SCRIPTURE FOR TODAY: JOHN 4
JOHN 4:13 -14
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I given him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Jesus was tired, he was in a place where he didn’t fit in, he was thirsty … and yet He ministered to a woman whose life was in a quagmire of continuing sin. The woman was knowledgeable of religious boundaries and ideology and yet she didn’t know her encounter at the well was about to lead her to heaven.
Have things really changed so much? On this earth it is all about being able to pause and connect … or as a friend used to say “Witnessing is all about one beggar leading another beggar to bread.”
Jesus is hardly a beggar, but He led the way in humility and acceptance of people so that … everyone – everywhere … might hear the good news.
We sometimes get caught up in the results of “giving a testimony” but what a person does with the Bread of Life is between them and God. It isn’t our role to convince or make the message acceptable for a better shot at a conversion.
We give out a piece of Bread … a drink of Living Water.
People who are hungry and thirsty spiritually don’t need the rules of eating and drinking explained, or table manners presented … they need a drink of Water … a piece of Bread.
Jesus did not present a teaching watered down to the culture of the moment but rather in truth and spirit, He gave a drink to a thirsty soul.
In His life here, our Lord experienced all of life. He didn’t skip over the hard parts. In fact Jesus experienced pain in ways we never will. Yet when He was tired, lonely, thirsty, and faced with a person in need … He never turned away.
So a woman who others may have shunned had the opportunity to become a true worshipper of God. Scripture shows that she was so moved by Jesus speaking to her and knowing about her life – that she went and told others.
An encounter with Jesus produces a testimony about our life and His. Flesh gives birth to flesh but Spirit gives birth to spirit (John 3:6). So as we walk through this world, we will eat and drink - yet we will hunger and thirst again. But when we encounter Jesus – face to face as Paul did on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) – we are forever changed.
So how is your “spring of water welling up to eternal life” flowing today?
Don’t wait till you are feeling well-fed and comfortable to “testify”.
Be ready everyday to pass out Bread and Water.
From one beggar to another … lead someone to the Bread of Life today!