Have you ever felt you weren’t enough? Enough for your parents, enough for your spouse, enough for your friends, even enough for God or yourself? The longing to be enough can often lead us to search for our worth and value in achievements or in relationships.
The problem, though, is we are led away from finding our true worth in being known by a gracious God who is full of mercy.
Long ago, a Samaritan woman came daily to draw water from a well. Like each of us, she had a deep thirst to be valued. However, one failed relationship after another proved her view of her own worth was quite shallow. Scripture tells us in John 4 that Jesus had to go through Samaria, a place most Jews would never show their face. So, in a town called Sychar, where Jacob’s well stood, a Samaritan woman would be asked for a drink by the King of the Jews in spite of her disgrace. She immediately questioned his request because Samaritans and Jews hated each other and avoided contact with each other.
Then Jesus began to tell her the truth that would address her thirst for worth.
“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” John 4:10 (NIV).
The woman’s attraction to the idea of water that would forever quench her thirst opened the door for Jesus to reach her soul, drained dry by shame.
He asked her to go get her husband, and she replied that she had none. For she had had five husbands, and the man she was living with was not one of them. Then Jesus kindly showed her broken soul that the Messiah she had been waiting for had indeed come. “I, the one speaking to you – I am He.” John 4:26 (NIV).
The woman’s encounter with Jesus filled her soul and healed her thirst for worth in a way she had never experienced before.
So, she left behind all of her shame and regret and excitedly went into town to tell everyone about the man she had just met. Her testimony about the Messiah was simple yet spoke deeply to her search for worth. She was an outcast known for her indiscretions and sin, cast aside by various men. Yet this man, quite different from all the rest, had knowledge of everything she had ever done, even though she had never confessed.
The Messiah she had been waiting for now stood before her, not disgusted or tempted to run. Her search was finally over, for her worth could now be found in being chosen by God.
If we seek to satisfy our thirst for worth through imperfect human relationships, our search will always leave us feeling empty. However, the fully satisfying, never-ending, shame-eliminating, sin-forgiving, living water of God’s grace and mercy is freely available to you and me.
So let’s bring our empty water jars to the well that never runs dry and be satisfied with being fully known and loved by Jesus.
Valerie,
An excellent blog. I am keeping a copy of what you wrote for clients who need to hear this. An interesting comment, in a session recently I went to the story about the woman at the well because of a client dealing with the same issue.
At a conference I attended, the speaker said he had researched the women at the well and there’s a historical record that she became an evangelist that lead many people to Christ. You can get a glimpse of that because she went to her village and told everyone about Jesus and they wanted to meet him.