unexpected, to be easily challenged about my own preconceptions and beliefs. I realize that if I am in the Word and have asked God to surround me with His Spirit and presence that I am in a safe place and do not need to worry about being misled. If I am willing and desire to be mentored by Him, He is faithful and even eager to share more about Himself with me, to train me with ideas unfamiliar to me from my previous training and to reshape the way I perceive reality and the way I see God.

As I came back again to this passage the first thing that I noticed was the connection between these two verses and that there is likely something important here that I should take time to ponder and to listen. If I am willing to listen then God is willing to reveal a little more of Himself and in the process advance my heart in the process of healing and restoration.

This verse says that many believed because of the testimony of this woman.

I hear a lot about our need to testify, to speak openly about God, to share what God has done and is doing in our lives. There are hundreds of programs and seminars and all sorts of materials centered around soul-winning through witnessing and testifying. It used to be popular to have what was called “testimony meetings” where it was supposed that people could get up and tell what God was doing in their lives that week. But as I recall most of what was talked about seemed more centered on the good fortunes of that person or the misfortunes that befell them with only sometimes a tagline near the end mentioning God or asking others to pray for them.

I have been baffled by the various uses of the word “testimony” over the years and have even become rather leery of those who are quick to promote programs of this nature. I was forced as a child to go out and hand out literature or collect donations from mostly unwilling townspeople in the name of witnessing that left a very bad taste in my memories. It all seemed so staged, so shallow and even hypocritical most of the time. It never involved speaking out what was in the heart even though those words may have been used as part of the training process. It was always along the line of memorizing some key phrases or methodically color coding our Bibles and pasting a chain of proof texts into the back of our Bibles to prove some unique doctrine that we were supposed to convince someone else to embrace.

Yet through all the years that I have lived and observed people using these techniques to bring more people into the church, I have seldom sensed the passion and love and warmth that emanates from someone like what must have taken place as a result of what this woman did to attract a whole city to come out and meet Jesus for themselves.

It is undeniable that whatever it was this woman did, it produced unprecedented success as far as our measurements of evangelistic success goes. Many people would give nearly anything to have the kind of response that this woman had in her very first efforts, yet she had no training, no theology coaching, no memorized speech or anything of the sort. Clearly she must have understood something or did something that made her efforts far more effective in returns that the millions of dollars many today spend each year trying to impress the world to change their minds about some particular brand of religion.

On the other hand, in our quest for discovering just the right formula for “success” we can fall easily into the trap of trying to zero in on whatever it takes to wow people, to excite them and gravitate toward whatever produces the greatest reactions. This can create problems of its own as we end up copying what seems to be working for others and studying their methods to see how we can imitate their techniques in order to catch more “fish” like they are doing. But often in the process we end up compromising or seeking to supply power and efficiency that God would do far better at providing if we were more dependent on Him than on our own grandiose plans.

Clearly this woman did not spend any money on her evangelistic campaign that I can see in this story. She did not mount a strategy of conducting Torah studies ahead of her public announcements about the Messiah waiting outside town and she did not even outline a series of beliefs that people needed to embrace in order to conform to the truth. The simplicity of her testifying strikes us so strongly that we are tempted to believe that her enormous success may have just been 'the luck of the draw', that maybe she just accidentally did the right thing and got lucky like pulling the lever of a slot machine at just the right time. That sounds a bit crass when it is put that way, but then we sometimes feel the need to justify why we are willing to pour thousands of dollars again and again into meetings, programs, seminars ad naseum without seeing any significant results year after year.

Why can't we see results even half as effective as this woman had within minutes? What is wrong with our formulas? Are we not saying the right words? Not enthusiastic enough? Not smart enough? Not socially connected enough? Not holding our mouth right...?

Why are we so dull and stymied to the point that we can't even perceive where our problem might be? Where to even begin to look for what is preventing our efforts from having the effect on other lives that this woman's efforts obviously produced? Is there anything we can glean from this woman's techniques that might increase the returns on our investments?

