What’s Standing Between You and Jesus? | Respond

Brody Holloway | Respond Women’s Retreat

In this session, Brody reminds us that hearing God’s Word at a conference can feel exciting, but the same truth is available to us every day. Looking at the story of the woman at the well in John 4, we see how Jesus meets us in our brokenness and tears down the barriers that separate us from him.

Jesus understands our struggles. He was tired and worn out too. Yet he pressed on, showing that even in weakness, God works. Jesus breaks through walls of division: race, gender, shame, and sin. Nothing is too dirty or too broken for him to make clean and whole.

What are the barriers in your life that keep you from deep intimacy with Christ? 

Whether it’s sin, wounds inflicted by others, or the lies we believe about our worth, Jesus has come to tear those walls down.

• John 4

View Transcript: What’s Standing Between You And Jesus?

Morning girls, this is not intimidating at all, it’s pretty cool, though, I’m one of the few people with the guys in the sound booth and some of the ladies here that get to hear the men worship at Be Strong and it’s pretty awesome to see and hear and listen to five or 600 men worshiping the Lord together, you don’t, get that very often, we promise the men that come to Be Strong, you can tell your husband this if you’re trying to talk him into it, we don’t ask guys to hug each other or cry or anything like that, we don’t do any weird ice breakers, we just preach, we just yell at them, but it’s always so cool to listen to them sing. As cool as it is, you all sound way better when you all singing was so gentle and angelic, I was sitting back there, I was like, I’m not deaf and they’re not tone deaf and it was good. That was I feel like my cup is already full. Turn to John 4, we’re going to open God’s word together, remember several years ago we were, it’s been a long time ago, it’s probably been 20 years ago, we had a team and early days of Snowbird, we used to travel around and we would go church to church, sometimes for two or three weeks at a time, we would load up an old van. We had a van that had come out of the school system, it had the sticker on the side of it was T-13, I guess, transportation van # 13 in the Graham County

School system and we decided to paint flames on one side and shark’s teeth on the other and so, it looked like a, some sort of, a street rod and we had that old van, I bet we put 150,000 miles on that van, we would go around to churches and the band would play and we would teach and preach and sometimes we’d have six or eight students at an event. Sometimes we’d have a few 100 and I remember going to do a thing and I don’t know if we got any folks here from South Mississippi, but we were going to down to Lucedale, Mississippi and they had, what you call, an amphitheater type thing, it was in a park and we were going to do this outdoor event and I found out we were staying with this guy named Bobo, who had, Bobo had a barbecue restaurant and everybody raved about Bobo’s barbecue and we were excited we were going to be staying, he had property and we were going to be staying in like a bunk house and which is great, because we weren’t sleeping on van benches and I remember getting to Bobo’s place it was a really cool place, it had a really cool vibe and you could tell it was really great local restaurant, we got there that night and I remember Bobo said, you all hungry and I was like, yeah, I’m so hungry.

He went into the kitchen of this restaurant and we’re back there with him hanging out and he took out a tub of the those Nestle Toll House, it’s just a big dough bowl, where you scoop it out and I remember he’s scooping it out and I thought, well, I do this at home. Is this it? It’s what we get at Bobo’s, I can do this at home, but I remember, it dawned on me while we’re eating those cookies and drinking some cold milk, it’s just as good here, in fact, it seems like it’s a Little better here than it is at home and the thing about coming to one of these events is that you hear the word, but it’s the same word that you have the opportunity to hear every day and there’s nothing new about sitting under different teachers or going through breakout sessions. The word of God is for all of us, it’s for you, it’s for me, it’s for your children, it’s for your grandchildren and if we will be obedient to open God’s word. he’ll speak to us through it and so, this morning, my prayer is that as we open it, God will speak to us, but then as you leave the pattern of your life will be to open the word of God and expect, when you do that, that you’re going to hear from your Creator God, your savior God, every day. So, very familiar story.

