Lord of a Better Day
“Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.”
John 4:50 ESV
My father recently shared with me the story of how he came to faith. It was at the lowest point of his life. My dad was a body-builder in his early twenties and took a lot of pride in his physical ability. During a particularly difficult workout, he badly slipped a disc in his back, leaving him unable to do much of anything for months. Depressed and with no sense of self-confidence, he decided to show up to church for the first time in ages. My dad sat down in the farthest seat, scoffing at the service the whole time. I’ve heard this all before. How can people really buy into this stuff? However, in the middle of the pastor’s sermon, there was a sudden change of tone.
“I have a word for someone in the room.”
The pastor’s words seized my father’s attention.
“There’s someone in this room who’s been suffering from immense back pain for a long time now.”
This can’t be possible, My dad thought to himself.
“If you’re out there, I want you to come forward and receive from Jesus the healing you need.”
There’s no way this is happening right now. What the heck is going on? My father painfully got up and everyone in the sanctuary turned their heads in his direction. All eyes on him, he started limping down the aisles. There he was, the punk who was just making fun of the whole scene walking down the aisles from the very back, past every pew, unable to explain his trajectory towards the pulpit.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I trust you.” My dad spoke to his savior again after so long. He approached the pastor and told him his story. The pastor placed his hand on my dad’s shoulder, and the moment he began to pray, every ounce of pain disappeared. His back straightened before everyone’s eyes and my dad gave his life to the Lord right then and there.
It was a miracle that gave my father the faith to run the race ahead of him, trusting in his Savior. That same faith carries him through the highest and lowest points of his marriage to my mom. That same faith led him to raise his two sons, my brother and I, to put their trust in the one who healed him. You see, our Savior’s miracles draw us to trust in Him. Every miraculous work is done so that we might believe who He said He is.
“‘But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the man who was paralyzed—’I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.’”
Luke 5:24 ESV
Our Savior’s deeds point to a better day when He will redeem all of His people, wipe every tear from their eyes, and heal them fully of every pain they have ever or will ever experience. We can trust in Him to heal us continually today and completely someday. The official from Capernaum did so for the sake of his son. The centurion did too. And, my father certainly does. Jesus is the Lord of that better day. May He be Lord over us as well. Amen.
Jared Graf
Faith to His Whole Household?
“The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household.” - John 4:53
There are a few other times in scripture that it sounds as if entire “households” come to faith automatically simply because of the faith of one person (see also, Luke 19:10 and Acts 16:31). However, we know that faith isn’t automatic, it’s a decision each person must make. Those of us who are parents wish that our faith would be enough for our kids. It would be so nice if we didn’t have to worry about their own personal faith decisions. We know that most of the “you’s” in the Bible are plural, but this is one of the very clear single “you’s”: “If YOU confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” This is the personal responsibility of each individual person. I tell my kids all the time that they can’t inherit my faith… they need their own.
To make matters a bit more confusing, the word “house” or “household” in all of these passages is not just referring to one’s “nuclear family.” The Greek word, “Oikos,” which is behind all of these words, is much more. One’s “oikos,” especially of an influential “official” like the man in John 4, would have involved a wife, kids, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even servants and co-workers who lived on the same property. Households could be 20-30 people. It was basically all the people that you would interact with on a daily basis. Did all of them get saved because this man believed?
No! It just doesn’t work that way. Instead, the only rational explanation for this is that when this man realized what had happened, he told everyone in his household about what Jesus had done. He not only became a believer, but he also became a disciple who makes disciples by testifying to what Jesus had done.
This is what it looks like to follow Jesus as his disciple. The message of salvation has been given to us and because of that, God has miraculously changed our lives. Now what a disciple does is testify to what Jesus has done. Nowadays, we may not live in “households” that are quite as large, but we all interact with “oikos.” We have people in our lives that we interact with on a regular basis who need to hear about the One who has changed our life. Today, would you take some time to think about who those people are in your life? Pray for them, and then look for an opportunity to give Jesus credit for what he has done in your life.
Josh Rose
Discipleship Pastor
Evolving Faith
When the official heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he made a journey of more than 20 miles on foot. When he reached Jesus, he addressed him as “Sir,” and begged for Jesus to come back with him to heal his son who was close to death. Even though the man had legal authority, he was submitting to Jesus.