A few years ago during a heated political campaign a phrase became very popular promoted by one party trying to discredit the opposition. People began to hear everywhere they went, “It's the economy, stupid!” After awhile it got to be a joke until it died away not long after the elections.

What made me think of this was a phrase that we might well benefit from in trying to figure out why many of our efforts produce such little lasting results. It might be well for us to say to ourselves on a regular basis, “It's the heart, stupid!” when trying to understand why we seem so ineffective in reaching out to others.

Over the past few years and especially quite recently I am becoming more and more keenly aware of how dull and damaged and confused my own heart is about reality and my ability to perceive God correctly. The more I see what is inside of me the more sick I feel emotionally. I remind myself that this may be a good sign; that the worse I see the truth about what is inside of me the more likely it is that that very awareness is evidence that the light of God is getting closer to me exposing all of this. That well may be true, but I feel an intense need to see God's goodness and power far more clearly if it is ever to overcome the power of sin that I am starting to see inside of me and all around me. I very much need to have a much larger and compelling vision of a great God that outstrips the ability of sin to manipulate me and control me. I need to come across Jesus personally at the heart level just as this woman did because I am becoming more and more aware of my own sick condition that this woman felt before she met Jesus.

Maybe I am like one of the people in town on the receiving end of this woman's announcement that Jesus is waiting to see me out by the well. I do know that my heart is increasingly hungry for something much better and more effective and powerful that the left-brain form of religion I see all around me. That is not to say that a lot of religion is not emotional. But emotional religion does not equate to genuine heart-based spiritual encounters with the living God. I have been getting tastes of these encounters with God which has greatly increased my desires for Him, but it also exposes more clearly the magnitude of my own thirst and hunger.

Maybe I am like the townspeople who believed because of this woman's testimony. I am moving into belief, I am encountering God for myself or at least am approaching Him. Many of the people in this town said to the woman later that they had believed initially because of her words to them, but after they spent several days with Jesus themselves their level of belief transitioned from dependence on her testimony to a solid foundation of their own encounters with Him personally.

Maybe that is the transition that I am craving and longing for right now. I feel dissatisfied with the heart-level of my religion yet at this point. I feel an increasing pressure to move past some major internal obstacles to break into a far deeper level of spiritual transformation in God's plan for me. It is hard for me to even identity what those obstacles are but I am getting impatient with them and seeking for God to expose them and remove them so I can see His face much more clearly. I want what this woman had just as her 'friends' wanted whatever it was they saw in her face and body language when she came rushing into town that day. I want to find Jesus at the well for myself and to have Him come home with me and spend more intense personal time with me.

There is a difference between the kind of belief that comes from someone else's testimony about Jesus, as important and vital as that is, and the kind of belief that comes from personal encounters and tutoring by Jesus Himself. That is what I am seeing in this passage this morning. I hear other's testimonies on Christian television programs that move my heart. I occasionally hear testimonies from people in person that make me long to experience God like they seem to be doing. All of these are important drawing influences for me that God uses to attract me closer to Himself.

But these is another whole level, a dimension beyond what most of us ever experience that I strive to experience for myself. There is something I desire that I cannot even describe at this point because I have not been there yet fully to know what it is like. I have heard descriptions of it from others who appear to be there but until a person experiences something for themselves it does no good to parrot the symptoms as seen in the lives of others. I want my life to be a fountain of living water springing up from a transformed heart full of the passion and love of the Father dwelling in me. I want my life to be full of spontaneous love, not forced religion.

I am becoming aware of some key areas in my life that I believe are going to be strongly affected when I encounter what I want God to do in me. These are core areas of thinking and feeling that I watch as indicators and that I believe cannot stay the same if I experience what I see in the lives of people like the woman in this story. I am going to feel love for certain people that right now is sadly missing in my emotional bank at this point. I am praying for that deeper level of conversion, that personal face to face shock of transformation when I finally see Jesus in a far more dramatic encounter that eclipses the attraction induced in my by the testimonies of others.

Father, give me that experience with Jesus now.

