Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Imagine stumbling upon a stranger in a place he's not supposed to be—it's fight or flight, right? Welcome to episode 20, where we dive into the Woman at the Well and her unexpected encounter with Jesus. For generations, pastors have pushed the narrative that this woman was rude to Jesus. That she was immoral and ashamed of herself. That she "had an attitude." But what if that's not true at all? What if her seemingly bold demeanor was just a mask to hide the fear of being alone with a man who could have done her harm? Today, we're retelling this story from the perspective of a woman just trying to survive a seemingly dangerous situation. Join us as we explore the Woman at the Well through the lens of real-life experiences, and find out why her reaction to Jesus might have been more understandable than you think.
We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
Welcome to the We Are More podcast.
My name is Alyssa.
And my name is Bri.
We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.
We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His
word.
And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
Piss, piss, piss.
You can't start like that.
All right.
Hello, everyone.
Hello.
Why do I always talk first?
Because you're annoying.
Oh, thank you.
As Brianna sits there in sunglasses with a claw clip on the direct top of her head.
It's a good look.
If you put the claw clip, okay, life hack for you.
If you put the claw clip at the very top of your head, you can lay down.
That does sound like a pretty good hack.
I know.
Hey, all you people with hair.
Most of you probably.
Not necessarily.
Not necessarily.
They should have little claw clips for your leg hair.
How long is your leg hair?
Depends on the day.
I shaved yesterday, but it was really unaffected if I found out this morning.
Oh no.
I looked and I was like, oh.
Bree is just one of those razors that has the soap all around it.
And I feel like you can just never get a close shave with those.
Well, I think the issue is that you trust it too much.
You don't look.
Yeah.
That's probably a sad thing.
Or you just keep swiping and you think it's fine.
I need to read that book all about you or whatever it is, American Girl.
The American Girl one?
We have it in the house right now.
What is it called?
The Care and Keeping of You.
The Care and Keeping of You.
Okay.
So if you want a definition of who I am versus who Bree is.
I feel like we've talked about that before.
We had this book.
It's called The Care and Keeping of You, right?
All the girlies know it.
Oh yeah.
All the women know.
It's like the puberty book.
It's what you get when you're going through puberty.
And for some reason, American Girl wrote it.
Yeah.
Why?
They're like, you like dolls and you have a period.
But it's so helpful.
It explains everything in really basic terms and it's great.
So we had a copy of it when we were kids and our mom paper clipped together certain pages
about periods and tampons and whatever because she hadn't had that conversation with us yet.
I would not have moved those paper clips if someone came up to me and said, if you don't
look in those pages, the world is going to explode.
I would not ever have looked between those pages.
Brianna, the first thing she does, rip off the paper clips and read that section.
Because all the fun people are with me.
They want to know about tampons ASAP.
We just want to know.
They're curious.
You can read the side of the box.
I don't know if you know this, but when I was eight, I wasn't buying tampons and looking
through the boxes.
Mom probably had some.
Mom?
You want to chime in?
Mom is unfortunately not here.
Anyway, today we're going to be talking about the woman at the well.
The woman, the woman at the well, well, well, well.
I made that up when I was in the bathroom.
Oh, I just want to hear like, is this a thing?
Is this a Veggie Tales episode I don't remember?
I feel like it's the tune to something.
I don't know what it is.
It's now to the woman at the well, which is the theme song to today's episode.
Oh good.
We get a theme song.
Should I just take out our intro song and pop that in there?
Just me on the loop.
The woman at the well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well,
well, well, well, well, well, well, well.
Darn it.
All the heck.
We're going to be talking through this story.
It's found in John.
Bree thought it was found in all the gospels, but she's a liar.
I'm just saying it's the Mandela effect because one of the top things that pops up on Google,
just search whatever.
It is that.
It is the woman at the well story in all four gospels.
Other people are with me.
Well other people are looking for the information.
As am I.
You've convinced yourself.
I took a class on this.
