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; but the water that I will give him will become in him a wellspring of water leaping up to eternal life.” John 4:13-14.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
As you read My Word, as you delve deeper into the conversations of Jesus, I will bless your life with My presence in a way you never thought possible. He is the way to Me, the new and living way. But just as He told His disciples at the Last Supper, He had so much to tell them but they could not bear it then, you also must enlarge your heart or otherwise it will be more than your heart can hold.
You may be asking, “How do I enlarge my heart?”
You enlarge the capacity of your heart by removing everything in your heart that is not of Me. And I have already given you explicit directions of how to do that:
Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander (backbiting, gossip), like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. 1 Peter 2:1-3.
Let every word be established by two or three witnesses. Here is the second witness:
Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the Word implanted, which is able to save your souls. James 1:21.
And here is the third witness:
Let no unwholesome (rotten, corrupt) word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:29-32.
These directions are very clear. The question is do you want to be powerful in good works and have a life filled with the extraordinary rather than the ordinary? If you do, then you must become a doer rather than a mere hearer of My Word, you cannot be sluggish about this and put up any longer with an evil mindset in you. You may feel justified about it, but you are ruining your life, and not just yours, but the lives of those around you in whom you are planting bitter roots about others and poisoning them as well.
You must take every thought and word in you captive to the obedience of Christ. Get all wickedness, slander, anger, bitter roots, and offense out of your heart and there will be room for My revelations. Just as I told My prophet Jeremiah: “If you extract the precious from the worthless, you will become My spokesman (mouth).” Jeremiah 15:19. It is time for you to go higher and know Me better so your life can be filled with My glory. Glory is the exercise of power in love. It produces goodness and brings the imperfect to the perfect and causes all evil to cease. Evil cannot exist in the presence of glory.
And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain—for He says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is “the acceptable time,” behold, now is “the day of salvation.” 2 Corinthians 6:1-2.
You work together with Me on this. I will give you the grace and work within you but you must lay hold of it and work it out.
So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Philippians 1:12-13.
Looking at the conversations of Jesus, you will see Him enlarging people’s hearts by the words He spoke to them. Remember what He told the disciples who had been with Him for the years of His public ministry the night He was betrayed?
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He cleans (purges, prunes) it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean (purged, pruned) because of the Word which I have spoken to you. John 15:1-3.
One of the longest conversations I reveal to you for your edification is the conversation Jesus had with a Samaritan woman by a well. You may think of all the people He could have spoken with, she seems the least likely to be the one chosen, but appearances are sometimes deceptive. I see the heart.
“God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7.
And as Jesus spoke with her, His Words purified her heart so that she came to believe in Him as the Messiah. She was saved by hearing My anointed Word from the gracious lips of My Son, it healed and enlarged her broken heart. Jesus came to heal the broken hearted. And it set her heart aflame to share the good news of Salvation with all would heed her call to come and hear Him. She became a witness to all who would listen. And the whole town came out with her to meet Jesus. And they believed too. But I am jumping ahead. Let us start where you see the conversation in the Bible, although I had planned that encounter long before. I see the end from the beginning. I sent Jesus there on purpose. It was not random. None of His life was and yours should not be either.
When some controversy arose when the Pharisees heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), rather than cause any division, Jesus left Judea and went away again into Galilee. And He had to pass through Samaria. Most Jewish travelers went around Samaria because Jews avoided Samaritans because after Assyria conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel, the split with Judea and Jerusalem had occurred during the reign of Solomon’s son due to Solomon’s apostacy from Me to the worship of idols, the Jews in Samaria, who had already left Me to worship Baal and other idols, had mixed with the Assyrians and though they had some knowledge of Me it was tainted and incorrect. They were living a lie. But Jesus came to seek out and save the lost, so He knew that He had to pass through Samaria that day. He did the works I showed Him. Just as when He searched out Zaccheus hidden in the tree above the road when Jesus passed under the tree.
So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob’s well was there. It was the perfect setting for Jesus to bring a thirsty woman to the joy of drawing water at the springs of salvation (Yeshuah) as Isaiah had spoken many years before. But when a prophet speaks My Words into the earth the go to work once they are put in motion. Be mindful of that when you speak. You are putting things into motion, for good or for evil, for life or for death. Watch your words for death and life are in the power of your tongue. Speak life. My Words are Spirit and life.
So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour, that is noon. The hottest part of the day. His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food and Jesus sat alone at the well.
There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. I gave Jesus a Word of knowledge about her and Jesus knew she was the lost sheep I had sent Him to find. But he waited to use that word when the time was ripe in their conversation.