The Missing Name

They were saying to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world." (John 4:42)

I am starting to see that this verse exposes one of the greatest weaknesses in the experience of most Christians. And I have to include myself in that category.

The woman who met Jesus out at the well has never been identified with a name, so we have to use descriptive labels like 'the woman at the well' or 'the woman of Samaria'. Why is this? Did she not get enough respect to be identified by name simply because she was a woman and came from the wrong lineage? Or maybe there is another reason.

As I reflect back on the reading for today from My Utmost for His Highest I realize a very important principle here. Many of us spend a great deal of our focus on our own religious experience and we talk and testify about our feelings, our problems and how much better we feel when Jesus comes near. I don't want to discount that because many times God uses one person's experience to resonate in another person's heart to attract them into a deeper relationship with His own heart.

But there is serious danger of allowing our relationship with God to stagnate at the emotional level and never really drop into the vital area that may feel too threatening to us. Anything that feels threatening about getting close to God is always due to some resistance inside of us, some lie about God that we firmly believe is true and that we cling to above what God says is true. Our heart, though it still contains a lot of original wiring and design created there by God, is corrupted by sin and the effects that sin has permanently caused which taints and distorts every desire and every attempt to help salvage ourselves. No matter how much we may crave to be free from sin and its effects or how much we strive to be a good person to avoid the consequences of bad behavior, selfishness remains as the subtle poison that neutralizes every decision that we make and compromises our noblest thoughts and deeds.

Sin is far more diabolical than almost anyone can begin to imagine and extremely more deceptive than we can conceive. Deception by its very nature cloaks itself as fact so a person who is deceived cannot realize they are deceived unless it is revealed to them by divine intervention. Until we are exposed to the true light that flows from heaven through the presence of Jesus and was revealed to this world through His life and death, we are living in the light of sparks of our own making and will remain blind to what is really true and cannot experience true salvation.

So, what does this have to do with the identity of this woman that met Jesus and suddenly became a highly successful evangelist? I think it may have a lot to do with it. You see, what was really taking place in this story was the awakening of faith in the hearts of many people (the least of which was the disciples evidently). But faith came wide awake in the heart of this woman and true faith is always highly contagious. She raced back into town with her faith all ablaze and began to ignite other hearts with faith that were craving to to be warmed all over town in just a few short minutes until a crowd was running out to the well to find the source of all this fire for themselves.

What is one of the most important truths that can be seen in all of this? It is this – that faith, saving faith is never focused on myself but must always be intensely focused on God and who God is and what He is really like as revealed in Jesus no matter what I have felt before or believed or learned from religion. If faith is not seen obsessed with knowing Jesus for myself personally, compelled to get deeper into His mind and heart and being transformed in the process, then it is something other than saving faith.

I have lived far too long with the version of faith that is seen in religious circles. We know almost nothing of the Bible definition of true faith even though we can quote texts to prove that we do. We often speak of faith as something that maybe we must somehow work up on our own as if it was something we can generate with our minds. I can remember as a child immersed in this human view of faith derived from all the talk about faith that I heard and concluded that faith must be the absence of any trace of unbelief – that if I could somehow eliminate any thought from crossing my mind that something I prayed for would not happen then I would finally have real faith.

Now I see that that view of faith is the sister of the same fallacy that I was learned relating to righteousness. Many of us feel and believe in our heart that to be truly righteous we must eliminate every sinful habit and action and thought from our life and then we might be righteous. But creating a more intense vacuum in our heart does not induce righteousness to flourish there, it only sets us up to suddenly be filled with frustration and rage when we realize too late that we have been duped by a counterfeit version of religion that used Scriptures and religious jargon to keep us busy all of our lives trying to get right with God and appeasing religious people around us.

True faith is always spontaneous and saving faith is like the electricity that flows through an unimpeded circuit from one source to another outlet. As Oswald Chambers puts it in the passage for today, Never nourish an experience which has not God as its Source, and faith in God as its result. If you do, your experience is anti-Christian, no matter what visions you may have had.