It’s the story of the woman at the well, I’m actually only going to read a few of the verses we’ll do. We’ll work through 15 verses, but really going to just zero in on one main point and then, break that point down and the point is this, Jesus breaks barriers and as we go into this this morning, I want you to be thinking in your mind, what are the barriers in your life that you need the Lord to tear down? Everybody’s got them. We’ve all got them, it could be something as simple as worry or doubt, it could be something as big as fear or PTSD from past trauma, the barrier in your life that keeps you from the deepest level of intimacy with Christ. There’s a barrier in your life, there’s a barrier in my life and sometimes that barrier might be changing from day to day, but for most of us, there are those overwhelming things that we constantly come back to, a fear, a doubt and anxiety, something that in my life tends to control my joy or my peace or my fulfillment, in Christ, the understanding of my purpose. Jesus breaks barriers. So, it says in John 4:1. Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples. he left Judea and departed again for Galilee and he had to pass through Samaria. So, he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

Jacob’s well was there, so Jesus wearied as he was from his journey was sitting beside the well, it was about the sixth hour, a neat thought and there in verse 6 is it says that Jesus was weary and I love when you’re reading through scripture and we’re getting ready to see in this passage, the divinity of Christ, in that he knew things that this woman did not tell him. he possessed infinite, omnipotent, omniscient knowledge, in other words, Jesus is all knowing. So, in this text, this is one of those texts where we get to see that Jesus is truly God, but he’s also truly human, because look, in verse 6, it says he was wearied. he’s tired. Jesus identifies with you in your weariness, physical weariness, emotional weariness, the weariness that’s associated with a marriage that’s dysfunctional or broken, or a husband that won’t lead spiritually, the weariness of praying over a child that has turned away from the Lord, the weariness of broken fellowship with a parent and the weariness that’s associated with, maybe financial strain and you’re constantly trying to get on solid footing. Jesus understood what it was to be weary and what’s so magnificent about that is that Jesus is God and God doesn’t sleep. God doesn’t need to rest the way we need to rest and so, the fact that it just has that Little line that says Jesus was weary.

In my mind, I think about the scripture that says he’s able to identify with us in our weaknesses, because he himself was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he was without sin. Jesus’s weariness never caused him to doubt his purpose, it never caused him to question the Father, it never caused him to turn away from his mission. he was weary, but he would press into that weariness and trust the Lord and so, we see the humanity of Jesus, but then as the story unfolds, we see the divinity, or the deity of Jesus, because even though he’s weary, he’s still God who has submitted himself to that weariness, so that he might identify with us. One of the most beautiful, most powerful, most impactful biblical truths that we can know is that Jesus entered into the human condition, so that he might understand the human condition from our perspective. So, the fact that Jesus endured hunger, he endured emotional torment, there’s a point at the grave, or the tomb of Lazarus, where Jesus is standing in front of that tomb It says that he wept and it says that he cried out and the word that’s used for Jesus, crying out is a word that is associated with a horse, I don’t know if you ever been around a horse when they blow or snort really loud, it’s scary, little and I used to work a lot with horses before we started Snowbird.

We worked at a camp that was kind of, like a dude ranch and there’s actually some folks here, some deer, lifelong friends that worked there with us, but it was always funny when we’re giving someone a ride, a trail ride or something and a kid would walk up to that horse and that horse would blow almost like a sneeze and the kid would jump back, it would be so intense in that moment and I’m like, oh, he just got a booger and that kid would, kid that you make a booger joke, you make a body function joke with a kid and or a man and they’ll laugh every time and so, Jesus snorts this just intense emotional outburst and we feel that Jesus understands emotion. he understands grief. If you have grieved over loss, Jesus grieves more deeply, so he can enter into your grief. If you have wept in brokenness, Jesus has wept more deeply because he enters, into your brokenness. The humanity of Jesus is what makes him so different from all of the false and demonic gods of this world and so, we see his weariness and so, he just plops down at this well. Now some commentators think this is about noon. That’s what I think. Some commentators think it’s 6 p.m. depending on the Jewish daily calendar or the clock, but at any rate, Jesus is tired from a journey, it’s hot in this part of the world and he just sits down beside this well.