I'm pretty sure.
I don't know what to tell you.
The internet says and so does the Bible.
I'm sorry.
I'm really upset.
I'm sorry.
I feel like my dreams are shattered just like the Berenstein Bears.
Huh.
Okay.
Another Mandela effect.
I can talk about this later.
Oh good.
So the story of the woman at the well is found in John.
Sorry, Bree.
And I believe it's four.
John chapter four.
So the basics of this story are that there's a woman and there's a well and there's Jesus.
So this woman, I'm not going to read the whole four word story to you.
I wish you would.
I will not.
I'm just going to kind of talk through it, but I would encourage you to read it.
So John chapter four is where you can find it.
Pause everybody.
Everybody pause.
Open your Bibles to John chapter four.
Read it to yourself and then hit play.
All right.
So now that you've done that, I'm still going to explain it to you because some of you won't.
Like Bree.
Bree would not have.
No.
I don't follow directions.
And the pastors say repeat after me or whatever and they say, or they say turn to your neighbor
and say, no, I absolutely refuse.
I do too.
And it drives Nathan insane.
I just, I'm not going to, no, I'm not going to do that.
It's not kindergarten.
We're not repeating after me.
I never do.
Okay.
The woman at the well, there's a Samaritan woman and she is walking to the well.
It's Jacob's well.
So this is like an ancient, I don't know how else to say ancient.
It's a really ancient well.
Find some more synonyms for ancient please.
Really really old.
So she walks out kind of in the middle of the day.
Now normally people would have gone out in the morning or in the evenings because it's
cooler.
Yeah.
Cause it's, they're in the desert.
It's hot.
They're out bleeding in the desert.
I'm telling you what.
And so she goes in the middle of the day, probably for some privacy.
Now there's arguments back and forth about why she would have wanted that privacy.
Some scholars say that she probably wasn't treated very well by the other women in her
community and so she didn't want to be around them.
I do that.
Yeah, I do a lot.
But our friend Mark, who has a fantastic blog that we've talked about in the past, she's
fantastic.
She says that there's no evidence that this woman was there to avoid other people or that
she was being treated poorly in her community.
There are other instances in the Bible of women going to the well at random times of
the day.
Yeah.
Hey, sometimes you just need water.
Yeah.
And potentially just today specifically, she wanted some privacy.
She just wanted a quiet walk.
Maybe her kids were driving her crazy.
Maybe the chickens got out and she just ran away.
She just left that problem for someone else.
So she goes out to the well.
And I want to talk through, I want to say, tell this story from a feminist perspective,
but I think more tell this story from the perspective of a woman.
Yeah.
I think sometimes it's really hard to put Bible stories, to make them real in your head
because it's so far removed.
How often are we in what century are we in?
The 21st?
Yes.
Now, obviously other places, they are walking to wells.
I don't want to, you know what I'm trying to say.
But us sitting here in the United States.
I can go downstairs and get a bottle of water.
Right.
But let's make it something more real in our heads.
You're stopping at a gas station.
Yeah.
Perfect.
So let's say as a woman, you're stopping at a gas station.
I did that today, but not for gas.
Now you're specifically going at a time where nobody else is going to be around.
Late at night.
Late at night.
She walks to the well or you walk to the gas station or drive to the gas station.
And as she gets there, there is a singular man there.
Now men should not be at this well.
Okay.
Men don't come to the well and get the water.
That's the women's job.
Very, very rarely are you going to see a man at this well.
Imagine if you're at a gas station, the middle of the night, you pull in and there's a singular
man just chilling.
He's not pumping gas.
He's not doing the thing he's supposed to be at the gas station for.
He doesn't even have a car.
Yeah.
He's just standing there.
Okay.
You're terrified.
I would be terrified.
I would pull my car back out and leave.
I'd say, I'll let this thing run out of gas before I stop here.
But she probably doesn't have that option.
I mean, water is non-negotiable.
And also you're walking.
It's not like you're going to be like, I'll come back later.