So I come back to the potential reason that we still don't know the name of this woman who was such a compelling example of both conversion and evangelism. Why could such a successful one be brushed aside by the Bible writers as almost insignificant when her example is such a powerful model for us to emulate? Again I defer to Oswald Chamber's most helpful insights from today's reading.

When I am born again, the Spirit of God takes me right out of myself and my experiences, and identifies me with Jesus Christ. If I am left with my experiences, my experiences have not been produced by Redemption. The proof that they are produced by Redemption is that I am led out of myself all the time; I no longer pay any attention to my experiences as the ground of Reality, but only to the Reality which produced the experiences. My experiences are not worth anything unless they keep me at the Source, Jesus Christ. (Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest December 21)

The very fact that this woman did not even get named in the Bible is actually evidence that she was far more effective and closer to the real model for a true witness than nearly everyone else. She was so passionately focused on Jesus exclusively that everything she did and said after her encounter with Him was to draw attention to Him alone and not to herself. She had received the same spirit that motivated John the Baptist as he told his disciples, He must increase but I must decrease. This was not some sort of self-flagellating martyrdom complex to make himself look pious but was the evidence that God's own self-forgetful, other-centered passionate love was motivating and filling his own heart.

How much of this spirit is seen in the lives of our popular public evangelists today? How much of the open humility seen in the deference to Jesus by this woman and by John the Baptist is evident in the spirit and words and actions of those claiming to represent Jesus to the world now? We may be bringing thousands of people into an apparent belief in Jesus and accruing a long list of achievements for 'the kingdom', but I sometimes wonder just what kingdom we are really working for – God's selfless kingdom of real love or our own kingdoms of religion or denominations?

The progression seen in the final verses of this story verify the kind of spirit that was at work here. First of all the woman encounters Jesus and a selfless love that she had never knew was possible to experience. She was so animated by this passionate love that she could not contain it within herself and compulsively ran to those who had previously scorned and shamed her to entice them to encounter this love for themselves. Her very spontaneous and concise testimony was so effective that many flocked out to see for themselves this thing that sounded too good to be true. But they could not catch what she had experienced as quickly as she had so they insisted that Jesus stay with them so they could have more time to check Him out and see if He was for real.

As they allowed the presence of Jesus to be exposed to their own hearts and others that had not initially gone out to meet Him, many more lives were warmed and converted by their own personal exposure to the true light that had come into the world to light up all of our lives. The evangelism initiated by an obscure woman's encounter with a man like no other in her life resulted in two days of some of the most successful evangelism ever seen in history. And it all happened because people were exposed to and received without resistance the real truth about God as shown in the kindness, love and grace of the One sent to reveal the heart of the Father.

As these new converts reflected on how they came into such an encounter of belief, they confirmed the method that the woman had used to introduce them to Jesus initially. She had not tried to convince them of anything whatsoever; she had simply posed a question and displayed unmistakable evidence of a transformation that every human desires deep in their soul. Given the selfless nature of her total focus on drawing people's attention to Jesus alone they told her later that it was indeed their own encounter with Him that really made the difference, not just her words.

This is so important but so easy to overlook. We think far too much of our carefully assembled presentations and logical arrangement of arguments and proof texts and elaborate extravaganzas for soul-winning. But where is the radiating authentic joy emanating from faces of people who have encountered a man like no man ever met before? Doctrines are about as compelling to falling in love with Jesus as a skeleton can induce someone to fall in love. While bones may be very necessary for the existence of a body, they were never intended to be the main feature of attraction. Just so, the beauty that is supposed to connect us to our only hope and Source of life for eternity cannot be found in intellectual discourses or even compelling, irrefutable arguments. Insisting that we must keep the law of God before we have had our hearts ravished by the ultimate lover will never produce the kind of saving faith that is needed for a meaningful and transformational relationship with God.