He’s going to have an amazing encounter, it says a woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 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. So, I want to consider right here, the obvious barriers that Jesus breaks. Now Jesus is going to break three barriers in this interaction with this woman. The first barrier he’s going to break is a racial barrier. he breaks a racial barrier, we do not have a real way of understanding the tension and the intensity of hatred between the Samaritans and the Jews, because it was centuries old, it went all the way back 700 years before this part of the Jewish people were enslaved and carried off into captivity, or slavery, bondage to another country. When that happened, that country began to intermingle with these Jews, these Israelites and then, you had what they considered a blended race, which was what they considered to be against the will of God, but then, about 150 years later, the rest of the Jewish people.

Were carried into captivity to another powerful kingdom called Babylon, but in that captivity the Jewish bloodline was preserved. So, what you had was this sort of, sense of entitlement, this condescending attitude that the Jews had toward the Samaritans, but it’s important that we don’t only think of the Samaritans as victims, because the Samaritans hated the Jews equally. So, you’ve got two groups of people that have such deep seated, deep rooted hatred that it’s gone back generations and generations and so, Jesus simply breaks the racial barrier, the ethnic barrier, by going to this woman and speaking to her and sitting down with her. The second thing he breaks is a gender barrier, because in that culture, men, particularly rabbis, did not speak to women, they didn’t look at women in public, they didn’t make eye contact with, they didn’t even acknowledge them and that was a very big important point in that culture and so, the fact that Jesus is tearing through a racial barrier is then intensified by the fact that he’s having a one on one conversation with a woman out in public. This was especially unacceptable for a rabbi, a priest, a holy man, a religious person, it’s really unacceptable. The third barrier that Jesus breaks in that scene right there is simply a cultural barrier, it’s a cultural barrier. There were certain aspects of what Jesus was doing that the culture simply did not support.

But, we know that Jesus was always countercultural. Now for us, trying to illustrate how this works can be tricky, I want to tell you two stories that help us understand this. The first one is that some years ago, this was quite a while ago, we were leading an event at a church in the eastern part of North Carolina and we had friends in the area that had a farm and so, this was in the fall of the year and so, little and I went out a couple days early and we did some deer hunting. So, we were hunting and the evening of the event came around, I think it was a Saturday evening, maybe and it was a group of churches in the area that had brought all their students and Little said, well, the event, they did sound check and she said, well, I’ve got three hours till the event starts. I’m going to run out and get in the deer stand on this farm because she had seen a buck that she wanted to shoot this, this is Little, my Little, little and so, she jumps in T 13, drives on over there. So, about 30 minutes before we’re going to do the countdown, she calls me, she says, I just shot a buck and I was like, when this event’s over, I want to renew our vows, I guess it’s just, I want to make sure I got this locked in and so, I leave now we’re fighting the clock, I drive three, four miles to this farm near the church, we recover this deer. Now, I don’t want to be overly graphic, I kind of, do, because it’s just funny in the room full of women.

So, we got this deer, you got to get the guts out of it and so, we’ve strapped the deer to the top of the van, strap it with ratchet straps a whole, we don’t have time to cut it up and get it in the cooler, a whole 180-pound carcass laying on top of T 13 and so, we go pull into church. Now it’s a country church. So, them people were like, huh, good week. All right, let’s worship, nothing out of the ordinary about that, but when we started driving home that night, we got a van full, a vehicle full of Snowbird people and a car starts flashing the bright lights at us and then, they start blowing the horn and then, they run up beside us and they’re flicking us off and just this lady screaming and her boyfriend screaming. he had a man bun. he’s mad, he’s screaming and they’re giving us this and they got on around us and they had a pita sticker on the back of the car. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and I remember I was not offended, I just have this broken default mechanism in those situations, I just can’t stop laughing, which infuriates man bun guy and angry lady and so, when you think about cultural differences, some cultural difference are just funny, but they’re not really important, You see somebody with a bumper sticker for the other political candidate, or whatever identity politics, that cultural differences.