Catch you next time.
No.
So she has to go into this situation that probably to her feels very threatening, very
scary.
At the very least, she's uncomfortable.
Yeah.
If she had come at a different time of day, there would be other women around.
Even if there was a man in the mix, like, okay, but there's witnesses, right?
There's not anybody.
It's just her and him.
Yep.
And she gets there and Jesus doesn't even have a cup or anything to drink from the well.
He doesn't have a bucket to get water out of the well.
He has nothing.
He's just suspiciously hanging out as a man somewhere he shouldn't be in the middle of
the day.
Now as she walks up to him, the next thing that she notices is that he's Jewish.
Now she's a Samaritan woman and the Samaritans were-
At odds with.
They were at odds with the Jewish people, but they came from the same ancestors.
It's like in Harry Potter, how they call the people who have one wizard parent and one
human parent, they call them half-bloods.
It's like that.
So she was someone who had some Jewish descent and some non-Jewish descent.
I love that so far we've referenced this very popular historical Bible story with a gas
station in Harry Potter.
How can we make this real to you?
That sounds on par with everything in my life.
Yeah, I like Harry Potter.
So she walks up to him and she sees that he's a Jewish man.
Now I don't know how she recognizes this.
I don't know if there was a large difference in looks or in clothes or anything like that.
And super interesting thing about the Jewish people at the time is that most of the religious
Jewish people would avoid Samaria completely.
So when they were on their journeys to get wherever they were going, walking.
They would go around Samaria.
It's like two extra days of walking.
That's how much they disliked these people, okay?
I cannot think of anyone, and I don't like a lot of people, but I can't think of anyone
I dislike enough to walk two additional days just to avoid them.
Although I will go out of my way to go to a different Starbucks, just because I like
the coffee.
But the coffee's better.
It's not the people, it's the coffee's better.
The people are nicer there too.
A little bit.
My best friend is there.
Best friend, if you're listening.
Hey bestie.
You make really good coffee.
I'm sure you don't know my name.
They know my name.
I'm mobile owner.
So she gets there, Jesus is there, he's a Jewish man.
In my mind, all of these things say I'm in a dangerous situation.
Because if she's, let's say, and I'm not going to use Jesus in this example, but let's
say it's a different man, and he attacks her, and she takes that to the Jewish authorities,
they're not going to listen to her.
Not only is she a Samaritan who they don't like, she's a woman.
The testimony of a woman at the time, it's well documented, was literally not considered
truthful.
It wasn't considered evidence of any kind.
They barely considered women people.
So there's no way anybody's caring if she gets attacked.
So the story, as we go on, the way that I have been told it is, and I've heard this
preached a thousand times, pastors will often talk about her as though she's really rude
to Jesus.
And you'll see where that comes from in a second.
Or really sassy with Jesus, or she's got an attitude, or whatever.
But I want to put forth as you listen to what their conversation is that she's scared.
She's on the defensive already.
And I don't know about you, but in my life, when I get into situations like that, I do
one of two things.
If someone comments something to me and I feel uncomfortable and unsafe, I try and laugh
it off and diffuse the situation that way and get out as quickly as possible.
Before I get angry and try and push that person away as quickly as possible.
You'll puff up your peacock feathers and make yourself as big as possible.
And say, get out of the way.
I'm big and scary.
All five feet of me.
And so I think in my mind, and this is just conjecture from Alyssa, I think she's scared.
I think she's really scared.
Additionally, and we'll get into it, she has all kinds of background with men that's scary.
And she probably has no trust for men at all.
And now here's a man that she really, really, really shouldn't trust.
And of course we have the benefit of knowing it's Jesus.
But she didn't know that.
She didn't know.
Even if he said, my name's Jesus, that means nothing to her at the time.
She's like, awesome, my brother's name is Jesus.
Also, Samaritans didn't practice quite the same religion as the Jewish people.
My understanding is it was kind of like a hybrid kind of how they were partially Jewish
and partially not, because they were not allowed in the temples.