However, the official didn’t recognize and honor Jesus as the Savior of the world but believed Jesus could heal his son and persisted. Why? Because he knew Jesus had done miracles and he was in a crisis. Jesus recognized the man’s belief and responded, “You may go. Your son will live.” The Galilean official obeyed, returned to his son, and when he was told that his son was healed at the 7th hour he believed that Jesus needed only to speak the words that his son would live. So, was it the man’s belief that saved his son, or was it Jesus knowing that this miracle would solidify the man’s faith and belief; not only his, but that of his family? Maybe both?
Time and distance are not obstacles to God’s miraculous powers. Just like the man in this story, shouldn’t we ask and move forward believing that our prayers will be answered? When we do this, our faith is exercised, and it will grow and be strengthened. Then we can share with others how God’s blessings come through our faith in him.
The seed of faith caused the official to go to Jesus and the miracle caused it to grow. Faith is ever-evolving and growing. The Lord often graciously meets us at our point of crisis, but that’s just the beginning. He wants us to believe in and follow Him not only because he delivered us from our crisis, but because he is our Savior and Lord whom we trust.
Even those of us who have believed in Christ as Savior need to look in the mirror. All too often, we’re just like this royal official. We don’t pray unless we’re in a crisis. We keep Jesus on the shelf, like Aladdin’s lamp. When we need Him, we pull Him off the shelf, try to rub Him the right way, and ask for His help. But after the crisis passes, we put Him back on the shelf and get on with life virtually without Him. He wants us to believe in Him for who He is and to fellowship with Him at all times.
Lord, help us to stay in a close relationship with you, and strengthen our faith, not because of what you do for us but because of who you are.
Deb Hill
Faith to Leave
The scene reads like a script for a movie. A wealthy father’s son is sick, so sick that even the best doctors cannot help him. So, when the official hears that Jesus is in a nearby town, he travels 25 miles to try his best to talk Jesus into coming with him to heal his son. This wealthy official was probably used to getting what he asked for, so the images he had in his head of the way things would go probably included Jesus responding positively and acquiescing to the man’s request.
Only Jesus didn’t. Instead of traveling the 25 miles with him back to his home, Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” (John 4:50a). If I were the wealthy official, I would have responded, “Go with you? You’re coming with me?” After all, that’s what he wanted. That’s what he initially believed was needed for his son to be healed. Not only that but can you imagine how mad his wife would have been if he waltzed back into town without Jesus? Yikes!
John tells us that “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.” (John 4:50b) He took Jesus at his word and he went home. The initial journey of leaving Capernaum and going to Cana took faith, but it might have taken even more faith for him to leave believing that Jesus would be faithful to his word. Those two components of faith are present for us as well. First is the faith to come to Jesus. That needs to be present in each one of us - to bring our hurt and pain to him and ask him to heal. However, like this man, we also need faith to believe that Jesus will be good on his promises. Just like this man, we need the faith to leave, trusting that what Jesus promises is good as done.
We have a cultural proverb: seeing is believing. However, in this passage, we see that Jesus sometimes operates with the opposite methodology: believing is seeing. Sometimes our sight follows our belief - sometimes we need to leave before we see the provision firsthand.
What is one promise of Jesus that you are clinging to today? What would it look like for you to take Jesus at his word, just like this official did?
Pastor Ryan Paulson
The Big Ask
Have you ever modified a request of someone to make it more palatable in hopes they will grant it? It could be called sneaky, or simply tactical. The royal official in John 4:46-54 can’t afford to soften his request, he needs Jesus to come through in a big way right now. It’s a big ask and a big assumption that Jesus can deliver. We see our Lord delivers above and beyond with instantaneous healing and sends the official on his way.
The Lord sees who we are and all the things in our minds and in our hearts with perfect clarity. There’s no tactical approach when coming to God, he knows our words completely before we say them. Jesus won’t always give us what we want as he did with the royal official, but we are invited to ask full-heartedly anyways. The answer he does give will be for our good according to his greater purpose and his fingerprints will be all over it.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
Isaiah 55:8
The Lord still heals in miraculous ways, for all intents and purposes, I am the son who was healed from death after almost drowning at 18 months old. Most importantly, every day he miraculously heals people spiritually. The Lord has his own plans for the world and we get to play a role in it. No matter what, we need to be real, open, and honest with the Lord, whether it be through laughter or tears. Meanwhile, our faith and the faith of others will be growing.
