It All Began With a Thirsty Woman (Video) — Carter Conlon

A Spiritual Awakening Through an Unlikely Woman

This morning I want to talk to you about a spiritual awakening that came to a community that nobody would have expected it to come to. Came to a people that nobody would expect would be even hungry for the things of God.

And it came through a person that nobody would expect God would ever use for his kingdom and for his purposes. The title of my message is, it all began with a thirsty woman. It all began with a thirsty woman.

Jesus Meets the Samaritan Woman

John chapter four, please if you'll turn there. If you're thirsty today for the things of God, you have no idea what God can accomplish through your life. Father, thank you for the touch of heaven and your evident presence here today.

Lord, I ask you for the grace to speak for you today and that you would speak through me. This word that you've placed upon my heart, which I know has come from you. And I'm asking you God with everything in me, Lord, give me the quickening of your Holy Spirit to be able to speak this.

And oh God, let it find its mark in every heart, every mind. Lord, push away the Jericho walls that would want to keep us apart from this truth. These great truths, Lord, that are found in every chapter of your word.

Thank you for the ability to hear today, for the ability to respond and to believe. And we thank you with all of our heart in Jesus name. Amen. It all began with a thirsty woman, John chapter four. Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples, he left Judea and departed again into Galilee, but he needed to go through Samaria.

So he came to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore being wearied from his journey sat thus by the well, it was about the sixth hour.

A woman of 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. Then the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that you being a Jew ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says 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 with.

And the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it himself as well as his sons and his livestock. Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.

But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water that I may not thirst nor come here to draw.

Now the majority of this chapter, John chapter four, right up to verse 42, now speaks to us seemingly of two distinct, but yet interconnected in inseparably interconnected things. Firstly, now there are seasons where God is speaking to a people in a way that we are most likely not aware of.

Did you know that this morning that God might be speaking to people in this society that you would never dream that he is speaking to them. John chapter four, verse eight said, the disciples had gone into the city to buy food.

They were preoccupied with the needs of the day. They were preoccupied with provision and food and just the general concerns as you and I can become concerned with the things of the hour in which we're living in.

And right at that moment, Jesus is undertaking something that they have no knowledge of whatsoever. We think that we're the only ones that can speak to our generation. Might I remind you that God is well able to speak to anybody that he chooses to speak to.

And secondly, when we get near two thirds of the way through the chapter, he speaks to us as his church of a source of strength available to us if we want to consider it. Verse 32, he said to them, his disciples, when they came back, they said, master, please have something to eat.

He said, I have food to eat of which you do not know. In other words, I have a source of strength that you are not a partaker of yet. You don't understand where this strength comes from. How perplexing that must have been to those who spent their whole day finding food to bring it back.

And he says, no, I'm not hungry. I have a source of food that you have no access to yet. Not yet, but you will in the future. Now the whole scene in this chapter begins in a journey to a place where there lived a people whom the religious Jews considered unworthy of salvation.

They were a people who the Jews considered a culture of impurity and mixture. And in their opinion, if these people worshiped at all, it was in the wrong place. Now they had been conquered at one point in their history and the conquering nation had brought in people of other cultures and other nations.

That's the way they hope to keep their stranglehold on nations that they conquered. And so the people of that part of Israel had become intermarried and intermixed with people of other nations. And so the Jew who considered his lineage pure as it is considered these a mixed people who worshiped in the wrong place.

In chapter four and verse 20, the woman who spoke with Jesus said, our fathers worshiped on this mountain. And you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Now, everybody knows somebody like that in their life.

Even today, somebody that is mixed, they have a form and your opinion of, of godliness of some sort. Everybody in our society today has a hope for the future. They, they, they are striving in the best way they know how to, for the, for the concept of family, for the concept of blessing.

Some even have some marginal knowledge of God mixed in the midst of it. And the Jews felt that those who were mixed like this, even if they had a form of worship, it was, it was so in the wrong place.

The division had become so bitter that they wouldn't speak to each other. Does that sound familiar? Or is that just a historical thing? There were two different cultures in the same geographical boundary.

And they were so juxtaposed one to another that they had ceased to speak with each other. They'd ceased to even travel through each other's territory. It, so it was a phenomenal thing for Jesus who was a Jew to stop in the midst of this place of mixture called Samaria, to sit on a well and to start speaking with a Samaritan woman.

She was confused by that because her whole life experience was that you religious people, you don't speak to us. You don't consider us worth speaking to. You consider us mixed and immoral and impure. And you consider our, even our quest for God to be so deficient that you don't even bother speaking with us.

