By John Crist

 

John 4:1-10

“When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John,(Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples,) He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee. And he must needs go through Samaria. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.”

Look at the seventh verse for just a moment. “There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.” Look at somebody right now and say, “Give the man what He wants!”

This insert in the Gospel of John is given without much explanation. Evidently, it is confusing to the administration of Jesus’ ministry, that He has inserted on His itinerary a stop in a location that was not in their charts or in their graphs. He says, “And He must needs go to Samaria…” I have to thank the Lord for being the kind of God who does things that confuses Christian leadership, breaks the bands on our religious perceptions, does things that make us have to seek Him. I am so glad that He doesn’t always fit within the spectrum of our ideologies.

He went down to the well, and you know the story; He administered to a troubled woman down at the well. I understand quite clearly that she needed an encounter with Him. She needed the Lord. She did not know when she rose up that morning and gathered her waterpots and prepared her outline for the day, put her meal on the stove, washed her clothes, and said, “I’m going down about the sixth hour to the well,” she did not know that this encounter would change the rest of her life. How many times do we get ready to do something and don’t even know that it is going to be a life-changing experience? She thought she would run down to the well like you run down to the mall! No particular preparation, just throw something on, grab the car keys and go to the mall!

She went down to the well. It was not her planning, not her mentality, prayer, commitment, fervency, that caused anything to happen! I get so amused today because we got to have steps for everything. Five steps to be healed, seven steps to be delivered, ten steps to a miracle, two steps to get to the ten steps that call for five steps to be blessed. Back in the old days, we didn’t have any steps. Sometimes we have more power with no steps than we do with all these other steps! We can understand all the principles and the steps and if we don’t have power, we don’t have anything but empty knowledge! The old timers had all the power and didn’t understand any of the steps! They didn’t know what to call anything, they just did it!

This woman just meandered her way into a miracle! Isn’t it amazing how that most of the awesome things that happen into your life, you just stumbled into them? You can’t even write a book about how it happened! You just wandered into it, happened to be in the right place and the right time! Just overheard a statement; got a piece of mail; you just stepped into some things.

The real miracle is not on your side of the well, it is on God’s side of the well! Jesus went down to the well, but His procedure was premeditated and calculated for a divine purpose. He didn’t just meander there, He woke up with it on His mind. He said, “I’m going to Samaria, I have an appointment there.” I can see quite clearly why she needed Jesus! If anybody needed the Lord, it would have been her! She was in a mess! She had had five husbands! Some of you are in a mess and you just got one! When you walk in and out of relationships, one right after the other, at some point you have to say, “Now wait a minute, something is wrong here!” She had had five and the one she had now wasn’t hers. Series of broken relationships, perpetually broken relationships. I used to go over here, now I believe the Lord is leading me over here…..

If anybody ever needed the Lord, it was her. She was so theologically confused! She could not maintain relationships. Theologically she was a mess. Jesus said that she worshipped in the mountain she knew not what! He said, “You are having Church but you have no idea what you are doing!” “You are going through a form and a fashion!” “You need to be in the presence of God, but you have no idea who God is, or how to ascend into His presence!” “Theologically you are disturbed, sociologically you are a mess!” She was in trouble, and in addition to that, she was prejudiced! She said, “You know you people don’t have any dealings with us!” “I don’t know whether I should be talking to you or not!”

There were all of these barriers that the Lord had to overcome in order to help her. Helping people is hard work. Never begrudge ministry anything that the Lord wants to bless them with because helping people is hard work. If you don’t believe that, just take another look at it, or better yet, try helping people! When people are in pain, they are hard to work with. They have attitudes and dispositions that when you really start touching them where they are hurting, they yell, react and scream, and become vulnerable! Helping people is not easy!

He had to overcome all of those limitations to get down to the crux of what was really wrong in her life! He said something to her that really shut her up when he asked her, “Where is your husband?” There is something that the Lord could ask every one of us that would shut us right up! Certain things could flash up on the screen and you would want to put up your finger and tiptoe right out of here! There’s no need in any of us acting like we don’t know what I am saying, we need to just humble down. He led her to a place of real confession.

