Share the Good News
OPENING PRAYER:
Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you today to learn more about you and your will for our lives. We know that in this life everyone walks with someone and we want to be intentional about whom we are walking with. Help us to be willing to share the Good News with others.
“Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me 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? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
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.”
He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 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.”
John 4:6-7, 9-26 (NIV)
REFLECT:
The story of Jesus with the woman at the well has touched many people over the years. I think it appeals to us on a human level for many reasons. We see ourselves as the woman at the well, just going about her day, the tedious task of getting the water and dragging it home. But even in our daily tasks we walk around as broken people. Jesus is who he is and in this moment he presents to this woman an option not just for her physical body but for her soul. The message of the Good News resonates with her immediately and deeply.
APPLY:
Let’s be reminded today that the Gospel of Jesus is to be shared with all people. In going about our daily existence, with people we just met and with people we’ve known for years.
CLOSING PRAYER:
Thank you, Jesus, for being a very real source of goodness and boldness in the world today. We desire to be more like you and to share your good news with others. Help us to see when an opportunity presents itself to us. We are not walking alone and we don’t want anyone else to be alone. Amen.
CONTINUED READING:
I Timothy 2:1-6, Acts 10:34-35
WORSHIP: