I watched a video this morning in which a lady made an inference to Jesus and the woman at the well. As I thought about this lady’s story, I began to think about the woman at the well.

Most of you know the story so I won’t tell it here. I think it was Beth Moore who first called my attention to the Samaritan woman’s kind of odd response to their conversation:

Jesus: “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

The woman: “I have no husband.”

Jesus: “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;  for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

The woman: “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. (That makes me laugh every time)

So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

The woman, who has been married five times and is now living with a man, and who is drawing water alone at high noon, gets called out by Jesus and then runs through town excited because He told her everything she had ever done. She believes Him to be the Messiah and shamelessly runs through town yelling about it.

When do you think was the last time she was shameless? I wonder.

I love the turnaround in this situation: the shamed woman becomes a prophetess of the Christ.

The first strike against her, culturally, is that she is a woman. Women were basically property at the time and their words didn’t carry a lot of weight.

The second strike is that she has been married so many times. No doubt she was a woman of a certain “reputation.”

How many of us have had a reputation of one kind or another? How many of us have lived with shame?

I used to really despise my younger self, because of the way I lived. I carried a sense of shame because I made bad decisions; behaved in embarrassing ways at times; I was sometimes a doormat; other times I was unkind.

In addition my mind was defiled. Really, through no fault of my own, as I grew up, various people and things were placed in my path, that led to the defilement of my mind.

It took a long time to get freedom from it. I feel like I can relate to that Samaritan woman. I know a lot of you can, too, and I want to call you out of shame.

I want to call you to turn that thing around and be a prophet for the Christ. Don’t be ashamed of the fact that you needed saving. Even the perfect Pharisees needed it. It was just harder for them to see it.

He knows everything you’ve ever done, and yet He still looks on you with love and compassion. He doesn’t turn away from you. It’s not too much for Him.

I want the dirty, the defiled, the abused, the shamed to come out, and take the offer of living water. Then run with your testimony.

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.”

John 4:39 ESV

Art: “I That Speak Unto Thee Am He,” by Michael Phipps