(John 4:13-16, 26)

Soul Dehydration (4/2/17 – Samaritan woman)

ATTN: About 7 years ago, God gave us a vision of a diverse church that would center around one common bond – and that is Christ. “What would a church look like if it had Jesus as its only common core?” More than culture, socio-economic group, generation, musical preferences, or political bent, what if we preferred Jesus to anything else? And to get there, we had to have some specific goals or desired outcomes. And they were: 1) Lives changed, 2) Families restored, 3) communities formed, 4) culture transformed.

        1) We desired to see people’s lives changed – from self-centered to god-centered, from self-absorbed to god-absorbed. Our thoughts, habits, speeches, loves, changed because Jesus is effecting every part of our lives.

        2) Then, that would lead to our families being restored. How many broken families do we see around us? Having been a youth pastor for 16 years, I realized that what I was doing was rescuing kids that were floating down the river one after the other. It took me 16 years to realize, “wait a minute. Who’s pushing these kids into the river? I gotta go upstream and find out who’s doing this!” I realized that it was their family. Broken families, broken kids. So, by starting our church, we wanted it to be a place where everyone – young and old – feels like family and would take care of one another. Let’s do a more holistic ministry to the whole family in the hopes of bringing them together.

        3) Then, we wanted to see communities formed. If you haven’t been here long, you do not know how much joy it brings me to see you staying long after service talking and laughing with one another and meeting and doing things together outside of church. This hasn’t always been true of our church. Rarely anyone hung out outside of church. We gathered weekly for the mission of starting the church, but that relational part was missing and so people wouldn’t last long. People who play together stay together. We still have long ways to go, but I feel we are getting there.

        4) And then, we also wanted to see our culture transformed. I don’t mean the world in which we live. I think we can influence and affect the world around us as salt and light, and we should speak against the evils such as abortion, racism, but that cannot be our main motif. We are talking about the church culture mainly. The church culture ought to be different from the worldly culture. For example, we do not judge people by their appearance, performance or status. Rather, we receive the least of our brothers/sisters as we do the Lord. Another example, we put the community before the individual. “Ask not what the church can do for you; ask what you can do for the church.” I didn’t borrow that from JFK. JFK borrowed that from the Bible! “Seek first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness…” And many more…

        so, God willing, we want to emphasize these four points in the next couple months until summer time to refocus our vision. And I thought it was especially appropriate as we are going to a 3rd phase of our church as we are contemplating moving to a new location very soon. So, today, we want to look at our desired goal of having lives changed.

TRANS: Now, is there anyone who doesn’t want his life changed? Anyone among us who doesn’t think, “I just wish my life was different.” If you had been a part of As One for some time, I hope we have convinced you that the source of your unhappiness is not your circumstances but you. If you are new or if you are still not convinced, think of all the “only if” game you’ve been playing. We all did. “Only if I can get out of high school, I will be happy.” “Only if I had college education.” “Only if I were married to that woman or man…” “Only if we bought a house of our own… How many times do we have to be tricked by that game until we realize it’s never going to be our circumstances that will make us happy forever? Now, the older people are nodding their heads agreeing with me but the young people are incredulous, because you haven’t lived long enough to know that nothing in this world really satisfies. Put it this way: Say you got out of your parent’s home, you have your own place, you have your own car – you can go anywhere anytime you please – and best of all, you are done with school for good! – you never have to do homework ever again! No more tests! Wow, sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you be happy forever if that described you now? Well, welcome to my world. I just described to you what my life is like and the lives of just about every other adult here. You don’t see us grinning ear to ear all the time because we are happy forever. As a matter of fact, I get calls and text messages from these adults who are living your dream telling me how miserable they are. So, it’s not your circumstances, but it’s you that needs to change. So, we all want our lives to change. I do. How does a life change? Many factors, but certainly one factor is by hearing – faith comes by hearing and hearing from the word of Christ. So, today, I want to share with you of one life that was changed, that in turn changed other lives around her. It the story of a nameless woman that the Lord of heavens waited to come out in the middle of the day to encounter. And how her life changed through this encounter.

CONTEXT: Jesus waits for a gentile woman, a woman usually known as “woman at the well” to come out to draw water so that he can have a conversation with her. His purpose is to save her soul. And he strikes up a conversation by asking her for a drink of water. And then Jesus uses the water to draw her attention to her spiritual thirst!

