Where do you go to find real life? The life that truly satisfies?
Will I find it on TV...10 years youngers in 10 days?
Will I find at Borders...The Secret?
Will I find it on a billboard...Do you want longer lasting SEX?
Have you found it in Rudd money? Has the stimulus package brought you satisfaction?
Where do you go to find the real life?
Can the woman at the well find this life? She's had five husbands and she's currently shacked up with another bloke. I guess you could say she's walked off the set of Desperate Housewives. She's also at the well in the middle of the day in the heat of the day. The other women have come and gone...so too are their stares their goss their rolls of the eyes their self righteous tutt tutts.
So what does this woman need? Mr Right? Thankfully she finds him and she will never be the same again...
John 4:7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water JEsus said to her "Will you give me a drink?"
Everyone avoids but Jesus engages her. Even though he knows her background. Even though he knows that her current sleeping arrangements aren't kosher. All others dismiss her but he draws her near. This is new or something she hasn't felt for a long time. But it gets better because once you're close to Jesus he offers you something...
John 4:13, 14 Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.
Coke is refreshing but only for a time. You finish one can and you need another. But Jesus declares that if you come to him you'll never thirst.
So rather than thinking where can I go to find satisfaction Jesus says that its a matter of who. He himself is the source of this new life. But it doesn't end there. Jesus offers her a relationship with God...
John 4:21 A time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem...a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth
Jesus declares that faith is not locked into a location. It is no longer about times and places but infuses all times and space. Jesus offers this woman not a religion but a relationship with the living God.
And so coupled with living water does this woman keep this all to herself "My faith is private...just between me and God..."? No she rushes back into town to tell others about who she has found...
John 4:28, 29 Then leaving her water jar the woman went back to the town and said to the people, "Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"
Remarkably the very people she avoided by coming to the well at midday she now engages. She's living like Jesus already!
One minute she trudged to the well in search of water...the next she's run home with living water. One minute she was locked into religion and the next she has a relationship with God. One minute her relationships were fleeting but now they are permanent. This is a new woman.
How did this happen? Not how but who. It is because of who Jesus is that he can give real life...
John 4:10 If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink you would have asked him and he would have given you living water
Jesus was ready and waiting to give this woman satisfaction. She came to know who he is and he gave her living water. It is because of who Jesus is that she will never be the same again.
So where do you go to find real life? Find satisfaction? Come to Jesus and you will never thirst. He is ready to give you new life. Jesus says "Come to me...and drink up..."
