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One word. Five minutes to write about it. This is the idea behind Five Minute Friday and this is today's free-writing post.
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Of the long list of characters in the Bible that I'm looking forward to meeting in heaven, one that really intrigues me is the Samaritan woman at the well. We don't know her name and there's no follow-up to the story in John 4, but she was an effective evangelist. Her testimony was enough to cause the people in her town to believe in Jesus and to come and hear for themselves and decide to believe.
I've condensed the story here, but you can read the whole exchange in John 4:9-42. Jesus and his disciples are passing through the region of Samaria, and Jesus sits down at a well in the middle of the day while the disciples go to buy food. While he's waiting, a Samaritan woman comes to draw water and Jesus asks her for a drink.
The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?"
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
(Jesus said,) "God is spirit, and his worshipers 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."
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?"
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did."
They said to the woman, "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 Savior of the world."
This woman was probably a bit of an outcast in her town, with so many failed relationships, but her conversation with Jesus so impressed her that she went back into the town and told the people that a man who could be the Messiah was hanging out at the town's well. And she told them that this man had seen the truth about her and all that she had done. That's bold. But she had been changed by her meeting with the Messiah, and that was her testimony.
When we give testimony, we must be honest. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what Jesus has done in us. Because the story is really about him, not about us.
And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
~I John 5:11~
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When you tell the truth, you don't have to change your testimony. ~Andrew Gillum
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4 comments:
Yes indeed, it is all about him.
Don't know just whom I will meet
under Heaven's banyan tree;
who will come and take a seat,
unafraid of meeting me?
It's not that I am a menace,
but I look like no professor,
or slim player of good tennis;
no, more like bad*** pro wrestler
that on cable you might see
(if you enjoy a guilty watch)
whose ring-name must surely be
something like "The Great Sasquatch",
but I am now amiable guy
who really would not hurt a fly.
The Samaritan woman is a great example of how God can use our testimonies to impact others. I love how she was so keen to share what she had discovered.
Amen!
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