Reading Through John Devotionals – Week 4
See all Devotionals: https://graceforohio.org/category/reading-through-john-devotionals/
Day 22
The Samaritan woman in today’s story is going about her day as usual. She has no reason to believe that she will meet the Son of God on her way to get water, so she is a little slow to catch on when it happens. Jesus is very patient with her, using a water metaphor, something she can relate to, to begin explaining His true identity and what He has to offer her. The “gift” He refers to is eternal life.
Given the circumstances, it is easy to see why the woman in the story did not ask Jesus for a drink. She was a Samaritan and a woman, after all. According to the customs of the day, she had no business asking a Jew for a drink, much less a Jewish man. Plus, she had her own water jug. However, she might have asked Jesus for “living water” to quench her heart’s thirst if she had known who He was and what He could actually do for her.
Forget superficial, temporary things for just a moment. What do you really need from Jesus right now? What if He told you that what you actually needed was something different? Would you listen to what He had to say? Would you let Him meet that need?
Thank God for providing what you actually need in Jesus.
Day 23
The Samaritan woman is like many people. She has some spiritual knowledge, but it is mostly second-hand, not based on personal experience. She is curious about Jesus and wants to know what He has to offer. She is doing the right thing by asking Him questions and listening carefully to His answers.
The harder the Samaritan woman presses with her questions, the more insight Jesus gives in return. She is a great example of what it means to seek Jesus. When you go to Jesus, the source of truth, and do the same, you’ll get the answers you need.
Because we have the Bible, we already know that Jesus Himself is the living water He tells the woman about. We know that through His death and resurrection on the cross, He has made a way for us to have eternal life, but we tend to forget that He came to do more than that. Jesus wants us to live meaningful, joyful lives here on earth, too.
Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that the water He offers will “become…a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” We taste the living water of Jesus when we accept His gift of eternal life. That living water becomes a deep well when we make an intentional effort to grow closer to Jesus through prayer, Bible study, and obedience. It wells up in us and spills over in a way that others can’t help but notice when we allow ourselves to become utterly dependent on Him for everything.
Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? If so, when did you make that choice? How has it changed you?
Do you make a daily effort to grow spiritually? If so, what does that look like in your life? How has it changed you and the way you see things?
Thank God for answering your questions and allowing you to draw close to Him.
Day 24
The Samaritan woman is obviously drawn to Jesus in this story. She’s not sure what He has to offer, but she wants to know and is pretty sure that she wants whatever it is. At first, she asks Him for water that won’t run out. She thinks He might be able to meet a physical need.
Jesus takes the conversation to a personal level, asking her to bring her husband to the well. Ashamed that she lives with a man to whom she isn’t married, she simply tells Him that she doesn’t have a husband. Jesus lets her know very quickly that she isn’t fooling Him.
The Samaritan woman’s response is much like ours might be. Uncomfortable with the shift in conversation, she turns it back on Him, discussing the more neutral topic of religion while trying to figure out how He knows what He knows, but Jesus is having none of it. He cuts right through the religious pretense and talks about matters of the heart. When the woman has no pretense or conversational defense left, Jesus answers her spiritual questions by revealing His true identity.
Are you comfortable dealing with Jesus on a personal level, or do you hide behind religious practices and “safe” conversation and prayer?
What do you think would happen if you let God tell you what He really wants you to know? How would your life be different if you let Jesus be everything to you that He wants to be?
Thank God for seeing right through you so you don’t have to keep pretending.
Day 25
Read John 4:27-30 & John 4:39-42
The Samaritan woman finally gets it, but she doubts herself just a little. Not caring about the same things she cared about just a few moments before she met Jesus, she leaves her water jar and goes immediately to tell everyone about her conversation with Him. He has totally interrupted life as she knows it (something He tends to do), and her response is completely appropriate. In her excitement, even as she is working through the details of who Jesus is and what, exactly, that means for her, she shares the little bit she does know with others.
It’s our job to introduce people to Jesus. It’s His job to save them. We are responsible for telling others about Jesus, but we are not responsible for other people’s reaction to what we have to say. All we have to be is obedient. Jesus will take it from there.
Thank God for helping you communicate His truth to others even when you don’t fully understand it.
Day 26
The disciples had been with Jesus for a while. They had watched Him perform miracles and were no longer surprised to find Him doing unexpected things like talking to the Samaritan woman, but they still didn’t understand what it meant to serve God the way Jesus served God, putting personal needs aside in order to do exactly what God would have Him do at just the moment that God wanted Him to do it. In the few moments that Jesus had alone with the Samaritan woman, His obedience set in motion a chain of events that meant salvation for many, many people.