The Jewish people wouldn't let them in there.
So even if somehow she, and she does know a little bit as the story goes on, even if
she did know, okay, this is kind of the Jewish religion, she wouldn't have all that connection.
Also, she's a woman, so she wouldn't have been allowed to be educated in religion.
So Jesus starts talking to her, right?
And the first thing he does is ask her for a drink.
And this is, so I'm pulling some of this from Marg's article, and he asks her for a drink
and she's shocked that he's speaking to her at all.
And again, now you're on the defensive.
Imagine that you pull up to the gas station, there's the single man over there and you're
just trying to pump your gas as fast as possible and you are like, things are fumbling and
you're trying to get your credit card in there.
And then he walks over to you, there's nobody else around.
He walks over to you and starts talking to you and he asks, hey, can you come pump the
gas in my car?
I didn't bring anything to pump gas with, I didn't bring a car, but can you come help
me?
Have you seen that?
Here we go.
Have you seen that TikTok?
Oh my gosh.
It's just like security footage of a gas station and this person was pumping their gas and
a van pulls up and a bunch of people jump out, try to mug the guy and he takes the gas
out of the car and sprays it into their car and in their faces.
That's what I would do in that moment.
Yeah, because you've seen the TikTok.
See, TikTok is educational, ladies and gentlemen.
Sure, sure it is.
Actually I've seen some really great TikToks lately.
Yeah, you zip it.
So anyway, so he asks her for a drink and I find this fascinating.
So in Marg's article, she talks about the fact that, so the woman basically says, how
can you ask me for this?
You're Jewish, you're a man.
You shouldn't even be talking to me.
She points this out to him again on the defensive, leave me alone.
Stop speaking to me.
I'm scared.
And so the words that are used depending on the translation are, she says, Jews do not
associate or have dealings with Samaritans depending on the translation.
So the Greek word for associate, I'm going to butcher this, okay?
We all knew you're going to.
So it's sugchromai.
Say it again for the people in the back.
Nope.
And it also means the sharing of eating utensils and dishes.
Okay.
So I think back to segregation.
That's kind of a similar feel here.
And I love breaking that apart because I've never heard anyone explain it that way.
No, that's really interesting.
Yeah.
Like, don't touch my bucket.
Yeah.
Well, he would have thought she was unclean.
And it goes into that later.
So this is fascinating.
So the Jews have all these rules about when women are on their periods, right?
Bleeding in the desert.
When you're on your period, you are considered unclean for the entire time.
Nobody can touch you.
Like you're a pariah for seven days out of the month, which maybe is not terrible.
Maybe you get to be alone.
And then you have to go through a whole cleansing ritual in order to be able to be allowed back
in the temple, to be able to be allowed back in society.
I'm not even kidding.
It's for real.
So the Jews regarded Samaritan women as, and this is a quote, menstruants from the cradle.
Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh.
So can we title the podcast?
Menstruants from the cradle.
No.
Oh.
So that would have meant that she was always considered unclean by them.
A hundred percent of the time.
Constantly bleeding from the day she was birthed, literally from the cradle.
Man, what a life.
So she's, there's no reason Jesus should be talking to her here.
He shouldn't be here.
He shouldn't be in her country.
He shouldn't be at her well.
He should not be anywhere in the vicinity.
Did you bring me here?
Did you rub my lip?
So Jesus starts talking to her.
She says, why are you speaking to me?
And Jesus starts talking about living water.
Now the metaphor here, so he says this well, you're going to drink from it and you're going
to be hungry.
I'm sorry, thirsty again.
You probably always be hungry.
You leave thirsty again.
But I have living water and if you drink this living water, you'll never be thirsty again,
right?
Now I want you to go back to the gas station.
Okay.
I'm closing my eyes.
I'm back at the gas station.
You're trying to pump your gas.
You're trying to go as quick as possible.
This man comes up to you.
He's like, help me out.
