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[WW] Living Water · The Wesley Word

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Wesley World.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Have you guys ever had someone make assumptions about you that are completely untrue?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: I suspect for a lot of you the answer is yes.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I can promise you that as a young female pastor, that happens like all the time.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because no one ever sees me and thinks, I bet she's a pastor.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like that I don't think has ever once happened to me.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it can be kind of fun when I meet people and they don't know like who I am or what I do, and it could be kind of exciting.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: And there was actually one time we did a funeral at my church, but the vast majority of the people who came to this funeral um didn't weren't a part of our church, and they um so they didn't know anything about our church or pastors or anything like that.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: And our other staff were like talking to people and greeting people, and after the service was over, one of our staff came up to me and said, because most of them had never seen a female pastor, and he was like, You're like a unicorn to these people.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like they've never seen anything like it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes it can be kind of funny.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, other times it's not.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like one time I was on an airplane and we were on our way back from a mission trip with my church.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: We'd been traveling for like 28 hours.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm exhausted.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was our final flight.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on the plane, and you know, you're making like small talk with the guy sitting next to you, but now like we're taking off.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I pull out the book, which is like airplane code for don't talk to me, right?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: But in this brief conversation, I mentioned that I was a pastor, and this dude keeps like tapping me on the shoulder, like, excuse me, miss.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you say you're a pastor.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I am.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: So women can do that.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Return to the book.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me, miss.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So so you preach, like, not just to the women.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: That is correct.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Back to the book.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Went on like this the whole flight.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Needless to say, it was a long plane ride.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: But what's true is that we're always guilty of making assumptions about people.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: We have certain things in our mind about who people are or what certain people do.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's often true that we make assumptions about people and we later learn they're incorrect, just as it's true that when people make assumptions about us, often over time, we can help to change those assumptions or we can overcome them.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also true that there are times that people make judgments and assumptions about us that we can't ever change or overcome for whatever reason that is, which is their problem, not ours.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the challenge for us becomes how do we not define ourselves by the assumptions other people make or the judgments other people make?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: How do we not define ourselves by that, even if other people continue to do so?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, part of the good news for us is that Jesus' whole ministry is about shattering expectations and assumptions, and that's absolutely true in our story for tonight.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, in the story I'm gonna read, some of you may be familiar with it, it's a story that we still make assumptions about the woman in this story to this day.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: She's somebody that we still have a lot of opinions about, but the thing about it is, is we know very little about her, even as we make these judgments.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna be reading from the Gospel of John.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is John chapter four, and it starts out and it says, but he, meaning Jesus, had to go through Samaria.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, before I keep reading, I'm gonna pause for just a second and say that anyone who would have been present and hearing this story at this point in time, the listeners would have been like, hold up, why did Jesus have to go through Samaria?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because this wasn't a geographic requirement from where he was coming to where he was going.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Samaria would not have been, it wasn't like a necessity, like the only way you're gonna get there is to go through Samaria.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And as a matter of fact, for the most part, Jewish people went out of their way to avoid going through Samaria.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Jewish people hated Samaritans, they didn't talk to Samaritans.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you've read other stories in scripture, like the parable of the Good Samaritan, you might be familiar with this tension that exists between Jewish people and Samaritans.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so as soon as the people hearing this story learn that Jesus willingly walked through Samaria and where he presumably is gonna interact with a Samaritan, they are already making judgments and assumptions about whoever it is that Jesus is gonna encounter.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'll keep going.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So he, Jesus, came to a Samaritan city called Sikar near the plot of ground that Jacob had given his son Joseph.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was about noon.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: His disciples had gone into the city to buy food.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: 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.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Then the woman said to him, Sir, you have no bucket, and this well is deep.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you get that living water?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: But those who drink of the water that I give them will never be thirsty.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I may never be thirsty.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: You have to keep coming here to draw water.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to her, Go tell your husband and come back.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: The woman answered him, I have no husband.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, You are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: What you have said is true.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: The woman said to him, Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say the place where people must worship is Jerusalem.