John
4:9-11 Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink from the well.
“The
woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans.
She said to Jesus, ‘You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you
asking me for a drink?’ Jesus replied, ‘If you only knew the gift God has for
you and who you are s
peaking
to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.’ ‘But sir, you don’t
have a rope or a bucket,’ she said, ‘and this well is very deep. Where would
you get this living water?’” New Living Translation
In
a recent devotional I read that the reason Christians don’t look so different
from anyone else these days is because we forget that God is almighty! We go
about doing the right behaviors and saying the right things, but in our hearts,
we don’t believe God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine.
Oswald
Chambers asked, “Have you been limiting, or impoverishing, the ministry of
Jesus to the point that He is unable to work in your life? Suppose that you
have a deep “well” of hurt and trouble inside your heart, and Jesus comes and
says to you, ‘Let not your heart be troubled…’ (John 14:1). Would your response
be to shrug your shoulders and say, ‘But, Lord, the well is too deep, and even
You can’t draw up quietness and comfort out of it.’ … We impoverish and weaken
His ministry in us the moment we forget He is almighty.” from "My Utmost for His Highest"
I
like Oswald Chambers’ writings. He constantly challenges my status quo and if I
am willing takes me to a new level in my relationship with God. This challenge
to consider the almightiness of God got me wondering about how I limit God.
If I
can’t see a solution to a problem in my own mind, I have difficulty believing
God can or would like to solve the problem for me. I constantly limit Him by my
past experiences and lack of faith and vision. I limit an infinite, almighty
God to my finite definitions and understandings. I put Him in the box of my own
experience. When I grasp that this almighty God is the same God who spoke the
world into being, hung the stars, sun and moon in place and balanced the math
and biophysics that we all function on every day, I begin to understand how
limited my vision is and I begin to submit to His authority and power and ask
Him for that drink of living water. This drink of living water isn’t just
accepting Jesus’ gift of salvation. That is where so many people stop.
I
try to imagine what kind of explosion we would see in people coming to Jesus
and the miracles of His power demonstrated daily in our lives if even a tenth
of us began to get the almightiness of our almighty God! Maybe before we pray
for others to be saved we need to pray for those in the church to be awakened
to the life and power of Jesus so that we would indeed be the light and salt
that would draw people to Him. If we aren’t praying for something bigger than
we can manage on our own, we haven’t even begun to tap into the promises and
the power of the Holy Spirit that dwells in us.
My desire is to hang out a
little more around the well with Jesus and to see His power at work in me as
the living water gushes forth from our almighty God!
