I’ve been challenged by my Bible study group to live out loud this week. Specifically, I’m posting some thoughts on John 4 here, the account of a woman drawing water from Jacob’s well, a woman who had the courage to testify despite having no social, economic, or religious standing in her community.

Jesus sent 12 disciples to town to get food for 13 people because they didn’t have take out boxes to carry the flat bread and fish?

No, apparently he sent 12 to get food for 13 so he could cross racial, social, and religious barriers and speak to a woman drawing water from a well and tell her He was thirsty…and despite her sexual past, her race, her gender…for her He had living water.

Once she realized who Jesus was she shared what she had seen because she had seen beauty. What was this beauty?

Come see a man who saw me to the bottom, and knew everything I ever did, and still loved me to the skies.

To be loved but not known is superficial and unsatisfying. They love you but they do not know you.

To be known and rejected for it is our greatest nightmare.

Surely, the Samaritan women knew these two kinds of rejection, she was after all on her sixth husband, in a culture that discarded women casually and treated them as sexual chattel, but…

To be known all the way down and loved infallibly, endlessly…is Heaven.

Once she saw this beauty, she had to share it…like seeing a sunset or hearing a beautiful piece of music. It’s an involuntary muscle, “I want you to see it, I want to share it.” And she dropped her water jar as if it were her life, and she went to tell people about Jesus.

^{John 4:39}  Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.”

selected excerpts from Tim Keller sermon, “Public Faith”