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: You worship what you do not know.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: But the hour is coming, and now is here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: For the Father seeks such as these to worship him.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: The woman said to him, I know the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said to her, I am he, the one who is speaking to you.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just then his disciples came.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, What do you want?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or why are you speaking with her?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: She said to the people, Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: He cannot be the Messiah, can he?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: They left the city and were on their way to him.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is the word of God for us, the people of God.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks be to God.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll start by saying, I really appreciate in the story we have this small reminder of Jesus' humanity in that he at the beginning of the story gets to the well and he stops to rest.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe because he's just tired.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've ever been to the Holy Land or you know anything about this terrain, it's understandable because, first of all, it's hot, it's the desert, but it's also kind of a rugged terrain.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it wouldn't have been an easy walk.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I just kind of appreciate the thought that Jesus maybe just wanted a quick water break.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, not long after he sits down at the well, a woman arrives.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And at this point, when anyone in this time period would have been hearing this story, they're already more alert.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're already stressed out about the fact that Jesus has gone through Samaria and not around it.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly, at the heat of the day, a woman shows up at the well.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And they would have a lot of questions about this.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Why is she coming to the well at noon?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's hot.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: No one comes to the well at this time of day.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, because your water jar that you'd have to carry, this big like clay pot, it's heavy when it's empty.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're carrying it on the way back and it's full of water in that kind of heat, I mean, you might as well just do CrossFit.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like that would be the extent of the workout.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: In this culture, people would have only come to the well first thing in the morning as the sun is coming up, or late in the day as the sun is setting when it wouldn't have been as hot.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because you'd want to avoid the heat.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the only reason to come at the middle of day like this would be because you're trying to avoid other people.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone listening to the story at this point would have known this.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: They would have known that she's holding some kind of secret, or there's a reason why she's coming at a time of day when it's very unlikely that she would encounter anybody else.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so anyone who would have been listening to the story would already be wondering what is it that this woman is hiding?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: But back to our story, Jesus speaks to her and he asks her for water.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we've already established that Jews and Samaritans don't like each other, they don't speak to each other.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: But what is also true at this point in time is that Jewish men don't speak to women that aren't their wife or a relative, especially not when they're alone.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so for Jesus to speak to this woman with no one else around, who he's not related to, who is a Samaritan, he is breaking all kinds of social barriers at this point in time.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she knows it.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: She's shocked, she's surprised, she says, I'm a Samaritan, you're a Jew, you're a man, I'm a woman.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: What is happening right now?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: But if you notice in the story, in typical Jesus fashion, he doesn't give her a straight answer.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, he starts talking about this living water.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And at first she appears to be confused too.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't have a jar, she doesn't know what he's talking about, but then he says in verse 13, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, meaning the water in the well.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: But he said, But those who drink of the water I will give them will never be thirsty.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: The water that I give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Immediately I can imagine the woman's face lighting up.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, sign me up for this water, because then I don't ever have to come back to this well in the heat of the day ever again.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want this.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: How do I get it?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: She's probably quietly thinking to herself, this will solve a lot of my problems in the process.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm not gonna have to deal with all of this.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: But Jesus, because he's Jesus, knows what she's thinking already.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so he essentially says, speaking of problems, let's talk about yours.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly all the listeners are about to find out why it is that this woman is here at the well at noon in the heat of the day.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because we learn that this woman's had five husbands and now she's living with man number six.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now we all know, this is so true in 2022, that people love to talk about other people's drama.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: People love to talk about other people's messes and their mistakes.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm guilty of this.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: I just cannot resist good gossip, y'all.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like it just, it's a bit a problem for me all my life.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I love good gossip.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: I know this is true of me, but I do wonder sometimes if the reason that I gossip, if all of us do, is because in talking about other people's flaws and mistakes, it draws attention away from our own.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And in the case of this woman, I'm confident that she has been talked about a lot.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: The stigma, the shame would have been too much to endure, so much so that it is not worth coming to the well early in the day or late in the day when other people are gonna be around because she just can't endure any more dirty looks or whispering or pointing.