The Wells We Drink From

“A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock." Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water." Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he."” ‭‭John ‭4:7-26‬ ‭ESV‬‬

When I read this passage, I find irony in it. Jesus even wasn't supposed to be there, at least not by the thinking of the woman he met anyways. 

When the woman went to the well, she went during the heat of the day, when the sun was at its highest and hottest. You see, during these times the women were often the ones that went to get the families water for their homes, and they typically did so early in the morning or late in the evening. This woman was trying to slip down to the well and get back out as quickly. She didn't want to be seen by anyone. Little did she know that this trip would forever change who she was. 

I can't help but imagine her expression and what went through her mind as she walked up to the well and found someone sitting there. 

"Dang! Are you kidding me? Seriously? Someone is here at this time of day?"

As Jesus already knew, this woman had some pretty serious sins in her past. She didn't mind sleeping with various men. She was an outcast, a social and religous pariah in a society of people who were already seen as outcasts. You might consider her a pretty accomplished sinner. She had her masters in sin. 

Imagine the shock she felt when Jesus told her that she had not only had five husbands but that He also knew she wasn't married to the man she was living with at the time. Talk about a shocking development. If this was on a modern day soap opera, there would be some pretty dramatic music playing in the background right then. 

She had every right to be shocked by the situation, because Jesus was sitting there waiting on her. I mean this is the Son of God we are talking about. 

Let me explain this in a way that relates to each one of us today. While we don't go to the well to get our water anymore, we all have "wells" in our lives that we have visited or are now visiting. Every one of them is full of sin, shame, and guilt. In my own life, the wells that I frequented at my less than finer moments, were not so much gross and horrible as they were just flat out embarrassing. 

The sad reality is that each one of us believes that the rest of the world would react with shock and awe if they knew about the private journeys to these wells that didn't turn out quite as we had hoped when we started to dip out of them. 

Jesus already knew the woman at the well had issues in her life and He knew the issues of the six other men she had been with. He knows mine too. And yours. That was her well and she was forced to face it head on. And we will all be forced to face our own someday.

Each of our wells are unique. For some men, your well is full of greed and the guilt you feel over wanting more stuff. For others, it is the frustration you feel because you know that women your head all the time and you hate the fact that short skirts and tight tops can send you into a mental abyss that has the potential to wreck your entire day if not your whole reality. For some men, you simply live a battle every day about your own self worth and you have the twisted belief that a real man shouldn't struggle in this way. And for more men still, it is the thought of leaving your wife and the shame that comes from feeling that way...I mean a real Christian wouldn't feel that way would he? 

Guys, are wells may be filled with different things but the point I am trying to make is that we all have them. There isn't a man alive that doesn't have one. They just have different things in them. It takes a personal relationship with Christ, daily reading His word, and the accountability of our brothers to make sure we don't return to the wells that can damage our lives. 

The more quickly we realize that every man has his own well, even our pastors and spiritual leaders have them, the faster we can get on living in the freedom that comes from the One that give eternal life from eternal water. When we come to the point we are going to attempt to return to that well in our life, He is just sitting there by our well waiting on us. He is waiting to have the conversation that we have so desperately tried to avoid. Don't avoid it. Take the time to listen. Make the change from the same old well to the one that gives each one of us eternal life.