Hanging Out at the Well

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!