The Women At The Well

Winter is slowly melting away here in Montana which means the ushering in of new flowers, birds, hiking tails, and STUDENTS! 

I am about to staff my 4th school with Ywam Montana and I could not be more excited! During the fall school I learned a lot about my self. Somethings I liked and some I really didn't. I learned that I had a great capacity to step up and carry heavy burdens, weather they were other peoples or just different weights of leadership. I also learned that I am quick to apologize (something I haven't always been good at) but also quick to take the blame. To say the least this last trip was not the easiest. There were tons of days where it felt like the bad days and words against my character far out weighed the good. BUT JESUS faithful as he is stepped into those places. The places where my inner voice would not let me sleep and He told me to rest, where every decision I made was the wrong one, where my team would have been far better off without me as their leader and I should have never said yes to stepping in. Jesus found me in those places and spoke truth in every lie, even if I didn't want to hear it. 

The truth was that regardless if any of those lies were real, I am a daughter, not a slave. 

A slave lives every day in fear of doing the wrong thing or disappointing someone or of being cast aside because of mess ups. A child lives in security, even if they mess up they are loved and they are valued. 

I love the story of the women at the well in John 4. This story is one of a woman who in the midst of her hiding is found by Jesus. Weather she deserved the things said about her or not she carried the weight of those words and they defined her status in the world. Jesus, the radical He was approached her. See not only was it her reputation that made her unfit for compassion but also her ethnicity. It docent stop there, no Jesus then makes all the things in her life that caused her shame and banishment from the rest of there world, and makes them known. He simply says them out loud for them both to hear and He dose something incredible in the midst of vulnerability, He loves her. Now Jesus never full out states his love for her as a child of the one true King no, He loves her in the simple act of listening and speaking. He choses to reveal who He is to a women who did not want to be seen for who she was. 

HE REVEALED WHO HE WAS. John 4:26 "then Jesus declared I, the one speaking to you- I am he" 

I never want to down play the moments God reveals himself to us. weather it be through blind eyes being healed, dreams and visions of things we can't even comprehend, or a little brown eyed, warm skinned child who holds your hand a little tighter when they know you are about to leave. 

When God reveals himself creation itself changes. When God reveals who He is, He also reveals who we are made to be. 

The most powerful force a christian can encounter in this life it the seemingly mundane process in which God choses to reveal himself, most people just don't recognize it when it happens. 

In the rest of the story Jesus' disciples ask why He was talking with the samaritan women and they kind of completely miss the point of who Jesus. They were so focused on the reputation of the Women that they pay no attention to the fact that Jesus is the Christ. 

If our souls focus was on who Jesus is rather than who we think we are, how different would the church be?

It is important to recognize who Jesus is, because when we recognize who He is the weight of what He has done and continues to do for us secures our identity firmly as beloved. 

So in this school who am I going to be? I am starting to find that dose not matter as much as I thought it did because no matter who I am on a day to day, hour by hour basis, Jesus is the same and He choses to sit with me and to continue to reveal who He is so that I might know more about who I am as His perfectly loved child. 

one of the small but precious ways God reveals himself.