Real healing begins when we open up and start telling it like it is! You can never be delivered until you tell it like it is! “I have no husband!” He said, “You got that right!” “Five husbands you have had, and the one you are living with is not yours!” “You’ve had six men in your life, now get ready for the seventh!” “When Jesus comes into your life, He won’t be like any of the other six men that you encountered before!” He will not take you through what they took you through! You cannot deal with Him as if He were just one of the six, He is the seventh man and this time you are going to be satisfied! Tell someone, “I’m on the seventh man now!”

You caught me when I was on one of those other six, but I got it right now. I finally got somebody who can help me! Heal me! Deliver me! Strengthen me! Change me! Who can bring me up! Who can bring me out! I got the right man! The seventh man. He is so able to meet you right where you live and deal with you.

He sat at the well, made an appointment with her! She didn’t even know that she had an appointment! God knows how to orchestrate your affairs to make sure that you show up at the right place and time. He will manipulate things to make you show up at the right place at the right time, to get what He wants you to get! Sometimes you just stumble upon a blessing because God predetermines your steps. “The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord.” He draws you when you are not even thinking about Him. He’ll draw you when your mind is somewhere else. You don’t even know you are being drawn and He will say, “Get up and go to church!” You need to get up and go because God may be going to do something awesome in your life!

God is not in the business of doing “normal” things! Who needs God to do normal things, men do normal things! We need God to do awesome things! I can do natural things, I need a God that can do supernatural things! If God set an appointment with you, something awesome is going to happen! Don’t miss the appointment fooling around with the sixth man!

He has to overcome her conflicts, her attitudes. You would be surprised how your attitude about other things bleed over into your spirituality. Even when God wants to help you, He gets resistance form you. “Why don’t you have anything to draw with?” “What are you doing talking to me?” He has to overcome all of your obstacles!

There is something that we need to deal with. It was not her need, that brought Him to the well. Not her problem, raggedy lifestyle, promiscuous positions, arrangements or affairs: As bad as she needed to be saved, it was not her need of Him that brought Him to the well. Not her confusion about doctrine, not because He wanted to teach, not because He wanted to lay hands on her and clean her out: There was a need in Him!

I want to talk about the other side of the well! Not her side, but His side of the well! He had been dealing with the Pharisees, wrestling with their concepts and their religious perimeters and expectations about what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior for Him, and who He did or did not baptize. He had been dealing with the Pharisees, and He was tired of the Pharisees! He had been surrounded by His own men!

We have to be careful as men, and in particular, men in positions, that we don’t become boring to God. so impressed with position, influence, and affluence that we fail to touch God like He needs and wants to be touched! Most of the time that He was greatly moved, He was moved by women! One touched the hem of His garment! One broke and an alabaster box of ointment! They prepared His body for burial! Over and over again He was moved because of women. As men, we tend to evaluate who we are by what we do! If you get around a bunch of men, the first thing they will ask you if they speak to you at all, will be, “What do you do for a living?” Then if you have the wrong answer, the conversation is over. If you have a real good answer, “Do you have a card?” That’s because what we do is very important to us! That’s what you need to understand. If you are married to a man who is preoccupied with his vocation, his ministry, his occupation, we get a certain amount of affirmation out of what we do. He had been surrounded by people who were into position. “Who is going to sit on the right, who is going to sit on the left?” “Who gets to lay hands on who?”

Women are not worried about positions. Women tend to be pre-occupied with relationship! So Jesus says, “Not only am I getting away from the Pharisees, you preaching brother’s, I’m going to leave you here to!” “Where’s He going?” “He’s going to SAMARIA?” “To the red-light district?” “The trashy side of town?” “Those confused people?” “Those spiritual mutants who claim to be of the seed of Abraham?” “We don’t even claim them as being in the family!” “Yes, I’m going to Samaria, and that’s not the half of it, I’m not going to the upper echelon of the community, I’m going to a trashy Samaritan!” It was His appointment, He made it! The Bible says that He came to Samaria and rested at the well because He was weary!

