The Woman Of Samaria

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The Samaritan woman went to the well to draw water. Jesus sought her out and offered her living water. Indeed, Jesus meets us at our point of need! The lyrics of the song ‘Fill My Cup’ echo this:

Like the woman at the well I was seeking
For things that could not satisfy;
But then I heard my Savior speaking:
“Draw from the well that never shall run dry.”

Jesus says the water He gives will become in us a spring of water welling up to eternal life (Jn. 4:14). He also says: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (Jn. 7:38). By this He means the Spirit, whom those who believe in Him will receive.

Are you a blessing to others through the streams of living rivers of water flowing through you? Or are you a dead sea? As Oswald Chambers puts it: “Some of us are like the Dead Sea, always taking in but never giving out, because we are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus.” True encounters with Jesus bring lasting satisfaction to self and blessings to others.

After offering living water, Jesus revealed to the Samaritan woman her sins and then went on to teach her about true worship. He revealed that true worshippers worship in Spirit and in truth and that they are the kind of worshippers that God seeks. True encounters with Jesus leads to a right view of self and a high view of God, resulting in worship that pleases God.

The Samaritan woman had gone to the well with a water jar. After the encounter with Jesus, she abandoned her water jar at the well and went back to the town to tell the people about what Jesus did. Indeed the living water that Jesus gave was far more precious than what she had sought. She was eager to tell others even though it meant that she might have to reveal unglamorous facts about Jesus knowing that she had five husbands. “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Prov. 4:23). Through her testimony, many Samaritans came to believe in Jesus. The told her: “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world” (Jn. 4:42). True encounters with Jesus produce fruitful life.