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
1 Peter 5:7
Jonathan Duncan
Stay Thirsty My Friends
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” - John 4:7
I find it interesting that the reason that we have this famous story that has been called “The Woman at the Well,” all because Jesus was thirsty. It was Jesus’ thirst that created this moment. It was his thirst that led to a conversation that was life-changing for this unnamed woman. It was his thirst that led her to find enough forgiveness and healing to go out and tell her whole town about a man she just met (a town that had previously treated her as an outcast). In the end, Jesus’ thirst led to a situation in which, “Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4:39). Aren’t you glad that Jesus was thirsty?
However, I want you to notice that the thirst that Jesus had, led the woman to a deeper thirst. Jesus’ thirst was physical… His body needed H2O (a chemical compound that he had created for physical bodies that he designed to be dependent on). However, the thirst in her that Jesus wanted to satisfy was a spiritual thirst. It wasn’t for a chemical compound but for a spiritual turnaround. She needed to rely on a new source of energy, and this is what Jesus gave. In this way, Jesus’ thirst was contagious. His thirst led to her thirst.
In a way, this is just as true for us as it was for this woman. We need Jesus’ thirst to lead to our thirst. We need Jesus’ thirst to become contagious for us. And this is because this was not the last time that Jesus was thirsty. John records that on the cross, some of Jesus’ final words were, “I thirst” (19:28). This thirst must have been this same mixture of the physical and spiritual. Yes, his body needed H2O, but I think the thirst that Jesus experienced on the cross was much more than that. At this moment he was experiencing the lack of “living water” for the first time in the 33 or so years that he walked this earth. In fact, this was the first and only time that Jesus’ thirst would be spiritual ever! Jesus, the Son of God, did not have a beginning, so for all of eternity, he had drunk freely from these waters of true life. This is why the lack of it, even for a relatively short period, was so excruciatingly painful to him.
But, he endured it, so that we might thirst for those same waters. I hope today that Jesus’ thirst would be contagious for you in a new way today. I pray that we would become thirsty, stay thirsty, and help others become thirsty for the true living water that only Jesus can provide. The best way I can say this is, “Stay thirsty my friends.” I hope you will.
Josh Rose
Discipleship Pastor
When Life Leaves You “High and Dry”
When I was growing up I remember singing a song that had these words in it: “Heartaches, broken people, ruined lives are why you died on Calvary. Your touch is what I long for. You have given life to me.” I thought of the essence of this song’s message as I read and reread Jesus’ interaction with this woman at the well.
Here’s why. After speaking to her in verses 13 and 14 about drinking one kind of water and the certainty of getting thirsty again, and about drinking another kind of water and the certainty of never getting thirsty again, He instructs her to go call her husband. Why would He do that? What does her husband have to do with her thirst? What does Jesus know about her? About us?
Well, He knows that she, like we, all experience on some level and to some degree what the song lyrics point to - heartaches, brokenness, and ruin. And He knows that, like the woman at the well, we are a people who carry around hurts, disappointments, and regrets. (Anyone who has been through what this woman has most likely been through - the pain of divorce or the loss of a spouse - can attest to this.) And because of that, we, like she, thirst for wholeness, healing, acceptance, and a love that will never leave us. In other words, we thirst for “water” that will leave us in a place where we won’t ever get “thirsty” again. Fortunately, we have access to that water, for we have access to Jesus and His Spirit.
Emmanuel Faith, the encouragement from the Scriptures today is to either receive, by faith in Him, the living water that He offers or to remind ourselves that we already have in Him all that we will ever need to quench our thirst, whatever that thirst may be. And the challenge today is simply this: Drink Deeper.
Scott Smith
Care Pastor
Crossing Barriers
Jesus sees beyond the Samaritan’s woman’s ethnicity, gender, and religion. Instead, He sees her brokenness, her heartache, her failed relationships, and her deeply rooted shame and guilt. Jesus comes with love and understanding, but even more than that, He comes with grace and truth to set this woman free; from her sin, free from condemnation and judgment, free to live the life she was created for.