You know something? God is tired! The God who never sleeps nor slumbers gets tired! Tired of being surrounded by people who do not appreciate His presence! Not tired of healing, delivering, walking on water, walking through doors, raising the dead, God is tired of being around people who take Him for granted! He said, “I’ve got to bring myself down to the well and sit here because I have a need!” God has a need!

It was not your need of Him that got you saved! As badly and as obviously as you needed a Savior, it was His eternal purpose that He had chosen you in Himself from before the foundations of the world! He had a plan and a place that only you could fit! He had a need to make an appointment with you when you weren’t even thinking about Him! He drew you by His spirit! God has something for you to do! We’ve been so busy shouting about our need of Him that many times we do not think, “God, what do you need from me?” “What was it about me that made you reach over in my house and snatch me out of situations that other people are still dying in?” He snatched me out of relationships that could have drug me in the mud! He has taken us out of things and circumstances that other people are taking ten steps, five steps, twelve steps. and they are still tied up into it! “What was it about me?” Certainly, it wasn’t my goodness! You flatter yourself if you think you are so good that God had to have you! Maybe you think you are so gifted that God had to have you! There are some drunks up in the gutter that can outperform you! I’ve seen drunks that would clutch the liquor bottle in their hands and sing until you just couldn’t stand it! They didn’t need your gift! “What was it, God, that made you draw me, in spite of all my hangups, mess-ups?” “You just kept on talking to me!” “Why?” “Because you wanted something from me!” “Why do you labor with what other folks would give up on?”

He sat at the well because He was tired and thirsty, but He could have drank without her! If water out of the well was what He wanted, He was at the well before she ever got there! Don’t tell me He couldn’t get any water because He didn’t have anything to draw with because this is the God that commands the wind and the waves! If he wanted to He could have stood over the well and said, “Water, come up!” Don’t you think that you have got God in a stronghold and He has to have you to fulfill His vision because if He wanted to get around you, He could get around you! It’s just that what He wants is not in the well, It’s in you! he didn’t come to talk to the well! He says nothing to the well because the well doesn’t have what He wants! He left the men and waited at the well for the woman! He left the Pharisees, hanging out with the boys, business meetings, planning committees, philosophical committees, to go down to the well and wait on a woman!

This woman was a mess! She needed everything from Him, but when He started talking to her, the very first word He said to her was, “Give!” He said, “Give!” I came to tell you that God wants something from you! Look at somebody and say, “God said, Give!” He says, “Give me to drink.” He says, “I came down here because I want your water! Not your well, but your water!” And then she brings up all her messes. The conversation started, not with her thirst, but His! Her thirst came out of Him confessing His thirst! His thirst says, “Woman, give me to drink!” I don’t want to rain on your parade, I don’t want to dim the glow of your effervescence, but I do want to declare that God is thirsty! In spite of your flaws and failures, fears and insecurities, He purposely passed by other people who would have looked better for Him to be associated with than you! He came down to a well that you hadn’t even got to yet, and waited on you to get to where He already was because there is something in you He wants!

You know He waited on you don’t you? While you were doing whatever it was that you did. He was waiting on you! He could have left the spot without you! But He waited on you, while you were just thinking about getting right! He waited for you and when you come, now He says, “There’s something in you that I want! Give me to drink!”

Why her? Wounded, broken, abused, misused, confused people: If you can get them delivered, while everybody else is sitting up there looking pompous, elevated and intellectual, while everybody is trying to be profound and conservative, and trying to be a representative of the upper-echelon religious community, if you can go out in the mud and find somebody who knows that they were a wreck, you won’t need cheerleaders to get them to worship, you won’t need pompom girls to get them to worship, you don’t need spiritual majorettes to get those kind of people to worship God!

It was not her righteousness that brought Him! She didn’t have that! But He says, “Woman, I want your water!” When she argued about it, He said, “If you knew who I was, you would be asking me for water!” In essence, He said, “Let’s exchange waters.” God wants to exchange waters with you! He says, “I will be in you a well of living water, springing up into everlasting life!” He says, “I’ll take care of your thirst, if you will take care of mine!” “I know what you need, that’s caused you to run amok!” I know what you like!” “I know what you been craving!” ” I know what you been thirsting for!” “I know what you been looking for in all of your relationships, and in all your situations!” “Nothing you have bought for yourself, put on yourself, painted on your face, park in your garage, has fulfilled you!” But He says, “I know what you need!” “I’ve got the water, and I’ll give it to you, IF you will give it to me!”