You're like, no, me, me.
And then he starts talking like a psycho.
Okay.
Now they have this gas at my house.
That's the best gas you'll ever have.
Okay.
So we're making light of it.
But the point is, it sounds really crazy.
What he's saying.
And there's no precedent for this in the Bible that I can find this whole living water metaphor
in the Old Testament in anything.
And she probably wouldn't have been familiar with that anyway, but it wasn't even there.
This is a fresh concept.
Yeah.
And Jesus, he's a little confusing sometimes.
He talks in these parables and yes, with the benefit of time, we can sit here and pull
them apart.
Right.
But she's standing there and this man is talking crazy talk.
And she's already scared of him.
And now he's talking about water that you're never thirsty with and gas that will fill
up your car until the end of time.
I want that gas.
He's got a Tesla at home.
He doesn't need any gas.
So he starts talking about this and she's like, okay, I'm going to go with you here.
Right.
Now I again, Alyssa's translation of things, you take this however you want.
But my thought is I'm going to pacify this man.
I'm going to use the situation to get out of this alive.
I'm going to smile and nod.
And so she kind of does.
And she asks him, okay, where can I get this living water?
Now interestingly, living water in a way meant flowing water.
So that might've been how she understood it, like a river.
So many songs just went through my head.
Did you want to sing one of them?
I hear it's flowing with milk and honey.
Sounds sticky.
Cause we're going to the promised land.
Hey, hey.
Wow.
Those veggie tales in case any of you had a sad childhood and didn't see it.
The only reason that came to my head was the word flowing.
I thought we were going to get a period joke.
Oh, I could do that too.
We should really warn dad and Brandon at least.
Don't listen.
I don't care.
That's going to go somewhere else with that.
And that's where it landed.
So this story is, it's a very long story, right?
This is actually, interestingly, the longest recorded conversation that Jesus has.
The longest recorded one.
And so she says, where can I get this living water?
And Jesus would have made me a lot even more uncomfortable.
And he says, well, go get your husband.
We'll talk more about it.
Which wouldn't have been that weird for the time because realistically they shouldn't
have been talking anyway.
So maybe she's like, maybe this would have been a normal statement to say, okay, we've
talked too much.
I'd love to keep chatting about this with you, but it would be more appropriate if you
brought your husband.
Right.
Because of the time.
Yeah.
So she says to Jesus, I don't have a husband.
I would say the same thing to Jesus.
Now she, again, whenever I've heard this preached, it's like being really sassy, right?
That's not indicated in the Bible.
It's kind of like a text message where you, when you're reading the Bible, like you don't
know what the tone of voice was.
It's not even the same language.
Emojis were created.
They didn't have them back then.
They didn't have emojis.
No.
They didn't have emojis.
They had faces.
So she tells this to Jesus and Jesus basically says, yeah, you're right.
You don't have a husband.
You've had five husbands.
And I'm trying to do this in such a tone that is conveyed in the Bible because there's no
judgment from Jesus.
No.
He's just stating a fact.
Yep.
There's no condemnation whatsoever.
And he says, you're right.
You don't have a husband.
You've had five husbands.
And the man that you're with now is not your husband.
Just matter of fact.
Okay.
So now you're back at the gas station.
I'm back at the gas station.
The man has come up to you.
He said, back at my house, I've got a Tesla.
It doesn't need any gas if you want to come back with me.
And then he starts telling you the deepest, darkest secrets about yourself that he absolutely
should not know.
Brianna, you've had 17 boyfriends.
That's not true.
That's not true at all.
Teresa, you've had 49 boyfriends.
Sorry, mom.
And she gets scared probably again.
Now it doesn't say that, but I'm just thinking in this scenario, you would have to be.
It's frightening, right?
The stranger man is talking to me.
He shouldn't be.
He's talking a lot of nonsense.
And now he's a psychic.
He's that so raven.
But he knows way too intimate details about her life.
Probably details.