I will be the first to quickly confess that I need this kind of encounter myself as much as anyone needs it. It is one thing to see these truths with the mind but another altogether to have the face lit up with that kind of joy. But this woman did not scour the world looking for God and finally discovered Him standing at a well; God knew she was going to be there and He arranged all the circumstances to cause this story to unfold. If God does not take the initiative to reveal Himself to each of us we can never find Him by searching ourselves. On the other hand, if we resist His revelations to our heart in deference to the prejudices and preconceived ideas of religion we may miss experiencing the only thing our hearts were designed for.

Father, show me Your face today, Your beautiful face of compassion and love and grace.

Resisting Our Legacy

I am writing this in early January but am back-posting it to be closer to the rest of this story. I just heard a talk yesterday from a speaker who reviewed this story and brought out some wonderful insights I had not noticed yet. I want to capture them and include them with all the other things I have been learning from this most compelling narrative.

Notice that this woman went through five steps trying to protect herself from letting Jesus have access to the deep pockets of pain inside that she had been carrying around for many years. She had given up on trusting men after losing five husbands in a society where only the man could ask for a divorce. After three divorces a woman was considered an outcast anyway and so after the fifth relationship she found herself dependent on a man who would support her but would not even offer her the courtesy of a marriage offer.

She came to the well at a time when she was sure no other women would be around to ask questions. The well in that day was the place to hang out, to catch up on all the news and gossip, the place where relationships were made and strained, where people interacted the most, where the real social life of the women in particular took place. This is the last thing this woman wanted to encounter so she picked the least likely time of day to take care of getting the water she needed for the household in which she felt trapped.

This woman had built up layer upon layer of walls around her heart to keep out anyone who might get anywhere near the deep pain that her spirit constantly suffered. She was so ashamed and fearful of anyone accessing her heart that she made sure she had multiple defenses to keep everyone away. It was this kind of deeply wounded, defensive victim that Jesus chose to demonstrate the effectiveness of the power of God to heal and to bring new life. As she fronted each defensive maneuver Jesus dealt with each one and unlocked each layer as she continued her attempts to keep Him at bay.

The first layer she threw up was the wall of prejudice. I have touched on this in a number of places as I have looked at this story and it was the first defense she utilized that normally would stop a conversation dead in its tracks or at least ignite a good diversionary discussion. But Jesus never once in His whole life engaged in the spirit of prejudice and so this tactic had no effect in even slowing Him down.

The next defensive shield that she resorted to was the issue of pedigree. I had not noticed it in this way before, but this woman was actually trying to insinuate that the Jews were not nearly such hot stuff as they strutted around claiming to be. Though the Jews looked down their noses at the Samaritan's as dogs, the Samaritans may have had similar feelings about the Jews. This woman was tapping into this hostility against Jews based on pedigree – ancestry, as a means of stirring up a controversy that might sidetrack Jesus from getting any closer to her heart. In her statement, “You are not better, are you?” she was trying to put Jesus into His place as a Jew who she expected would think that He was better than Samaritans. But again, Jesus had no interest whatsoever in estimating value based on who a person's family was or what their ancestors may have been or done. He only saw people through heaven's eyes and that is radically different than the way we generally view each other.

The third defensive shield that this woman attempted to use was superficiality. In her answer to the startling request by Jesus bringing up the subject of her marital situation that she absolutely had no interest in discussing, she answered in a way that was technically correct but intentionally misleading. She would not stoop to directly lying about her situation but neither did she want to allow Jesus any further into her private affairs. So she hoped to stop this conversation from getting any more uncomfortable by simply dismissing His request as irrelevant. “That question is settled. I don't have a husband. Let's just leave it at that.”

But that ploy fell flat too as Jesus suddenly revealed that He already knew far more about her that she ever wanted anyone to know. After He exposed His intimate knowledge of her real situation that would imply He could sense all the associated pain and shame surrounding it, she quickly resorted to her forth defensive tactic of religiosity. This was now getting to be a desperate grasp at anything to keep this stranger from continuing on His obvious quest to access deep reservoirs of pain and fear in her heart and so she desperately tried to divert His attention to the hot-button religious controversies of their day.

