THE REAL THING!
“‘Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’ The woman said, ‘I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.’
“Then Jesus declared, ‘I, the one speaking to you – I am He.'” John 4:23-26 (NIV).
Her curiosity was aroused!
At first she was afraid, getting ready to run if Jesus came too close, but now, like an inquisitive animal, she crept nearer. Her secret was out and she was no longer afraid of being found out. Jesus knew it all but, instead of judging her, He diagnosed the cause of her pain — she had no Father, no-one to turn to; no-one to give her an identity; no-one to worship who would accept her and receive her and make her feel secure.
‘God the Father is looking for true worshippers, people who will open up their entire being to Him and become one with Him through the Holy Spirit,’ Jesus explained. Something came alive inside her. Her cold, dead heart was awakened. Somewhere she had heard that the Messiah was coming and He would make it all plain.
Wistfully, she voiced her longing. ‘Isn’t there someone who can tell me what this means? I know that Messiah is coming. When He comes, He will make it clear. But He’s not here, and how am I supposed to understand?’
Jesus did something He had never done in any other company – He told her straight out that He was the Messiah! She had inadvertently expressed her longing for Him, now that her interest and desire to know the truth had been aroused. It was time to disclose His identity so that her awakened heart could open up and receive the truth He was offering her.
In a short space of time, she had come a long way from being a brassy and hardened loose woman to an interested enquirer after the truth. How did Jesus do that? There was something about Him that she could not fathom but that drew her to Him. He was not the run-of-the-mill man who was lured by her “charms” and wanted what she shamelessly flaunted.
He was friendly, warm, gentle, even when He disclosed her sin, and genuinely interested in her. He understood her; He knew who she was behind her hard exterior. She was not the person she projected to the world. She lived in a prison of loneliness, shame and fear, feeling worthless, used and unwanted. She was an orphan. She had no Father.
Slowly He coaxed her out of her shell. When He dropped His bombshell by revealing His intimate knowledge of her lifestyle, she was ready to listen and not to run away. It was His role to introduce her to the Father and to reconnect her to Him so that she, too, could take her place in His family as a beloved daughter.
Her way of life was a poor substitute for what her heart longed for. She was drinking at the wrong fountain. She knew there was something missing but she could not put her finger on it until she met Him, and then it all fell into place. It was not only His words that unlocked her imprisoned heart. It was the presence of Jesus Himself that finally set her free. He exuded the very presence of God, the real God, not the substitute god she knew about and to whom she possibly even paid lip service.
She did not know then, but she would learn that she was standing in the presence of, and being spoken to by the Son of God, in the presence of pure Love, a love she had never experienced before. It was a love that engulfed her like a warm blanket, making her feel alive, clean and completely accepted in spite of everything she had done. This was the real thing and she knew it!
She had finally experienced the wonder of drinking at the fountain of living water. She would never thirst again.
Have you dome to the well to drink of the love of Jesus that is a fountain that will never run dry?
Acknowledgement
Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.