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably true that she doesn't have many, if any, friends, so there's no one to walk with.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: She's gonna walk by herself anyway, so she might as well go when she doesn't have to endure the looks and whispers of everybody else.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because the thing is, most people probably want to create as much distance between them and her as possible.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to be associated with her.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And even now, in 2022, when we hear the story most of the time in any Bible study or anything I've ever been a part of, we always tend to assume all the worst things about her.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, six men, you know what that means.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing about it is that we don't actually know what her story is.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know how she got to this place, and I'm not implying that she's an innocent victim, but it's also probably not as horrible as we tend to assume about her.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's I would say the odds are incredibly good that at least one of those husbands died.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's possible that she's unable to have children, and if that's true in this culture, that's justification for divorce.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also true in this time period that women can't work.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you so women are dependent on either a husband or another male relative to take care of them.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if she doesn't have any other male relatives who can care for her, she has no other option than to continue to get married.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not saying she's an angel.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna pretend we, but I'm just saying we don't know her story.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: But what I'm very sure is true is that her story is one that is filled with shame and guilt and sin, but also one that includes grief and pain and heartbreak, and not all of it was her fault.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I suspect that more often than not, our judgments of her are too harsh.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And by assuming the absolute worst about her, it makes it easier for us to distance ourselves from her.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: It makes it easy for us to think, well, yeah, I mean, I've made some mistakes.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not that woman.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't done those things.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, she clearly needs to meet Jesus and my stuff.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's not as bad.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there are others of you who are here who can really relate to this woman.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Don't know if it's because any of you have had six husbands, but you might be people who feel like an outsider.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're aware of the whispers, or you're tired of the judgmental stares, or when it gets quiet when you walk into a room.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you have done some things that you are ashamed of.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And whether people know about those things or not, the guilt and the shame and the pain of those things continues to weigh really heavy on you.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe even you haven't done anything as bad as what people whisper, but the fact that you know people think those things is starting to cause you to wonder if maybe some of them are true.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: But regardless of what you're feeling, every single one of us has something in common with the woman at the well.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Every single one of us.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a good thing.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because after she meets Jesus, her life is completely transformed.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: After she leaves Jesus, in my mind, they don't tell us this, but in my mind, she goes sprinting back to where she came from.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: She goes sprinting back to town, and when she gets there, she starts telling everyone she can find, anyone she's ever met, anyone she runs into about what has just happened to her, about this man Jesus, and how her life has been changed.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is a woman who has sacrificed her own comfort for the sake of avoiding people.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is a woman who has potentially spent years and years feeling shame anytime she walks into a public gathering as people glare or whisper, and suddenly she has had an experience that is so radical that she wants all of them to know about Jesus so that they can experience this too.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so she goes and she tells them.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And many of the people she encounters also come to faith because they see the transformation in this woman and they have to come and encounter Jesus for themselves.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: This woman drinks this living water that Jesus was talking about.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what else she does in the process?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you caught this in the story, but when she leaves the well, she also leaves the water jug she brought with her behind.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like she has so much joy.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: She's in so much of a hurry to get back and tell everybody about Jesus that she forgot why she came and this weight that she was actually carrying, this heavy pot, she can't bring it back with her.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: It can't weigh her down because she has to go.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like in the process, she also becomes free of all this guilt and shame and other things that she's been carrying for so long.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: That all of those things are no longer what defines her.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And she's light, she's free because she's encountered this living water from which she'll never be thirsty, from which the weight of all of the shame has been lifted, and it's so awesome.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: She wants everybody else to know about it, even the people who've been terrible to her.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's how powerful God's grace is.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's the potential that Jesus has to transform our lives from the inside out.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes a thing that defines us, and it doesn't matter what else we've done, what other things that we've carried.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't even matter what other people have done to us.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: This grace, this love is so powerful and transformative, but we can't help but tell everybody else about it in hopes that they can experience the freedom that we do.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: I said earlier that we're all the women at the well, and it's because we're all carrying water jars.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we don't even realize it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we don't even realize the weight of whatever it is that we've been carrying.