I knew a woman like her; who at 38 years old, needed to be set free from the mess she had made of her life. Two failed marriages prompted one bad choice after another; deeply sinful choices that resulted in public shame and humiliation. Jesus met her at the well and offered her forgiveness and freed her to live the life He created for her. She couldn’t wait to reckon her old woman dead and tell other women how they could find freedom too. She is 68 years old today and still sharing her story with broken women who need Jesus. She never looked back; only moved forward to live the life she was created for; confident in the love of her Savior. This woman is me; forever set free.
Margy Hill
Free for the Asking
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
As a mother, I always wanted the best for our three sons, but not only did we not have the means to give them everything they may have wanted, I knew that in the long run giving them too much of what they wanted at the moment wasn’t healthy for them. I also knew they needed to be taught early the value of things and that they had to be worked for.
In John 4, Jesus is saying, if the Samaritan woman had asked him for a drink, he would have given her more than she asked for–water that would quench her physical thirst, but also her spiritual thirst and abundant life. But notice he said, “if you knew the gift,” and the giver, and if you asked –he (Jesus) would have given you living water.”
Remember in John 16:24 when Jesus said “Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete”. In John 14:14, Jesus instructs the disciples to ask anything in “his name” and he will do it. Praying in Jesus' name acknowledges his authority. Does that mean we ask and get anything or everything we want? No, but neither will we possibly get the things our Father deems beneficial if we don’t ask. He wants a relationship with us, the honest kind where we express our hurts, desires, or wants as long as we ask according to his good and perfect will. Our sovereign Father sees the motivation of our hearts and clearly sees down the road where we can’t see what is best for us.
The gift Jesus offered the Samaritan woman (and us) has already been paid for and is free. How often is anything in life really free? She didn’t have to do a thing to receive it but ask. Jesus paid the price, he is the living water, and there are no conditions on this gift if we just ask.
Sometimes we find ourselves in a dry desert of life and we need to ask again for a fresh cup of living water. Have you experienced or are you now in a dry desert spiritually? If so, spend time sharing your feelings with Jesus today, ask him for refreshment, then take time to listen and watch for his answer. He loves you and wants to make your joy complete.
Deb Hill
Living Water
It was day four of a seven-day backpacking trip. The summer had been dry, very dry. I was guiding a group of 12 high schoolers through the Colorado wilderness, nightfall was rapidly approaching and we had no water. I was nervous. Looking at my map, I knew that there was supposed to be an intermittent stream coming soon, but I had my doubts that it would have any water running. We got to it and, sure enough, it was dry as a bone. The kids were thirsty, I was thirsty, and we were running out of options. We finally stumbled across a pond created by a beaver dam. Definitely not an ideal source of water, but when you’re that thirsty, anything will do. So, we put a few extra drops of iodine in our bottles and prayed! Water had never been so refreshing.
People who lived in an arid climate 2,000 years ago understood better than we do just how essential water is. Our bodies are made up of roughly 60% water. That’s why, when you go to the hospital, one of the first things they’ll do is get you adequately hydrated. You can only live three days without water. Water is the most fundamental element necessary for life. And so, it was a metaphor that Jesus used to talk about the kind of life he came to offer.
When Jesus came to a Samaritan woman drawing water at noon at a well, he said to her,10 “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10) He goes on and describes this “living water” further by saying, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14) That’s quite the promise! Jesus used “living water” to talk about the kind of satisfaction our souls long for and the very thing he came to offer.
One thing to notice is that Jesus claims the life he brings “wells up on the inside.” He’s saying there is nothing outside of you that can truly satisfy the thirst that is deep within you. There are many ways we assume that external water will satisfy - setting our hope on a relationship, career, political movement, or money. Even if those endeavors are successful, they are like splashing water on our faces - refreshing, but not satisfying.
I think all of us are like that group I was with traveling along that trail. Jesus is our good guide and he knows that there’s a spring bursting forth with living water, but we must follow him to find it. Jesus is your Good Shepherd and he wants to lead to still water. His water. Will you turn to him as your source of soul satisfaction? Will you allow his love to fill you and his Spirit to well up in you? Turn to him today.
Pastor Ryan Paulson