Now, it doesn't say that she's ashamed of these things necessarily.
Some people have assumed that because she's at the well in the middle of the day, that
that means people aren't nice to her.
People are crossing the street to avoid her, and so she's ashamed of her past.
There's really nothing to indicate that.
However, it's probably not something she was advertising.
So you probably would have had to know her for quite a long time to know, yeah, she's
been through five husbands at this point, and now she's with someone who isn't her
husband.
And it doesn't indicate what that relationship looks like.
It doesn't mean she's sleeping with him.
But really, there's no, again, there's no judgment from Jesus.
And Jesus at no point to her says, go and repent, or go and sin no more.
He doesn't say that, and that's significant because he said that to other people.
He does not say that to her.
So there's no indication of wrongdoing on her part in this, but she gets shamed all
the time.
S-L-U-T, isn't that a song?
Yeah, sweet little unforgettable thing.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Marg's article then goes on to say that her history fits a pattern that would be common
for women of her time.
She got married probably in her early teens.
And I know that's- Just like our great grandmother.
Yeah.
She was a little icky, but it was common at the time.
That was expected.
So she probably got married very, very young.
And from there, the Samaritan laws- And I tried to look up specifically what the Samaritan
laws for divorce would have been.
And all I was able to find- There's not, I mean, there's not a lot of historical context
here.
I'm sure if I dug real far that I probably could.
But it says in the first century, Samaritan divorce laws were based on the Torah, which
was the first few chapters of the Bible.
And they gave the husband almost complete power to initiate a divorce.
When it's presented at church, in the churches I've been in, it's so often, well, she divorced
all these men.
She went through a bunch of men because she wanted to sleep around.
And so here she is.
Or even if they're not saying that, it's kind of implied that something was wrong with her,
that the men didn't want to stay in her life.
And the reality is men had full power to divorce women.
She would not have had almost any power at all to divorce her husbands.
But they would have had almost complete power to divorce her with zero repercussions.
They're either dead or they're divorcing her.
So imagine the heartbreak.
Because also once you have been married and then you're no longer married, you almost
have to get married again quickly in that society.
Because otherwise, again, you're an outcast.
Women wouldn't have had a lot of options for making money.
So once she had been married and was no longer married, whether it was through divorce or
death, her option was essentially to either become a prostitute or live on the streets
as- Begging.
Yeah.
Or to get married again.
Yeah.
Those were her options.
So once you go through the first divorce or death, you've got three options.
Go through the second divorce or death, three options.
None of them are good options.
But this is all survival.
So now think of the crazy man at the gas station.
I don't like to refer to this as like Jesus is crazy, but in her mind that had to have
been kind of what the thought process was.
He tugs on the most sensitive, painful part of your life.
Not because you've done anything wrong, but because you have been hurt by everyone in
that story.
You have been ripped to shreds.
I would guess it's probably a combination of death and divorces.
Unless she's a black widow, baby.
The divorces, I think, it would have hurt in a deeper way because they tossed her to
the side.
Whether it was- It was a choice to leave.
Yep.
Death really isn't a choice.
She wasn't important enough for them to keep in their lives.
And so Jesus is going into this and she's like, ah!
And the only thing that she can make sense of is that maybe he's a prophet.
So a prophet at that time, or prophecy now also, it would be as though God gave you a
message for someone.
God gave you information about this person.
It came straight from God.
You have no way of knowing it before or after.
It just came, words came straight from heaven out your mouth.
So that's what she's assuming is happening here.
And prophets would have been more common back then.
I don't think they were common common, but more common at the time.
Particularly within the Jewish religion, we see that happen several times.
So in John 419, she says, sir, I see you are a prophet.
So she directly says, you're a prophet.
And Jesus, he starts talking about religion.
When John 421 says, Jesus told her, believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will
worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
You Samaritans worship what you do not know.
We worship what we do know because salvation is from the Jews.
So he's talking about the Jewish religion specifically and how the Samaritan religion
has broken off from that and it's different.