And so she was rather perplexed that this seemingly good man sitting on a well starts to engage her in a conversation. Now the history of these people in Samaria included a well. Now this well, no doubt represented a promise that the blessing of God was, or would one day be theirs as well as for others.

In John chapter four, verses five to seven, it describes it as a plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph. And Jacob had a well there. And by this woman's testimony, Jacob himself had drank from that well.

It was upon this well that this woman of Samaria came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, give me a drink. It reminds me of when Christ was on the cross and he called out and he said, I thirst. It's amazing.

There's a thirst in the heart of God for every man, for every woman, for every child created in his image, every descendant of Adam that was lost because of that sin that got into the hearts of humanity is a thirst in the heart of God.

For you, if you're not walking with right with the Lord today, if you consider yourself outside of the place of the true blessing of God, I want you to know something. There's a thirst in his heart for you.

It wasn't physical water. Yes, he was asking for a drink of water, but the thirst was deeper than that. You're going to see that in this story. He had come to do the father's will. And he says clearly in other portions of scripture that it is not the father's will that any should be lost.

He had come to reclaim that which would have been taken captive because of sin. Now this particular well, if you go with me to Genesis 49, I want you to turn there because I want you to see this in Genesis chapter 49.

That's the first book in your Bible. If you're new to the Lord today. Now this well was given to Joseph. Now remember Joseph, he was separated from his brethren. He was betrayed. He was sold off. And I think these people felt that way.

I think that they felt like we were betrayed. It wasn't our fault. We were taken into captivity and we were brought into this foreign place. And as Joseph was, we found ourselves intermingled with people of another nation, just as Joseph was.

And they would say, but Joseph at the end of Jacob's days, who was the father of Israel, he gave Joseph a double blessing, a double portion. And he gave him a piece of land in the promised land. And there was a well there that was established by him.

And there was a promise of God that they would have felt that came with this well. Now listen to this, this promise in chapter 49 of Genesis, beginning at verse 22, Joseph is a fruitful bow, a fruitful bow by a well, his branches run over the wall.

No. So there's a promise like the promise of God, these people coming to this well every day would be, would know this promise. Even if it was passed on by oral tradition, they would know this promise that this is a sign, this land, this well, that God is going to bless us one day.

It's the promise of God, even though we find ourselves mixed and in a place where the religious of our day says that these people are not worthy of even consideration. And they tell us that our worship is all wrong.

And our focus is wrong. And somehow we're not pure, but there's a promise to us. You see that that promise is resident in every heart, no matter what they're pursuing, no matter how they're looking for love in this world or where they are, there's the promise that God plants in the heart that I'll come to you.

You may not listen to me, but I'll come to you. And there is a promise of blessing and a promise of life. That's in every human heart. It says in verse 23 of Genesis 49, the archers have bitterly grieved him and shot at him and hated him how they would identify with the scripture, but his bow remained in strength.

And the arms of his hands were made strong. And by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, for there is the shepherd of the stone of Israel and by the God of your father, who will help you and by the almighty, who will bless you with blessings of heaven above blessings of the deep that lies beneath.

Think of the wealth. Think of people coming every day. Remember, she said, the well is deep and they may have even considered that that was part of the promise. Blessings of heaven above blessings of the deep that lies beneath blessings of the breast and of the womb.

In other words, blessings of family, blessings of a future. The blessings of your father have excelled the blessings of my ancestors. In other words, Jacob said to Joseph, I'm giving you a blessing that's bigger than any blessing anybody has ever passed down to me.

I'm telling you, God is going to bless you up to the utmost bound to the everlasting Hills. They shall be on the head of Joseph. In other words, no matter how far you are sold off or how far you get away, you can't out run the blessing.

I'm going to send to you and on the crown of the head of him who was separated from his brothers. Now, when I read this, when I first read this, I said, God almighty, it has to be that the people of Samaria would have identified with this because they were shot at.

They were separated. They were in their own mind, betrayed. They were put away from their brothers. They were considered mixed and not worthy. And yet there's this promise of blessing, this promise of family, this promise of life, this promise of hope.

And so I see this woman coming out of the city every day, knowing this promise. Now it's only conjecture on my part, but I think I'm on fairly safe ground in saying this. No, if she knew the history and she was a seeker of God, because her first question, when she perceived that Christ was a prophet by her testimony, her first question was about worship.

Where is the right place to worship? Our fathers said we worship here. And you Jews say that we worship in Jerusalem. So where's, she was obviously concerned because day after day after day, she's coming to this well, she's dropping her bucket down.