But, I remember being on a street in Kampala Uganda in 2014, there had been at the end of 2013 there was a bunch of political unrest in South Sudan and the two primary people groups in that country are the Dinka and the Nuer and the Dinka and the Nuer were having a civil war and this is an ongoing thing, it’s been happening for 3000 years and so, a lot of South Sudanese people had come into Kampala Uganda, those who were more affluent. This wasn’t like a refugee camp. This was like the people that were more affluent had come and moved into this part of the city because it was safe there and got out of their country. Most of them were young men and there’s a school there, Kampala International University and so, a lot of them had just enrolled in that school, I had met a few guys that were Dinka, which is one of the tribes and had gotten to know them and struck up a friendship with them and shared the Gospel, we were meeting at this little corner restaurant place and having coffee and talking about the Lord and so, one particular day Kilby and I. Kilby at the time, would have been about 13 or 14, we walked out to go get a cup of coffee and so, we’re walking on the street and I see my Dinka friends across the street and I greet them in Dinka because they had taught me that greeting.

I called them my Dinka brothers and I spoke to them, I didn’t realize that between me and them was a group of  Nuer young men, probably 20 year old guys, three or four of them, maybe five and they became infuriated, because what I had done they thought was I had insulted them by greeting them in Dinka and they came at us so aggressively, it’s one of the only times in my life I’ve been really scared, I was very scared they’re coming at us and I said to Kilby, Kilby, if they get close, I’m going to hit two of them as hard as I can without asking any questions. That’ll buy enough time for you to run to the compound and tell your mama what’s going on and hopefully you can get some police or something, but I remember it was so intense and I was so scared and I was like, I might die right here in the street because, I’m an idiot, because I’m dumb and I realized, through that experience and over the next few days, speaking with some local guys, that the hatred and the intensity between those two people groups is so great that they’ll kill you in the street on a college campus just for greeting them in the other language, or according to the other people groups, culture, that’s the kind of, ethnic cultural hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans and in one moment, Jesus rips that wall down. The Bible says that Jesus has torn down the wall of hostility that exists between us and God and us and each other.

Hostility exists between humans, in marriages, in business dealings, in the halls of schools and in between governments and hostility is a part of the human experience, but Jesus tears down the wall of hostility that divide us and he, more importantly, tears down the wall of hostility, or the barrier that separates us from him and so, when he comes up to this lady and he says, let me drink from your cup that you’re dipping the water with, he’s tearing down what might be the greatest wall or barrier, that is, she would have been considered unclean and he’s going to drink after her. Now I want you to enter into that moment for a second, because the reality is, most of us have got this wrong idea that our uncleanliness is bad enough that it disrupts our fellowship with Christ, but the scripture says that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from unrighteousness, it cleanses us from unrighteousness and so, that cultural barrier that Jesus tears down is the idea that because she’s a woman and because, she’s a Samaritan and because, she’s been married five times and she’s with the man that’s not her husband, that she’s unclean and Jesus says, give me a drink of water from your cup because, I’m going to enter into a relationship with you and in this moment, what is dirty in you is going to be made clean by me.

What is broken in you is going to be made whole by me, what separates you from God is going to be torn down and you will be reconciled by me, because I am the messiah and he says, I’m the living water. I’m going to give you a drink of water that’s greater than the water in this well, there’s a scene in John 7, so it’s three chapters later where it’s at a time in the calendar year in Israel, where they’re having a celebration called The Feast of Tabernacles, you might have heard of this. Feast of Tabernacles, is this time where they would celebrate God delivering them from Egypt. So, they’re celebrating the fact that God brought them out of Egypt and gave them freedom and rescued them from slavery and bondage and what they would do is everybody would come to Jerusalem and they would pitch these little tents, but they would make these tents and it was very specific how these tents had to be made and there’s a Jewish historian from 100 years ago named Edersheim, he was brilliant in the way he describes these things. he understood the cultural context, because he had grown up in Israel in the late 1800s and he said what would happen is they would put together these little tents and it was important that the top of the thatched tent had an opening, so you could see the stars in the sky at night.

You could feel the warmth of the sun by day to remind you that when you were in your slavery and your bondage coming out of Egypt, that the Lord was with you. A pillar of fire by night, a cloud of coolness to block the sun and help you travel by day and so, at that Feast of Tabernacles, the priest, it was a seven day feast or festival and every morning and then, you’re talking about massive quantity of people would descend on that city, just throngs of people in these little huts as far as you could see and every morning, the priest would leave the temple clothed all in white and he would take a pitcher of water and he would walk down to the pool of Siloam. If you could picture this, I don’t know if you’re a visual thinker, but if you could picture this, the priest is walking, the people would line the streets and they would wave palm branches to remind them of the desert and the famine and the fact that God provided water and food in the desert and as the priest is walking, they’d be waving those palm branches in their other hand, they held a piece of fruit that was local to that area to remind them of the sweetness of the Lord, even in their  bondage and deliverance and as the priest would walk through the street, he would go to the pool of Siloam. he would dip water out. he would then walk back to the tabernacle.

