Day 6 - Would you like a drink?

Reading: John 4:1-26

How are you at striking up conversations with people? How comfortable are you sharing matters of faith? There’s no doubt it comes easier to some than others, but we are all called to give it our best shot (Matthew 28:18-20) Here, Jesus makes evangelism personal, relevant and natural.

Jesus asks a Samaritan woman for a drink and chooses to ignore the prejudices of the day – that women shouldn’t be spoken to in public; that Samaritans were unclean and to be treated with suspicion (remember how the expert in the law couldn’t bring himself to even say the “S” word in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37)).

Jesus doesn’t judge the woman. He sees one of his Father’s children who needs help. She is a sinner, as we all are, who has had 5 husbands and who currently lives with a man who is not her husband. She also needs to know more of Jesus, as we all do, and the living water that he offers. This living water is the Holy Spirit and eternal life, the Holy Spirit that when accepted and embraced enables us to “worship in spirit and truth”. Without him we will worship in the wrong places (on the mountain or in Jerusalem) and in the wrong ways (in church on Sundays rather than with our whole lives). As Jesus says, “God is spirit, and the worshippers must worship in spirit and truth.” They are the kind of worshippers we must strive to be and we need the Holy Spirit’s help to do that.

Response

Ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit today, embrace him and, in his power, reach out to someone with a kindness.

Tom