Write this week’s memory verse, John 4:13-14, on a notecard leaving every other word with only the first letter. Practice the verse with the missing words using the first letter as a clue to help you remember.

Read John 4:9-26 Strict followers of Jewish law would not pass through Samaria because they believed the Samaritans would make them unclean. The Samaritans assimilated with non-Jewish people, intermarrying with the Mesopotamian colonists. Constant tension challenged the two groups. The Jewish people considered the Samaritans to be in a continual state of uncleanness, so the Jews avoided the Samaritans by taking a longer route when traveling from Judea to Galilee. Jesus traveled through Samaria. He risked scandal and uncleanliness to meet the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well.

Jesus comes to the well at noon, the hottest time of the day, to draw water. Typically, the village women would come to the well to draw water in the morning or evening when the temperature was cooler, but the Samaritan woman arrives when she knows no one else will be there. The woman is an outcast as a Samaritan, but she is even an outcast with the Samaritans due to her sinful life. Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, breaking all cultural norms and traditions, even asking her for a drink of water.

As you contemplate Jesus taking risks to meet the Samaritan woman, what stirs in your soul?

Jesus seeks the woman out, and He does not shy away from confronting her with her sin. With kindness and compassion, He reveals her sin while sharing knowledge of her entire life. When God confronts us with our sin during times of thirst, our first reaction is to focus on the problem, but God’s focus is His love for us. In Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, His omniscient knowledge comes with kindness and compassion. In thirst, God is working for good, but sometimes we misinterpret good. God aims to help us realize His Presence in our thirst. We have to remember He is in control, and He is at work to draw us closer to Him in love. Without Him, we are lost for eternity, but in Jesus we have a life with Him now and for eternity as He tells the woman at the well.

When spiritual thirst makes us uncomfortable, we tend to lean into life’s comforts. God desires us to lean into Him. His purpose in confronting our sin is to grow us into a better place in life by knowing Him in a deeper relationship. He is calling us in love. He wants us to become like Him by the power of the Holy Spirit, and slowly, over time, continually move closer and closer to Him and further and further away from sin. We will never be perfect. Perfection is not the goal. The goal is to love God and to follow as He leads.

Read Romans 5:8 As you contemplate God going out of His way to meet us in our sin, what stirs in your soul?

Pray this prayer by A.W. Tozer: "O God and Father, I repent of my sinful preoccupation with visible things. The world has been too much with me. Thou hast been here and I knew it not. I have been blind to Thy Presence. Open my eyes that I may behold Thee in “ and around me. For Christ’s sake, Amen"