He would pause at the door of the tabernacle, then he would walk into the tabernacle. Then he would take that pitcher of water and he would pour it out over the altar and it was a reminder that God was going to bring rivers of life back to Israel through the messiah that would one day come and set them free from Roman bondage. So, on the seventh day, it is believed that as the priest walked up the steps of the tabernacle and paused at the door of the tabernacle and held the pitcher up, Jesus yelled out, I am the living water, before he can pour it out, Jesus yells that water is no good, you don’t need it anymore. I’m the one that’s going to give you, life and it was at this point that they began to think about how they would need to do away with Jesus, because he was going to disrupt their system. Well, Jesus has already had that conversation with this broken, distraught, damaged woman, who’s shame filled, guilt ridden, zero value in her own purpose or existence Jesus has already told her the same thing, I’m the water of life. If you drink what I offer you, you’ll never thirst again. Your soul will never thirst. healing will occur, I thought about this morning what kind of, barriers exist in our lives that might cause us to need the water of life to be applied and there’s so many that came to my mind, I started writing them down, I was like, oh gosh, this will be like a whole series, like worry, we worry, we do we worry.

We tend to worry, whatever that looks like, worry about finances, worry about relationships, worry about the future. Some of us live like this woman in shame and guilt, shame over my past, guilt over my past, that shame and guilt, can either be the catalyst that drives you into intimacy with Christ or the thing you do to try to rebuild the wall that he’s torn down, because we kind of, self-medicate with shame and guilt, it’s no different than a 14 year old girl that we’ll deal with in summer camp that cuts herself. What’s she doing? She’s trying to deal with her own shame and guilt. I’m trying to control my own pain. I’m trying to deal with my own pain my own way. So, shame and guilt, becomes sort of, this coping mechanism, I remember a young lady that came to camp years ago. her name was Tara and she was in the middle of a I’ve told this story probably at respond before, I tell it so often, because it means so much to Little and I, she was at the middle of an investigation where she was a key or star witness for the FBI in an investigation for a sex trafficking ring where they were pulling these little girls out of housing projects and using them for prostitution and she came with, literally, this FBI agent who was like her handler, came with her and her counselor, they came to camp, I remember, listening to her story.

Little and I said, listened to her story, she was 15 and it was unbelievable what this little girl had been through. The number of, doctors, lawyers, professionals, blue collar guys, construction workers, she had been used and abused by so many men and she was so confused and she was so cognitively arrested and she was so damaged, we’re trying to explain to her, Jesus can, it’s hard to explain to somebody Jesus loves you, because the question inevitably is, then why did he let me go through that and it’s important that then we understand, we live in a fallen world. Jesus came to enter into that with us, so that he might lead us out of it. There’s a biblical principle that’s laid out in Leviticus 16, where they would take a goat and they would lay the sins of the people on this goat and lead it into the wilderness and turn it loose, it’s a doctrine called expiation. The idea is not just that you need your sin cleansed and forgiven, but that you need to be set free from the sin that’s been committed against you, because a lot of people, they don’t wallow in their own sin, they just can’t escape that which has been done to them, the abuse when you were a little girl, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, abandonment, the abdication of responsibility by a father who should have been there for you. The abuse of adultery from an unfaithful husband, whatever it is, Jesus is your expiation and I just have to tell you and you have to accept.