One thing we have got to decide right here and now is that God has the water we need! We need to get this so we don’t waste any more time chasing barren lands with thirsty hearts! In other words, we have been looking in places where there is no water! So that we don’t waste any more time dealing with the mundane when we can have the superlative! Don’t you see, that’s why she dropped her waterpots? Because when you get satisfied, there are certain things you will never need again! I know you are still going to go through things, struggles and the like, but some of the things you used to need, you are never, ever, going to need them like you used to need them! God said, “Don’t be afraid to break your water-pots, you will never be who you were, ever again!” “Don’t be afraid to break your water-pots, you are going to run off with the well!” Somebody praise the Lord!

Touch somebody and say, “I’ll never be who I was!” No matter how much they bring it up, talk about it, accuse me of it, look at me, act around me, roll their eyes when they walk by, I will never, ever, be who I was! Don’t be afraid to break your water-pot! Break it! Break it! If you’re never going to use it again, break it! Touch someone and tell them, “Break it, baby, break it!” Don’t be saving yourself a way out. Don’t be keeping nothing around “just in case.” Don’t be keeping anything for hard times! Don’t keep anything for bad moods! Go ahead and break your water-pot! You not going to ever need to be who you used to be! Break your water-pot! You will never enter into the realm of powerful ministry if you save your old water-pot! If you keep a “just in case” you will never be as anointed as God wants you to be! The real anointing flows when the water pot breaks! Break it, baby, break it!

The enemy absolutely hates you, He despises you. He despised you in the garden. He approached the woman before he approached the man. He’s been after the woman for years and years and years, because the woman worships, opens up in adoration, more readily than the man does. The devil hates the woman because she will break her alabaster box and aromatize the presence of the Lord with praise! While men are after positions and jobs, budgets and finances, the devil is after the woman who praises! He is after anyone who praises. He wants to dry up your praise! Your peace! Mess up your emotions! Keep your mind confused! Keep you on the verge of a nervous breakdown! The devil is after you!

After all, it was that need that the woman had, that he worked against her. Didn’t he work against her, the fact that she wanted to be like God! She says, “If you go through this method that I’ll give you, you’ll be like God!” “You will know as God knows!” There is nothing wrong with “To be like Jesus,” it’s just how you go about it! He wanted to pollute you in the process before you achieved your goal of being like God. The Bible regulates you with more severity than men. There are all kinds of rules and regulations to be understood because the enemy is after you. God’s laws and god’s words, when He speaks to you, they are not restrictive, nor prohibitive, they are protective because He knows how the enemy hates you! You are the legal door He has to use to get into the earth realm! You are the passage whereby we can move from eternity, where we have eternal spirits, into time, through a woman! So much so, that when God got ready to come to earth; and to abide therein, He had to be born of a woman! Forever and ever the rule in the earth is that man is born of a woman! If it comes into the earth realm it has to come through a woman! The enemy wants to shut up your door, mess up your mind, confuse your spirit, till you are letting the wrong stuff get in! But the devil is a liar! He is a liar!

You are not man minus, you are man plus! You are man with a womb! Man with the ability to carry life! To produce! Man with a birth passage into the earth realm! I want you to know that the church being referred to as a “bride,” is not manless, the bride is man plus! The Bride needs to get ready because it is coming through her! The blessing, power, and promise of God is coming through the church!

