The Woman at the Well
The other day, my friend asked me if there was ever a point where you read a passage in the Bible and there's nothing new in there anymore because you've read it so much.
My response was that there will only be nothing new in that passage if you refuse to allow God to teach you something new.
Case in point- The woman at the well. The story of when Jesus sits and talks with a Samaritan woman. Since joining InterVarsity, I have gone over that passage so many times. I could probably recite it from memory. I know the observations, the interpretations and the applications. It has become a sort of joke with friends of mine. Need a Bible study passage? Woman at the well! Need a passage to to over with new believers? Woman at the well!
But God always has something new to teach us. This past week, LaFe went over that passage during our Bible study. And yes, I learned something new about the way God interacts with us.
One of the observations that was made was how the woman must have been excited to receive water that would never make her thirst. She must have been anticipating something great. However, in the next verse, Jesus immediately brings her to her place of pain. That of her relationships. In just one sentence, Jesus makes her face her pain. But He makes her do it so that He can give her the eternal water. Himself. What she received from Jesus wouldn't have been complete if she hadn't faced the pain in her own life.
In that same way, I think God often wants to offer us more than we could ever imagine. However, before we receive that blessing, we need to face our own weaknesses and be able to surrender those to God. We need to be reminded of our failings and weaknesses and places where we feel we're not enough. Then we have to surrender all that to God and trust that He knows what He's doing in our lives. Trust that what He wants to offer us is greater than all the pain we've been through in our lives.
I think it must have definitely sucked to have been the woman at the point where she feels that Jesus is about to condemn her for her past choices. But what she received was a million times greater. Because we see her go back to her hometown and start telling everyone that the Messiah was there. The pain that Jesus made her face was nothing compared to the news that the Messiah she had been waiting for had at last arrived. That's pretty cool. Our pain is nothing compared to what God has to offer us.