This diversionary tactic is a very familiar one to people who are desperate to mask over the pain in their soul and keep everyone's attention solely on religious controversies. This type appear to be very sincere and can keep a religious argument going on endlessly in a supposed quest for truth. They become experts in theory, can quote at great length proof-texts and logic and quotations, but they are terrified to face the real truth that their own hearts are bankrupt and broken and are afraid of allowing anyone to see what is really inside.

But again, Jesus easily dealt with this diversion and answered the question in such a way that she could not keep the argument sustained. He did not resort to any of the standard comebacks that everyone had used in the past and instead used the opportunity to reveal to her the true nature of God's attitude towards His children.

Finally this woman was down to her last gasp effort to keep Jesus from stepping through the doorway into the secret places of her heart she had so desperately tried to keep from Him. Her last attempt was to use the ploy of procrastination. Without being able to think of a good reason why His answer to her religious question might be wrong so she could keep the argument going, she simply shoved the whole discussion aside with the rationale that really no one could know the correct answers to all these anyway. All the arguments and philosophies circulating around only caused conflicts between various groups and the best thing was simply to defer all of that discussion until the looked-for Messiah showed up with the authority necessary to settle all these disputes. Only He would be smart enough to figure out what arguments had not been able to resolve.

She finally thought she had hit on the ultimate diversion that would be secure enough to guarantee that Jesus could not advance any farther into her private affairs. She was sure that the chances of her encountering the real Messiah were pretty much nil and so this tactic seemed to be a fool-proof defense to keep this stranger from moving any closer; now she could get back home and into her emotional hiding place again. But to her utter amazement this last attempt actually set herself up to face the most startling and life-changing choice of her whole life. Jesus' answer to this last question was an overwhelming affirmative, that in fact He was the very one she thought she could use as her excuse to keep hiding.

With this last excuse suddenly becoming the trap which she had set herself and had now fallen into, she had no more defenses to use to keep Him away from her except outright unbelief. But by this time her heart had been so touched by His kindness and her spirit had been so impressed with His compassion that she no longer wanted to hide from Him. She was beginning to realize that instead of being afraid of Him she wanted to embrace His love fully and let Him have full access to bring into her soul the healing and life and living water that He had just promised to give her.

All of her perspective was now turned on its head. Everything in her world: her fears, her shame, her relationships, her self-worth, her pictures of God – everything was suddenly transformed to be radically new and fresh and alive as this living water infiltrated every fiber of her being. She was so thrilled with this new water that she quite literally exchanged her own waterpot for the internal water that was so much more life-giving and had now begun to spring up from deep within her own heart.

She was so full of this refreshing water already that she had to rush into town to let it pour out all over everyone else who had previously been the sources of all of her pain. She went straight to the men of the town (the ones who likely knew her the best) and shared with them that their power over her sense of identity had now lost all of its effect on her and that Someone else had come into her life who was far more effective in imparting worth and identity to her life than any of them could ever dream of doing.

There is one more very significant point that I had also missed in this story. It has to do with the reference right in the beginning about this land being given to Joseph as an inheritance. What I had not seen before was that the location of this property was the very area where Joseph himself had endured the most traumatic events in his life as a young boy. It was this very place where his own brothers had sold him off as a slave and failed to protect him. This betrayal of his heart by his own family members was not unlike the experience that this woman had endured in her own life. Yet it was this very plot of land, this place where all of the ugliness and pain had started in Joseph's life that Jacob gave to him as his legacy.

And isn't that just what God tends to do with all of us. We think we have to run away from the scenes of our worst nightmares, from the places and people where our worst abuse has wounded our spirits and damaged our hearts seemingly beyond repair. And yet God brings us back to those places and memories, He pushes past our comfort zones, dismantles all of our defenses and excuses layer after layer and suddenly surprises us with an inheritance that turns our worst pain into our greatest legacy. That's what He did with Joseph. That's what He did for this woman of Sychar. And that is what He is doing with you and me.