Look at Ruth chapter one, I want to share something with you! If the enemy cannot stop you from getting the water, then he wants to pollute the water! Naomi, the woman of valor and courage admits that she has been secretly depressed! Have you ever been secretly depressed? You know when you are depressed, you can’t be depressed, you have to be secretly depressed if you are a Christian. You got to go around like everything is fine. You got to have a positive confession, you gotta keep praising the Lord, and you can’t say anything negative, and so you come out to church and you grin and you skip and you say, “Praise the Lord!” Then you get in the car and you are crying! Secretly depressed! Some of you are secretly wrestling with some serious issues! Got a sore but it’s covered up! You got a Band-Aid over it! They used to say: Things that are covered up don’t heal very well! I care you to open up tonight! you are going to get some healing in your life! Down in the hurting place, there is going to be a healing touch! You don’t have anybody to impress tonight! You didn’t come here tonight to be prestigious and powerful, you came here to be healed, blessed and delivered! You can be cute when you go back home, but tonight God wants to deliver you! God wants you loosed tonight!

Ruth 1:20-21
And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.

I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the LORD hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?

Naomi is saying here, “I used to have things going on. Life used to be better for me than it is right now. But I have been through so much, I went out full but I came back empty!” “I made it, but I am depleted!” It is after the struggle that you have to watch out for! Nobody knows like women how to buckle up and take the pain and just go ahead and birth through labor and agony. It teaches you how to bear down in hard times! In the middle of a struggle you can always find the strength to push, it is after the struggle that you recognize how much it cost you to be who you are! Naomi says, “I made it, but I didn’t make it!” “I survived, but I didn’t survive!” “I’m here, but I’m not here!”
She says, “Don’t call me Naomi, Naomi means, my joy, and I’m not anybody’s joy now. I used to be my husband’s joy, but he’s dead, my children’s joy, but they are dead! I have always defined myself by my relationships, but now all my relationships are messed up, I am not who I was. Don’t call me “my joy” because there are no men left to affirm my worth. Call me Mara, call be “bitterness” because I want out full, but coming back, I survived, but I am empty!” “I am changing my name!”

Let me tell you something! Don’t you let anything that you can have or lose, determine who you are! Look at somebody and tell them, “Don’t change your name!” You might change your position, address, circumstance, everything else about you might change, but do not change who you are because of what you are going through! the enemy will release struggles in your life to pollute your spirit so that where you used to be full of joy, you become bitter! Nobody wants to dwell with a bitter woman! That is why the Bible says, “It is better to dwell on the rooftop alone than to dwell in the house with a brawling woman.” When your attitude changes, whatever is in you, changes whatever is around you! It affects everything around you! The devil knows it! If you’ve got a happy woman, you’ve got a happy house! But if that woman is bitter, there is nothing that can cover it up! If you are bitter, I don’t care how much you pay for the dress, bitterness will leak out over the top of the dress! You may have spent five hundred dollars on that suit, but if there is bitterness on your heart, you wasted your money! The devil is after your heart! He wants to make you so full of bitterness and anger! Anxiety! Confusion! Suspicion! Don’t trust anyone! Don’t love or give to anybody! You try to act otherwise but down on the inside you are full of bitterness! He wants to pollute your water!

It is one thing to come to where there is supposed to be water and find it dry, that is very frustrating! But to come to a place where there is water, and you are desperate to drink and the water is rancid and bitter, it is the ultimate expression of frustration! It is just like what Jesus went through when He went to the fig tree! It was advertising what it did not have! Isn’t it a frustrating thing when you come to somebody, you need water and they don’t have what you need! Don’t you know that’s what God feels like when He comes down in a service and we are skipping and shouting and leaping and saying all the right words, and He says, “Oh water, water, water, and He dives in, and it is dead things! Jealousy, unforgiveness, envy, strife, hatred, is laying, floating right on top of the water. He says, “I can’t drink this!” “I saw you dancing, I thought you had water, but I cannot drink this!”

Don’t let anything make you bitter when it can make you better! All we got is us, and we are in a mess! Moses, go ahead and cut down that tree and cast it into the water, It is going to cost something it’s life to straighten out this mess! Throw it over in all that death until it becomes life! Christ in you the hope of glory, cut down and died that you might live, get on with your life! Asked you for water that you couldn’t present, and then became the water that He asked you for so that you could give Him what He wanted in the first place! Holiness! Only God could do that! Stepped over into the bad places in your life and brought to life the dead things that need revived! Give the man what He wants, and what He wants, He became and gave to you, so you could give it to Him!