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we've been carrying it for so long we don't even remember what life was without it.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we could be carrying jars of all kinds of things.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it might be guilt or shame, but there's lots of other things too.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: For me, a water jar that I've carried on and off for much of my life is this desire for perfection or being the best.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: A great example of this for me, your starting point was that when I was in high school, I was like determined to be valedictorian and was like deep in the race.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was, that's not the point though.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it destroyed me in the process.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was obsessed with grades, I got stressed out about every single test.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: I went to school whether I was sick or not, because I couldn't miss class, I couldn't fall behind.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was so bad that my mom actually begged one of my teachers to give me a lower grade so that I would be out of the contention of this race.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Stevens said he'd never had a parent ever beg for a lower grade for their child.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: My mother, ladies and gentlemen.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't work.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: I got the good grade and I ended up getting what I wanted, but I was exhausted by the end.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: So much so that by the time I got to Clemson, I knew there was no way I could possibly keep that up.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: It had just been so much.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't keep chasing perfection, and you know what happened?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: The world kept going.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what else is true?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in my 30s, and no one cares at all that I was Valedictorian when I was 18.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter, nobody cares.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was like once I was able to set down that jar, at least for a little bit, to not chase perfection in the same way.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: There was so much more joy and peace and freedom in my life.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're gonna carry plenty of jars throughout our lives.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's unhealthy relationships, maybe it's grudges, maybe it's sin and guilt and shame about things that we've done.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's just unrealistic expectations we have for ourselves for other people.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: But what are the jars that you're carrying?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: What are those things that maybe you've been carrying for so long you don't even realize how heavy they are?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what would it look like for you to set those jars down?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because when we encounter the woman at the well, she's carrying a heavy jar, y'all.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then she meets Jesus.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And her life is so completely transformed.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: This new light, this living water that comes into her life so radically transforms her that people who used to talk smack about her also come to check out this guy named Jesus.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: The whispering stops.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because the degree to which she has been transformed causes others to experience that same transformation through God's grace.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Jesus does for all of us over and over again.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: He gives us this living water so we don't have to keep carrying these heavy jars around with us.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: He frees us from this guilt and shame.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: He frees us from bad relationships and unrealistic expectations and chasing perfection or whatever it is.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because none of those things define us when we're followers of Jesus.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's Jesus who's defining us.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus who calls us beloved children.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus who doesn't care what any of the gossip is about us, true or untrue.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus isn't making any assumptions about who we are or how we should be.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, Jesus encounters us just like he encounters that woman, exactly where we are.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he gives us the option to set down these jars, to drink from this living water, to lighten our load, because life with Jesus is lighter.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Life with Jesus means we're defined by who he is, by his grace working in us.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And there is nothing more powerful than God's loving grace.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Even death couldn't overcome this.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Jesus is offering us.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's the way that we're transformed so that we, like the woman at the well, can set those things down.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're defined by Jesus.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as followers of Jesus, he offers us this incredible gift.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Come and drink of the living water, and those who will will never be thirsty again.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because I am with you and I determine who you are.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I've called you all, beloved children.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let us pray.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Almighty God, we confess that sometimes we are carrying some really heavy jars.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we don't even realize how heavy it is, the things that we are carrying.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so, God, I pray tonight for everybody here that you would help us to recognize the weight of the things that we are carrying.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And God, that you would help us with the power of your transforming grace to set down those jars.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: To not let us be defined by the assumptions or judgments other people make, to not let us be defined by perhaps the real mistakes or sins we've committed in our lives.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: But that God, that you've promised us when we drink of your living water, that that's all we need.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: That your grace transforms us, that we are your beloved children, and like the woman at the well, we are forever changed.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, God, I pray that you help all of us to live in the freedom that comes with your grace.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: That you would help us to remember that we are defined by you and nothing and no one else.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: We pray all these things in Jesus' name.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.