She probably knows the promise that from this deep place, this place of blessing, you're going to have children. You're going to have family. And every day she's coming out. And by her own admission, a little later on in the story, she's given up on marriage.

There's no doubt about that. She's given up on family. She's had five husbands and finally decided not to marry again. So now she's living with the sixth guy and I can just see her every day coming to this.

Where is your promise? You said you were going to bless me here at this well. So one more time I come to the well and this one day she comes out to the well with this, and this thirst is still in her heart.

And guess who is sitting there on that well. Remember the promise was there's a blessing coming your way, Joseph, that is deeper than anything my forefathers have ever given to me. I'm passing on to you.

And here is the son of God sitting on the well. The first person really that he fully tells I am the Christ tells her straight out. It's a mystery to the religious. He speaks to them in parables. He never fully up to this point identifies himself, but to this thirsty woman, this thirsty woman is just looking for a place to worship and saying, is there a blessing that God has for my life?

He tells her straight out. I am the Christ. I am the Messiah. I am the one that God has sent to be the blessing for your life and for those in this world. And he tells her, whoever drinks of the water that you're drawing from this well will thirst again, but I've come.

I've got water for you that if you will receive it, you will never thirst again. It will become water inside of you that will spring up into a well of everlasting life. And the woman says to him, sir, give me this water that I may not thirst.

No come here to draw. You know, that tells me she knows, she knows that she needs physical water to survive. She knows that, but she's talking about something deeper because her questions are spiritual questions.

Her questions I'm convinced are about the blessing of God. That's supposed to be in this place for this group of people. Now he says to her, go bring your husband here. And she says, well, I have no husband.

And Jesus said, you've said, well, I have no husband. You've had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband in that you spoke truly. And the woman said, sir, I perceive you're a prophet.

Our fathers worshiped in this mountain. And you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Jesus said to her woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, worship the father you worship.

You do not know what for we, we know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews, but the hour is coming. And now is when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth for the father is seeking such to worship him.

God is a spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. In other words, you have to deal with the truth about where you are. That's where it all begins. A lot of people want the blessing of God, but they're not willing to deal with the truth of where they presently are, what they are presently doing in her case.

She was, she had, I think given up on the concept of family. She was bound by tradition coming every day to this same place to draw from the same water, hoping for a different result. It's like the person today who comes to church week after week, after week, after week, somehow hoping that you're going to hit the spiritual jackpot this Sunday, and it's going to transform your life, but you have no real desire to deal with the reality of where you are, of what you're doing, of how you're living, what kind of relationships you're in.

If you're going to know the blessing of God, if you're going to know the blessing of God, there are certain things you have to get up and walk away from and things you have to get up and walk towards.

That's how you start on the road to the blessing of God. This woman was tired of repetitive human effort and looking to the depths of this world to satisfy something in her heart that only God could satisfy.

They're going into this deep well that goes down deep into the earth, and there's somehow a promise connected to this thing, but all of her human effort and all of her trialing to obey the rules maybe in the early years of her life had come to nothing.

She was finding nothing that could satisfy her at this spiritual well. This is what prompted her to say, give me this water. Give me this. I hope that's in your heart today. Oh God, give me this water.

Give me this promise of satisfying my soul in such a way that I won't have to look to the things of this world, to tradition or effort or anything like that for satisfaction again. Oh God, give me that, which will satisfy this thirst in my soul.

Worshiping God in Spirit and Truth

She firstly had to deal with truth about where she was, but secondarily to worship God in spirit and in truth, you have to also deal with the truth about where God promises to take you. You can't stop him by unbelief.

You must in your heart say, God, I will leave. I will leave trying to find happiness in my own effort and with my own resources and by my own strength. And God, I choose to believe that you will take me where I need to go.

You will give me the strength to become everything that you're telling me that I will be. And you will take me there by the power of the Holy spirit. I will read the truth in your word. And by the power of your spirit, you will make me and take me and give me all that I need to become the person you've destined me to be.

I will worship you in spirit and in truth. I will no longer call evil good. I will no longer call good evil. I will deal honestly with you, God, what you say is sin is sin. I will not try to justify it anymore, but I'm going to go where you call me to go and I'm going to become what you call me to become.

And I'm going to do everything you call me to do by the grace of almighty God. And when I come back to church on Sunday, I'm going to lift my hands and by the spirit of almighty God, I'm going to open my mouth and say, Lord, only you could have done this.

