Outside The Box With Jesus
Outside the Box with Jesus
You may have heard the famous saying, spoken to those who need to, come -up-with a great or new idea: “Think outside the box.” The saying has been around for an exceptionally long time. Especially in the business world. In other words, think differently/creatively/originally/unconventionally or inventively.
Our Bible reading for this weeks Prayer and Fasting Focus, is in the book of John chapter 4. It tells us of a much-needed encounter, taking place at a well. A place that was especially important, because they did not have taps with running water, in their homes at that time. Wells were (and may still be) particularly important for thousands of years. It was a place for people to obtain water to drink, cook and wash with. Without a well, crops would not grow, and animals would not thrive. Jacobs Well still exists, even though it is now within a shrine, for tourists. It was situated in the city of Samaria, called Sychar. Over decades, it is now known as Balata village, on the outskirts of Nabulus, in the West Bank of Palestine.
Wells in the Bible represented more than a place to obtain water. You see, for an area to possess a well, meant independence for the people of that area. Even if the well was handed down, from one generation to the next, as was Jacobs, it meant that the people had a right to live in that given place.
If a new well would continue to be a symbol of blessing and establishment. God not only gave Isaac (whose name had changed from Jacob) a place to settle, but He was also establishing and preparing for the future nation of Israel, in that place. In time, Jacob had given that plot of ground, to his son Joseph. God had created a place of promise and blessing, in a foreign land. Jesus knew this, being the Son of God. His assignment for that day, was to introduce a different type of water, at an old site. It was at this iconic well, that Jesus, met a woman of Samaria. Jesus spoke to the woman. Jesus asked for a drink of water. The woman of Samaria was baffled by the fact that was talking to her about “living water,” and he had nothing to use to obtain water from the well. But Jesus was not talking about Jacob’s well. Jesus introduced the woman to a well not made by human hands, and water that was not tangible.
Jesus wanted the Samaritan woman to drink that water He would give to her. Water that would cause her to never thirst for the life she was presently living again. The water of life that Jesus was going to give her, was eternal, and would become a fountain of water (of life/spirit) springing up into everlasting life, within her. The woman asked Jesus to give her of that water. He did. From that time, she ran back into the city, to call other to see Jesus. Verse 30: “The they went out of the city and came to Him.” The Samaritan woman was a new person, with a new focus in life after she drank form Jesus.
Pray for the people in your church; That Jesus will give them a drink of that spiritual water, which will cause their present lives, to transformed spiritually and physically.
Pray: That Jesus Christ will become, be, and remain, the focus and centre of people’s lives. Pray: That people will have faith, and trust God with their life.
Prayer And Fasting Focus: Take the Limits off God; Walk by Faith and Not by Sight.
Bible Reading: John 4: 13 - 14
“Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him, will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”