Jesus opened the conversation as she went to draw water, He said to her, “Give Me a drink.” This totally took her off guard, she was used to being ignored or scorned by Jews. The Samaritan woman said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” Jews, for the reasons I stated above, had no dealings with Samaritans. But now that Jesus had her attention, and not in a negative way. She was rather pleased that He considered her worthy to talk with and even share a water pitcher with. But His answer was even more surprising.
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” John 4:10.
Now she was curious, she saw no evidence with Him that He had anything to draw water with, but He had told her it would be a gift of God and that He was someone of importance with God. She was wondering how this man showed up from seemingly nowhere at the well alone at the noon hour to speak with her. So she inquired further, “Lord, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living 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?” John 4:11-12.
She addressed Him with high respect, she called Him “Lord,” which in the Greek language in which this Gospel was written is the word “kurios (κύριος),” which means lord, master, as a person exercising absolute ownership rights. (Remember, it saves you when you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that He is the Messiah.) And now she even went back to her Jewish roots to acknowledge Jacob (Israel) as the father of her people. She asked if Jesus were greater than Jacob and you can see from the title “Lord,” she was inclined to believe He was greater.
Jesus saw she was ready to go higher, so He 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; but the water that I will give him will become in him a wellspring of water leaping up to eternal life.” John 4:13-14.
She was still, however, focused on earthly water and physical thirst, but she believed He could give her a water that would keep her from ever getting thirsty again in the physical sense, which was a leap of faith as well. So she said, “Lord, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” John 4:15.
Jesus would now use the Word of Knowledge that the Spirit had given Him. Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” 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.” John 4:16-18.
Jesus did not reprimand her, in fact, He complemented her on her correct answer, which on her part was being deceptive. It told her she had correctly stated the facts because she had had five husbands and was living in adultery with a man she had not married.
This took the woman aback. She had never seen Jesus before and He knew her marital history and what she was doing currently in her life. She assumed He knew everything about her but He really only knew the Word of Knowledge about her marital history given to Him by the Spirit. If He was to lead her to freedom, He needed to know in what she was trapped.
The woman said to Him, “Lord, 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 4:20.
The woman now switched from the profane to the holy. She had a serious question about where she needed to be to correctly worship. This shows there was a longing in her heart to get right with Me. Jesus saw that too. So her gave her the answer that would bring her to worship right there at that well.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:21-24.
She had the answer she was seeking. She could worship God in any place at any time. And she felt the sacred and the holy right where she was standing in the presence of Jesus. He had the answers to her questions and He knew her without ever having met her before. And He wanted to talk with her and answer her questions. And He wanted to give her of the Spirit to drink. She had heard that they were waiting for the anointed One, the Messiah, that would bring the Kingdom to them and set them free.
The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” John 4:25.
She looked at Jesus, proud that she knew that much about the Jewish religion, but she was also thinking this could be the One. And she was not disappointed. Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” John 4:26.
What many a prophet, king and priest had longed to see and had not seen, to hear and had not heard, this Samaritan woman who had been married five times and was living with a man she was not married to, now saw, heard, and believed. A joy hit her that nearly took her breath away! She had found the Messiah that everyone was looking for, or rather, He had found her!
At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that Jesus had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?” 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 Messiah, is it?” They went out of the city, and were coming to Him. John 4:27-30.
She left her waterpot and ran off. At that moment only one thing mattered to her. She had met the Messiah, He knew her life history, and He had accepted her and shared so much with her that she just had to share it.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” John 4:31-33.
Jesus was not talking about physical bread but My Words. Just as He told devil in the wilderness when he tempted Him to turn the stones into bread, man does not live on bread alone but on every Word that proceeds from My mouth. He then clarified to His disciples that He was not speaking about lunch but about My Will as His food.
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.” John 4:35-38.
The disciples at this point were not sure what Jesus was talking about but Jesus was talking about winning souls for the Kingdom. He had invited Peter to follow Him so He could make him a fisher of men. The people were ready and hungry to find purpose, to have a vision, to know Me, like the Samaritan woman, they were like sheep with no shepherd. It was time to reap the harvest of souls and gather then into My barn and not leave them to rot in the field. My Word had been sown by the prophets and the harvest was ready for the disciples to gather to Me.
And Samaria was seeking meaning in life and from that city of the woman Jesus encountered at the well, many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of her word of testimony, “He told me all the things that I have done.” 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 4:39-42. After the two days He went forth from there into Galilee. The third day.
Bring people to My Words, show them Me, and they will come. Everyone is looking for love that is love indeed, and for life that is forever wonderful.
I love you. There is so much to learn from the conversation of Jesus with the woman by the well. It is a lesson in evangelizing, a lesson in seeking out and saving the lost, and a lesson for you about worship. I call the ones you may not expect to be the most likely candidates for discipleship. The Samaritan women became a follower of Jesus as her Lord and she never turned back to her old life.