Only you could have made me a new creation. Only you could have given me this power. Now the scripture says in verse chapter four, verse 28, the woman left her water pot and went her way into the city and said to the men, come see a man who told me all the things that I ever did.

Could this be the Christ? So they went out of the city and came to him. Now it's not like the Jews had never pointed their finger at the Samaritans and told them what they had done, right? They, they would have been very quick over the course of time to say, you compromised, you intermix with other people of other nations, you worship in the wrong place.

They would have been very quick to point out all the flaws, all the failings, the fact that they felt these people lived outside of a place of the blessing of God. But there was something different about this encounter.

And here's what I feel that she's telling the men of the city, this man, a Jewish man, a prophet, as she felt he was, or potentially even the Christ, the Messiah who would tell us how to worship God. He told me everything I've ever done, but without condemnation.

He told me everything I've ever done, but with such a love and an offer of hope for the future. He didn't condemn me like others do come see this man. He knows everything I've ever done yet. I still feel so loved in his presence.

And he still offers me eternal life. He offers me a water that he says will satisfy my thirst. Come see this man. And she was the most unlikely evangelist in her generation. See the men of the city that I can just see the word starting to get around.

It's going all over the place and everybody starts gathering and they head out the gates of the city and start heading to Jacob's well, this place of the promise blessing that was supposed to come to them.

The Harvest Is Already Ripe

Now the disciples came back from buying food, a type of the church, I guess in our time, we've been very concerned with about our daily prayers. Give us this day, our daily bread and just so concerned about ourselves.

So concerned about our futures, our health, our finances, just very, very self-focused. And they come back out of the city to him. Now, all this has been going on there. They're completely oblivious to what he's been doing.

Although they're his disciples, they're actually the people closest to him at this point in the world. And they have no idea what's going on. And now they urged him and say, Rabbi eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat, which you do not know.

Then the disciples turned and talked to each other. Did you give him food? Did you give him food? Did you give him food? Did you leave him food? What food does he got? Has anyone brought him? Did anybody bring you something to eat while we were gone?

Then Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Now here's where it gets interesting. Do you not say there are still four months and then comes the harvest.

Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields for they're already white to harvest. This is incredible. He says, you are, you are constantly talking about this day of harvest, but you're putting it way into the future.

You're always saying, Oh, there's going to be this turning to God one day. The course, the scripture promised to the people are going to come from the North. They're going to come from the South, the East, the West.

The kingdom of God is going to advance and the harvest is coming. The harvest and we hear it in our generation, don't we? The harvest is coming. The harvest is coming, but we, we put it away. It couldn't be today.

Not possible. You see, because we haven't had time to get together and form our committees and strategize about how we're going to do this. We've been busy buying food. You see, and Jesus says, lift up your eyes.

And I think at that moment, as the disciples, they've all been looking in their bag for food and wondering who has been feeding him. And did somebody come here with bread? When we were gone, there are all these questions.

Suddenly they, they look up and there's a dust cloud in the horizon, heading their way with a multitude of people coming towards them. Lift up your eyes. He said, the harvest is already white. And he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.

For this saying is true. One sows and another reaps. Now here's where it gets interesting. He said, I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored. Others have labored and you have entered into their labors.

In other words, the people are coming your way. I've been speaking to them and now I'm asking you to reap what I have sown. For those who can hear it today, the city is coming your way. The city is coming.

People you never expected ever to be interested in the things of God. People you wrote off, especially in these volatile times we're now living in, you wrote them off as they're in the enemy's camp. They're so mixed.

If they have any concept of God, it's so adulterated now that they deserve to be cast away. Suddenly you lift up your eyes and they're asking you for a reason for the hope that is in you. They're asking you what it is you believe.

And you stand there and say, where did these thoughts come from? While we were busy, God has been speaking to them. People are tired. People are tired in this generation of the evil speech. People are tired of the lies.

People are tired of the propensity to violence. People are tired of the division. People are tired of the destruction of home and family. People are tired of confused children. People are tired of opiate addiction in our cities.

People are tired. And while they're tired, God's been speaking to them. God's been speaking to their hearts about something. He's been speaking about life. He's been speaking about living water. He's been speaking about something that he alone is able to give.

He's been speaking to them about their sin, speaking to them about the practices in their lives that have kept them distant from the incredible blessing that he wants to give to them. And don't be surprised when they suddenly get up and start heading your way.

Don't put the harvest far down the road, folks. The harvest is here. Jesus said, lift up your eyes. Lift up your eyes. The fields are already white to harvest. The people are already under conviction.

