She Left Her Water Jar

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John 4:28-30 "Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 'Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?' They came out of the town and made their way toward him."

Think

Look at the first five words. "Then, leaving her water jar."

That is the whole reason she walked to that well. It was heavy, it was valuable, it was the only thing she came for, and she just left it sitting in the dirt and went the other direction.

Whatever happened in that conversation was big enough that she forgot the thing she had built her entire afternoon around.

And where does she go? Into the town. The town she had been avoiding by coming to the well at noon. The people she had arranged her whole schedule around not seeing.

She walks straight into them.

Now read exactly what she says, because this is the heart of the whole week and it is smaller than you would expect.

"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?"

That is it. That is her entire message.

Notice what is not in it. There is no theology. She had been a follower of Jesus for approximately eleven minutes. She could not have told anybody what the Bible said about the Messiah beyond the one line she already knew. She had no training, no verses memorized, and no answers to any hard question anybody might have thrown at her.

And notice that she does not even sound certain. Her sentence ends in a question mark. Could this be the Messiah? She is not announcing a conclusion. She is telling people what happened to her and asking them to come look.

You do not need certainty to point at something. You just need to have been there.

Then notice what she leads with, which is the bravest part of this. "He told me everything I ever did."

The thing she had been hiding is the thing she uses. She walks into a town full of people who knew her history and she opens with the history. The very thing that had her hauling water alone in the heat becomes the reason she has something to say.

That is what God tends to do with the part of your life you are most embarrassed by.

And here is why all of this matters for you right now. A lot of students stay quiet because they are convinced they do not know enough. They have questions about the Bible they cannot answer. They have not read most of it. They are certain that if a friend pushed back even a little, the whole thing would fall apart in their hands.

You do not have to explain the Bible to say what God has done in your life.

Nobody can argue with what actually happened to you. They can argue with an interpretation, a doctrine, a translation, a historical claim. They cannot argue with, this is what I was like and this is what I am like now, and I cannot explain it any other way.

Look at your own life and tell somebody what you see there. That is the entire assignment.

And look at verse 30. It worked. "They came out of the town and made their way toward him." A whole town started walking toward Jesus because one woman with no answers said come and see.

So what has God actually done in your life that you could describe in two sentences without needing to know anything else?

Apply

Write your two sentences – Write down what you were like before God got hold of you and what is different now. Two sentences, no Bible verses, no religious words. Read it out loud. That is your testimony and you are now ready to share it.

Pray

God, I have stayed quiet because I was sure I did not know enough. I forgot that I can just tell people what you did in me. Give me the courage to lead with the part I am most embarrassed about, the way she did. Help me say come and see. In Jesus' name. Amen.