By faith, through the word of God, that Jesus will take the pain that’s been committed against you and he’ll remove it from you and somehow, he’s able to set you free from it. Seen so many women be delivered from this and that week, that little girl prayed to receive Christ and it was like, literally, shackles fell off of this kid, it was one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had in ministry, but I remember talking to a lady at one of these respond events years ago and she said, I’m a murderer and I was like, is that figurative? She said, oh, no, she said, when I was 14 years old, my stepdad had abused me terribly, was abusing my mother terribly. he was a horrible person and so, one night, when he was beating my mom, I went to the closet, got a 12-gage shotgun and shot him in the back and killed him in our living room and she said, I think what’s got me so twisted up is I don’t regret it, but am I supposed to be sorry for this? It’s not always simple and dry cut to follow Jesus and understand his grace and understand that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from unrighteousness and that he separates us from our sin. he tears down the wall of hostility, he removes the barriers and he, brings us into relationship that’s greater than the cumulative effect of all of our sin, but it’s also greater than the cumulative effect of.

All the sin that’s been committed against us. Some people deal with shame and guilt over their own sin. Some people can’t get out from the weight of what someone else has done to them. Jesus will deliver you from either or both and that’s what he’s doing with this lady. So, I’ll take you out of these five men, guys had to be idiots. Jesus didn’t say that. It’s what I’m thinking, but you think about a culture where a woman was completely exposed if she wasn’t in a relationship with a man that would provide, women were so oppressed and it was such a desperate situation. So, maybe the barrier in your life is the post-traumatic stress of past abuse and injustice that’s been committed against you, read a couple verses, one from Ecclesiastes 4, because it’s important that we are able to somehow wrap our mind around how does Jesus deal with the pain and injustice Ecclesiastes 4:1 again, I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun and behold, the tears of the oppressed and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors, there was power and there was no one to comfort them, you feel that sometimes maybe you feel it personally, maybe you feel it when you are ministering to someone or you’re talking to someone who’s been terribly hurt or damaged or abused.

But, if we go to Ecclesiastes 12:14 we can take hope in these words, for God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. So, what does that mean? It means God is going to vindicate the oppressed and punish the oppressor. Paul writes to the Romans in Romans, 12, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, trust me with vengeance, trust me with my wrath, it’s righteous and just, trust me to deal with the wrongdoing that occurs on this planet. Romans 2:4 a word for us, or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance. So, God’s kindness for us is seen in his forbearance, his patience, his gentleness and the fact that he’s leading us to repentance, but because of your heart and impenitent heart, you’re storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed, he will render to each one according to his works, to those who, by patience and well doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life, but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. So, he would say to the Romans later in chapter 12, leave that into my hands. I’ll deal with it. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek.

But, glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality. So, the Lord promises us that justice will happen, it will occur, you may not feel it right now, but it’s coming. he’s going to make everything. he’s going to wipe, Revelation tells us that he’s going to wipe away every tear from our eyes and when Jesus wipes a tear away, it does not come back. The crying stops, it stops in peace, it stops in joy, it stops in peacefulness and so, this woman is experiencing this kind of, peace. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep where do you get that living water, are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock. Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. There’s a principle there, you keep going back to the same source to try to find satisfaction or peace or healing, but there’s only one source that can provide that and that’s Jesus. 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. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.

What this woman does is she begins, if you read the rest of the story, which I encourage you to, she begins down this path where we see the way Jesus works with her, it’s so gentle. he brings her along. So, she starts to go, there’s water. I’m not totally tracking, but I feel the power in your words, I feel the strength in who you are. There’s something different about you and she begins to respond to him and over the rest of the chapter, she comes to a point where she declares that he is the Lord, the messiah, the Christ and she calls on him for salvation. As a result, not only is she healed, not only does she receive peace, not only are all the barriers in her life torn down and she’s reconciled to God, but she becomes the ambassador for Christ in her community and as a result, there’s a revival that breaks out in that town and everybody gets saved over this woman, who was an outcast, who in the heat of the day, went to the well by herself because she didn’t want to be around people, she becomes the person God uses to reach others. I don’t know what the barrier is in your life, but I’ll tell you this, there’s two things that will tear that barrier down immediately this morning as you leave out of here. The first one is worship. The second one is proclamation, she needed to do two things, she needed to recognize her thirst.

She needed to accept the water Jesus was offering her to quench it and when she did that, she entered into a relationship of worship with him and the response of that worship was that she went and proclaimed to Jesus, worship and proclamation will bring peace, in our hearts, in our lives and those barriers won’t be rebuilt and thanks be to God that he’s capable of doing that.