The people are already tired. The people are under the voice of the least likely evangelist in the world. Just a woman that was hungry, was spiritually hungry, and heard something from the son of God and went to those in her community that you couldn't reach and started talking to them about the words that have been spoken to her heart.

And suddenly they get up and start heading towards those that are the closest to him. And he said, you see, I'm sending you to reap something that you haven't labored for. Somebody else did the work and I'm just sending you now to enter into their labors.

In other words, you can bring it home. You can bring it to completion. There is a hunger now. There's a hunger. It doesn't seem like it. Oh, there's a few radicals at the top, I guess, that try to convince us this is the way we are.

This is the way we're going. But rank and file population are not like that. People just want, like this woman, they just want life. They want to raise a family. They want peace. They want to live in a safe neighborhood.

They want a blessing on their home. What makes you think they're any different than you are? They want these things. And there's this hunger and say, where is worship? If we serve God, is there any point to it?

How do we find life? And even though the church of the time is not there, Jesus is. That's what I love about this story. He is there and he is speaking when we won't or can't or don't. He is speaking.

Oh, the mercy of God, the grace of God is so far from us. It's so much bigger than we are. And he's reaching out to this modern day church and saying, I'm speaking. Will you enter into this labor with me?

And if you do, you will find a source of strength. I have food. That means I have a strengthening that you're not a partaker of yet. You'll find that source of strength that only comes when we're doing the will of the father, which is the saving of the loss, which is reaching out to the addicted, the afflicted, the marginalized, the hopeless.

We're reaching out to the arrogant. We're reaching out to those who think money will satisfy them. We're reaching out to those who lust for power. We're reaching out to all people, surprisingly finding a hunger in their hearts.

Spiritual Hunger in Unexpected Places

In 2001, I was invited to speak at a gathering of about a hundred top executives in Canada and America gathered together. Most of these people are almost at the top of the ladder. I was supposed to speak to them about the needs of orphans in Africa, but something started stirring in my heart and I got up and I said, you're all business people.

And if you want to write a check to this organization, you know how to do this. So I don't have to tell you how to do it. You're all financial people. I said, but I want to talk to you today about a debt that you owe that you can never repay.

And as I began to speak for the next 25 or so minutes, as I began to speak, tears started flowing in that room. People were at the second, third rung from the top in many of these big corporations. And I remember I made a statement.

I said, if some of you are so afraid that if you make it to the top rung and life is not any better than it is now, that there's no reason to keep on living. And I remember the tears began because God was speaking right to the people's hearts.

You would never think that that room had any spiritual hunger. You would think that these people have everything this world has got to offer. Whatever well they were going to every day had left them thirsty.

Thirsty for a meaning in life, thirsty for a reason to live, thirsty for truth that lasts, thirsty for something that satisfies. So don't write anybody off. There's a thirst in our generation. May God help us.

May God help you. May God help me to understand that for those that are thirsty and you're tired and you want a living and a real relationship with God that can be yours today. It can be yours. Admit who you are without God and let his word start to give you life.

The entrance of the words of God, the scripture says, gives light and gives life. So open your heart and let him begin to speak to you about where he wants to take you. Don't play games with God. Don't think that you can live any way you want and somehow still have the blessings of heaven.

No, deal with truth. The father seeks such to worship him in spirit and in truth. It's by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can put away the old things. It's by the power of the Holy Spirit that all things become new.

This is the promise of God. And for those like you and me who know Christ, who walk in proximity to him, maybe for a season we've been preoccupied with ourselves, but if you want the strength that God promises, it's time to get involved in his work.

That's where your strength will be. That's where your provision will be. It's reaching out and believing that as you speak to other people and offer them what Christ has offered you, and you consider no person unworthy to speak to, nobody too far, nobody too distant.

Don't just look for people of your own persuasion. There's a hunger now. There's a hunger. This might be one of the finest moments in the history of this nation. I don't know for sure. I don't know how deep it will go, but I know the people are coming.

A Call to Receive Living Water

And so father, I thank you with all of my heart for the truth of your word. I thank you, Lord, that you are speaking to this generation, if we can hear it. I thank you, Lord. Sometimes it's so hard to believe that the city could be hungry for you.

How perplexed your disciples must have been when they lifted their eyes and saw this crowd heading towards Jacob's well. How stunned they must have been to see that there was a genuine spiritual hunger for truth.

Oh God, would you open our hearts? Would you open our doors to people who are going to come in that don't know our ways, but Lord, you are speaking to them and you are drawing them to your house and to your heart.