* v. 13 – 14 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become min him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

What Jesus is doing is to getting the woman to see her that her soul is thirsty. But she doesn’t see it yet. She thinks her problem is physical. Her “Only if” was having running water at home, “Only if” I didn’t have to come to draw water every morning, I’d be happy!”

1. 15 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

But listen to what Jesus says to this:

1. 16, 16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

        What is Jesus doing? He’s opening her eyes to see that her problem isn’t physical, but spiritual. It is not her body that needed to be quenched. It was her soul that needed to be quenched. How do we know? Because she is going from man to man looking for satisfaction, but not finding it. How do we know that’s what it is? Because Jesus always puts his finger on the one thing that we are hanging onto for our worth and value or salvation, if you will – with the rich young ruler, it was money. With Nicodemus, it was his great learning. With the crowd, it was bread. They followed Jesus around after He fed them with 5 loaves and 2 fish and said, “sir, give us this bread always!” Their “only ifs” But Jesus tells them all, “Don’t follow money. Follow me. Don’t follow after great knowledge. Follow me. Don’t follow after bread. I am the bread.” And to this woman, “Don’t follow after men, who are made only in the image of God. They won’t quench your soul-thirst. No. Follow after God, Me! I will quench your thirst!  *

1. 26 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, ghe will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her,h“I who speak to you am he.”

You realize what Jesus is saying? He is our Savior and Lord. That He is. But He is more than that. He does more than to save and to rule over our lives. This is something I never learned in seminary. I was taught that Jesus is our Savior and Lord, but I never thought of Him as someone who will satisfy our soul, who is our Treasure, who is our joy! He satisfies our soul. He makes us genuinely happy even in the midst of our sorrows! That is what Jesus was saying to this woman. What men could not do, I can do. What things, diplomas, gadgets, social-media cannot do, I can do. That intimacy, that validity, that love, that meaning you were seeking for? You can find it in me.

        Being a Christian in not simply believing facts about Jesus. Even demons do that and shudder. Or even simply believing and trusting Him. Yes, it is that but more. No, believing in Jesus means that we find our satisfaction in Jesus.

“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. (Joh 6:35). He didn’t say, “He who believes in me will be saved from sin – which is absolutely true – but he who believes in me will not hunger or will not thirst – in other words, we will be satisfied in him. We will finally find what we’ve been looking for in Jesus. That love, that belonging, that intimacy, that significance, that meaning, that missing piece, that empty feeling you have in your heart, Jesus can fill!

        Our intuition was right in that the thing will quench OUR thirst has to do with relationships. But we were wrong in that we thought it was in our relationship with our friends. We thought it was in a marriage relationship. We thought if we had a good relationship with our children. It’s not a relationship even with other Christians. It’s not human relationship that will ultimately quench our thirst. It is specifically in a relationship with Jesus.

APP: But how? How do I have a relationship with Him and know Him deeper? John 4:14, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.b The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

      Will we ever be quenched perfectly that we won’t thirst again in this world? No. But we know what or who we need more of.

1) The word & Prayer: Read it everyday. Develop a godly habit of getting into the word. Read an audio bible…”Faith comes from hearing and hearing the word of Christ.” romans 10:17

2) The body: worship, fellowship. Do not neglect. Beat your body up to come b/c I know you are glad whenever you came.

3) Nature: look and marvel at God’s handy work. Take time to revel in the beauty of this earth.

4) Arts/music.

APP: I watched Beauty & the Beast. It’s Disney. I don’t think it’s Christian. But they can’t get away from the echo of the original story God has placed in them… As the movie ended and the credits were going up, I thought how much like the story of bible it was and I was thanking Jesus for loving such a beast that I am although he’s perfect and beautiful, and in the end, all things will be restored back to their original beauty, all the things that were cursed in this world because of our sin. You can see how you can find joy in God even in a story that did not set out to glorify God b/c it bears the mark of the original story…  Your life will change as a result of seeking and finding your satisfaction in this Jesus.

Learn to find satisfaction IN God through those things. Learn to link everything we experience to God so that in the end God is glorified. “Whether we eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God,” Paul said in 1 Cor. And if we can’t glorify God with it? Then we shouldn’t be doing it – for, everything that does not come from faith is sin. Would you look at Christ? In the word & prayer, in corporate worship, in nature, and in every legitimate pleasure giving things and experience your life change to become more like His?