As you continue to grow in your faith, keep your eyes on Jesus as the disciples did. Let Him show you who He is and what He is about. Don’t ever assume that you know all there is to know about following Him or serving God. When He tells you to do something, do it so that you don’t miss a chance to set a miraculous chain of events in motion.
What can you do on a daily and weekly basis to keep your focus on Jesus? Where will you find encouragement and support as you continue to grow in your faith and learn how to “harvest” as Jesus did in this passage?
Thank God for Jesus’ example as you learn how to obey Him.
Day 22-26 Sourced from “Thirst: The Story of The Samaritan Woman” View the plan on YouVersion here: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/13687-thirst-the-story-of-the-samaritan-woman
Day 27
Have you ever asked yourself what kind of response Jesus wants from us? The Samaritan woman has just heard an extraordinary declaration from Jesus: that He is the Messiah who can give the gift of living water. In these verses, we see Jesus’ disciples and the response of the Samaritans side by side.
The Samaritan woman wastes no time – she goes back to her town and tells everyone she knows that they need to meet Jesus (4:29). Like the first disciples back in chapter 1, she invites people to come and see… to consider the possibility that this might be the Messiah Himself.
Meanwhile, the disciples are thinking about lunch. They’re surprised to find Jesus talking to a woman, and want Him to eat something. When Jesus declares that He has ‘food to eat’ that they don’t know about, they are confused; who could have got Him lunch?
But just as in the temple, with Nicodemus and with the Samaritan woman, Jesus is not talking literally. This is about something much more important. Jesus explains that His ‘food’ – the thing that satisfies Him – is to do what God has asked of Him, to finish the work (4:34). What is the work? He invites His disciples to look at the fields in front of them. The crops are still green, but the harvest of people coming into God’s kingdom – the Samaritans coming out of the town towards Jesus – is ripe and ready to reap. This is a harvest for eternal life, something that others, the prophets and preachers that came before Jesus, have sown. Now the disciples will reap and benefit as they see people come to know the Messiah.
And that is exactly what happens. Many of the Samaritans come to believe in Jesus. Their first step is because of the woman’s testimony – her evidence of what Jesus had known about her. But that isn’t everything. They stay and hear from Jesus, so they can say their faith is not secondhand. They have heard for themselves and know that Jesus really is the Saviour (4:42).
How amazing that this message of the Messiah, the eternal life He offers, really is for anyone who will hear and believe. And what an extraordinary promise that Jesus’ followers can play a part in bringing in the harvest. If we’re followers of Jesus, that now includes us; just like the Samaritan woman, we can invite people to come and see for themselves.
Day 28
We’ve seen a lot of what it means for us for Jesus to be the Messiah in this section of John, but John has one more thing to teach us, and it’s one of the most important things we could hear.
As we come to the end of this section of John’s Gospel, Jesus returns to Galilee, His home region. He’s welcomed by the people who saw what happened at the Passover (see day 4), and we’re told Jesus heads back to Cana, where he turned water into wine (4:46). John wants us to connect what we see here with the wedding in 2:1-11.
But at first glance, there couldn’t be a more different occasion to the joy of a wedding. In walks a man in a desperate situation. His son is about to die. He has travelled more than 20 miles to see Jesus (4:47). This man is important, connected to royalty, but he is not too proud to beg Jesus to heal his son.
Jesus’ response is probably not what we expect. He challenges the man, and the crowd listening in (the you is plural here) about the kind of belief they have in Him. It seems that enjoying watching Jesus’ miracles is not the same as true faith. Yet the royal official insists… Jesus can heal his son.
What can Jesus do? In five short words, He heals the dying boy (4:50). What power! And notice the reaction of this father. He takes Jesus at His word – he trusts what Jesus says completely. While he is still on the way home, his household servants rush to meet him with the wonderful news that his son is well again (4:51). When he hears that it happened exactly when Jesus spoke His words, both he and his whole household believe in Jesus. Like the Samaritans, true belief happens as people take Jesus at His word and put their trust in Him.
But what about the connection to the wedding at Cana? Why does John deliberately draw our attention to it? In John 2, we thought about how the sign of the water turning into wine fulfilled the Old Testament promises of the Messiah; the Lord Himself coming to bring a banquet for His people. The same passage prophesied He will ‘destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever’ (Isaiah 25:7-8). This is what Jesus does for the royal official’s son. Death is simply swallowed up as He speaks. Jesus is the Messiah, the Lord Himself.
As we come to the end of this section in John, the right response is also there in Isaiah. Chapter 25:8-9 tells us that ‘In that day they will say, ‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.’
Day 27-28 Sourced from “Going Deeper: Meeting the Messiah in John 1-4” View the plan on YouVersion here: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/50724-going-deeper-meeting-the-messiah-in-john-1-4
See all Devotionals: https://graceforohio.org/category/reading-through-john-devotionals/