Left Behind

So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" (John 4:28-29)

A couple of days ago I had the privilege of enjoying a concert by Michael Card, a popular and very inspiring Christian musical artist. To introduce one of his songs he shared something he had read by a Christian thought leader. They noticed that it seemed that almost everyone ended up leaving something behind whenever they decided to follow Jesus. Matthew left his tax table and money collection behind, James left his father and boats behind, this woman left her waterpot behind and Peter left his nets behind which he was eager to remind Jesus of every once in awhile. Michael has written a very good song about this idea that brings out this principle in its lyrics.

As I ponder this interesting action noted in this story I wonder about the real reasons that caused her to leave her waterpot behind. I tend to think that it may not have just been one reason only, though there likely was one dominant motive. I suspect that by this time she was so totally distracted by her overwhelming excitement in realizing that she had just encountered the greatest person to ever walk the face of this earth that she didn't even know she had left her pot sitting there.

I can relate to that quite easily – at least the distraction and forgetting part of it. If I don't follow through on something I am doing without getting distracted by something else or what someone says to me I can lose track of what I just had in my hand a few seconds ago – and then spend a considerable time trying to figure out where I might have laid it down in my absence of focus.

Our minds simply cannot process and keep track of but so many things at once. And while some people have far greater capacity to hang onto many more things in their attention and keep track of them all at once more than others of us, there still comes a point where one can be pushed past their capacity and something is going to be lost to their attention and have to be dealt with later.

But there are more reasons for losing track of something than just simple forgetfulness or distractions due to limited mental capacity. Our emotions can have a far greater effect in suddenly eliminating many things that we were keeping in focus before. This also involves the area of what it is we consider important to us, what is valuable and what takes priority in our life. When we suddenly have a radical shift in what is important to absorb our attention then things that had been high on our list of priorities quickly sink completely out of sight and all of our mental energies are instantly riveted on what has now become more important to us.

Fear has incredible power to do this very thing. We can be living a normal everyday kind of life with its average views of what is important or valuable to us when suddenly a crisis or disaster may strike. Then our whole perspective of what actually should be important is seriously challenged and we are often surprised at how skewed our priorities have become from lack of careful attention or proper choices. We may come to suddenly realize that we have spent far too long dithering about things that simply have little to no importance in the bigger picture of life and far too little time investing attention and time with the things in life that really make a difference and prepare us for just such events.

Because of this ability of fear to get our attention and prompt us to reevaluate what is most important, unfortunately too many people have decided to exploit this technique and try to make people afraid more and more to gain control over their minds. I firmly believe that fear is actually a counterfeit of the way God desires us to focus our attention on the most important things in life. And though He may often allow fear to accomplish this work in us to jolt us away from our silly distractions and upside down value systems, it is not His desire for us to live in fear as a way of life. Someone has said that though the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it is only the beginning. Fear as it is most often used in our world is opposite to the way God desires to have a relationship with us; so when fear is utilized in attempts to force people into salvation those doing this are demonstrating that they do not really know or understand the real truth about God and His desires for His children. They are following the counterfeit methods of God's enemy who has insinuated that God wants us to live in perpetual fear of Him.

The Bible is filled with language that seems to reinforce this confusion about how we are to relate to God. But remember that the Bible translators chose words based on their own biased perceptions of what God is like and affected the picture of God seen in various translations of the Bible by their own ignorance about His ways. But this does not have to be an insurmountable block to a person who really wants to know the truth about how God wants us to relate to Him. There are enough clues and passages that make it clear what God is really like that the honest in heart, the true seeker for God will begin to see more and more clearly the real nature of His love and His true exercise of power completely free of manipulation and force.

God's love is actually far more powerful and effective to transform lives than fear can ever be. Fear can often bring much quicker results to change outward behavior or produce symptoms that appear righteous, but fear is a terrible adhesive to hold together relationships longterm and it is not God's principle or will that we live in constant fear of Him. The fear of God when properly understood from the Bible is not at all the kind of fear that we commonly think about from our perspective. It is unfortunate that the two concepts have the same English word because they really mean very different things at the heart level.

If God had desired a relationship of fear then Jesus would have related to nearly everyone quite differently when He was here on this earth. Jesus could very easily have said different things to this woman if He had believed that fear was the way to get her attention and connect her with God. But God's ways are not the same as man's ways and He is not interested at all in a service to Him based on fear. That is the counterfeit way of false religions that keeps billions of people either in terror of an angry God induced by all the lies they have been taught or in rejection of the very idea of God because their minds and hearts refuse to believe such stupidity about Him.

I have come to realize and appreciate much more over the past few years that many people who profess to hate God or reject any notion that God even exists are actually far more honest and even godly than most Christians are in the way they present God to the world. These people are actually rejecting the false pictures of God presented by popular religions. I am coming to realize that many of this first class of people are easier to relate to than Christians who have such dark superstitious pictures of God that they make Him out to be a monster more like the devil than like the true God of glory. I have found that when a professed atheist who has never encountered the true picture of God once catches a glimpse of God as He really is in opposition to the way He is caricatured by most religion, that they are eager to embrace Him and want to know Him much better. This transformation is much more difficult for a religious person to experience who has been brought up to believe so many lies about God that their hearts are kept in constant fear and confusion about His true character.

This woman lived among people with confused ideas about God herself. I am not so sure how many of these popular lies she actually believed, but I am sure that as a human being she certainly had a number of them at least. But given the glimpse into her past that we have I also suspect that she had already been challenging many of these social and religious assumptions about God because they were so out of harmony with the way God had designed her heart to thrive. The dissonance created between popular views of God and the God-given desires that longed for fulfillment deep inside of her simply could never be reconciled and she well may have chosen to follow her heart more than the religious expectations of those around her which would quickly get her into a lot of difficulties.

Also, because of the fact that she was attempting to follow her heart more than the mainstream of most of those around her, she found herself getting involved in one relationship after another that failed to bring the satisfaction that her heart so yearned for. She didn't realize that there is no human that can ever meet the deepest longings of the heart that were created for fulfillment in God's heart alone. And along this line I believe that like many atheists, many of the kinds of people that Christians despise and condemn who live immorally and reject popular Christianity in favor of searching for love in all the wrong places may actually be closer to discovering God than most Christians are at this point. Again, they may be people who are actually more honest about what is going on at their heart level than the professors of religion who profess to know and follow God but have hardened their hearts against being exposed and shaped and softened and transformed by the presence of God.

This is exactly why Jesus found it much easier to hang out with people that were viewed as despicable sinners by others who considered themselves to be closer to God's will. It is actually much easier for God to find entrance into a person's life who is honest about what is going on inside their heart than it is for Him to connect with one who claims to be religious but who resists admitting much at all about what is going on deep inside. Religious people all too often believe that appearances and outward behavior is more important to God than being transparent and honest and vulnerable about what is really going on inside. That is why it is so much harder for the so-called righteous to come to repentance than it is for the people openly seen as sinners to enter into salvation.

This woman was very likely closer to the sinner category based on society's measurements than most of the religious people or even Jesus' disciples at this point in their lives. For her, about the only distraction that she had to drop and leave behind was a mundane activity of everyday life – coming to get water while avoiding being seen by others; trying to survive and meet her basic physical needs with as little pain as possible. For her up to this point her waterpot symbolized what was important to her and it did not take a lot of agonizing or discussion or therapy for her to be willing to leave it behind for something far more satisfying.

Yes, she likely also left behind her feelings of no worth, or feeling shamed and despised by God and many other lies that distorted her feelings about God. But it seems to me that these false views of God may not have had quite the deep stranglehold on her life that they often do for people more entrenched in religious practices and profession.

But for others that are filled with far more confusion about God from years of religious training and social expectations it is sometimes far more difficult to drop what is important to them and leave their prejudices and mistaken ideas about God behind to embrace the real truth about His character as revealed in the life and example of Jesus. I have observed that my own life has been marked with far more struggles to let go of lies about God and to get my heart to really believe and trust in what I am learning about His true character than those who's lives are much messier outwardly than mine but who seem to easily grasp the reality of His goodness, grace and compassion for them. I have come to the conclusion that it is far more difficult for a religious person to be born again than it is for an open sinner living it up in the world but filled with pain inside and ready for something much more fulfilling.

I want to leave all of my lies about God behind to never be recovered again. I suspect that this woman might have come back later and retrieved her waterpot to use it again. But that waterpot did not hold near the danger for her like other things that keep me distracted have to obscure my picture of what God is really like. Yes, this woman like all of us had confused ideas about God that needed to be abandoned forever. And I believe that she was eager to throw them away and likely became free of many of those notions over the next few days as she, with all of her community were blessed with heaven's gift of God's Son sharing with them personally the real truth about how God loved them passionately. But I don't read anywhere that such a thing ever took place in a Jewish town. I suspect that the effect of the many lies about God that had become entangled in the religious thinking of the more pious Jewish people had far more effect to prevent them from as freely embracing the revelation of God that these Samaritan's enjoyed with Jesus in their midst.

Father, please show me more clearly the things and ideas and priorities that need to be left behind in my heart so I can enter into Your joy and Your peace. I want to experience Your presence like this whole town full of Samaritans did so long ago. I want my family, my friends, my church along with me to fall in love with You and see You the way You really are like these people did. That all started with the simple testimony of one very discredited woman who was marginalized by society but experienced a life-transforming encounter with the real truth about God in encounter with Jesus. I want that kind of encounter myself; I need it, I want it, I plead for it. Father, show me Your face, Your glory, Your goodness, the real truth about You that my heart was created for. Make me a witness to attract others to You just as this woman became an irresistible magnet to draw others to discover You for themselves.