And then verse 23, but an hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will
worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him.
God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
And again, it's a little confusing.
The wording is a little confusing.
I would recommend looking it up in.
I like the message for stuff like this to just which is a version of the Bible.
It's not a translation.
It's a like a story.
It's written a little differently.
It's supposed to be written more in like modern English.
So it's a little easier to understand.
So then she says, no, I know.
I know the Messiah is coming.
I've been waiting on this too.
So again, the Samaritan people kind of knew some of this information.
So she says, I know that's happening.
And when the Messiah comes, when God's Son comes, he'll explain all of this to us.
He'll explain to us how to get to heaven, how to worship better, how to become one people,
whatever it is that she's hoping for in the future.
And Jesus says, so this is verse 26.
Jesus told her, I the one speaking to you, am he.
I don't think that the gas station analogy works anymore.
So I'm gonna let it go.
Man at the gas station.
It's fine.
Turns out he's actually Jesus.
Now I think the gas station analogy is so good because it allows us to put her in context
and think of her as a real human person in our time.
But at the end of the day, she's actually talking to Jesus.
And this is the first recorded time that Jesus ever tells anybody that he's the Son of God.
How cool.
That's so cool.
It's so cool.
To a lady person.
I feel like a nerd.
I've always said that about you.
You have always said that about me.
From the day you were born.
You weren't there the day I was born.
Menstruating.
Anyway, I just think that's really cool.
Here she is, someone, whether she's an outcast from society or not, someone that hadn't had
it easy.
Someone that had struggled.
And her story, which she probably at the time felt was so insignificant.
And probably how everybody in this world feels at some point.
Your story doesn't matter.
You're a little ant on a log just floating along.
And her story is recorded in the Bible.
And people talk about it for years and years and years.
That's incredible.
It is incredible.
When you think of your life and you're going through the hardest moments, it doesn't feel
like you're important.
And yet here she is.
And she's talking to her creator.
And she doesn't know it right away.
But then she does.
And she believes him.
Now if I'm talking to the man at the gas station, I don't know that I'm believing him when he
says he's Jesus.
But I think that God probably gave her a supernatural understanding of that.
Yes, exactly.
But you have to think also, I love to dig into the background of it.
And again, this is guesses and assumptions.
But I would think God had been preparing her for that moment.
She talks about the fact that she knows about the Messiah.
She's waiting for him.
Once he gets there, he'll explain it.
So she has some background knowledge.
She didn't just randomly show up here.
Jesus didn't just randomly show up here.
Choices were made on both sides to wind them up at this point.
I hate to say this, but everything happens for a reason.
Maybe she slept in late that day.
Right.
She's like, ah, piss, piss, piss.
I need some freaking water.
I might as well go now.
It's hot.
I don't really want to, but I'll go.
Well, and then Jesus, and I think it's tough because Jesus is fully God and fully human.
So did Jesus know when he made the choice to tell his disciples, no, we're going through
some area, we're not cutting around the way everybody else does, we're going straight
through?
No, I'm going to have this encounter with this woman.
Did he plan for this moment to be the moment that he was going to reveal who he was, or
did he just have a connection with this person?
I think it's hard to wrap your mind around it, how you think of the three in one.
You understand it, but you don't understand it.
If you think too hard about it, you're going to get your brain in knots.
I think Jesus was fully God and fully human, so it was kind of a blend of both maybe.
Like he knew, but he didn't know, but he knew.
And if you're confused about the three in one thing, that's a very churchy thing where
we talk about the Trinity, which is God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, who are like three people
in one person.
I don't know, it's very confusing.
I bet you if you Google it, AI has a great answer.
I bet it does, and we're not going to go into it because I don't have another four hours
to explain or to understand it myself.
It's a lot.
It's a lot.
So the rest of her story goes that she believes him.
She says, great, awesome, give me that living water.
This is super cool.
And she can't hold it in.
She runs back to her village.
Now it doesn't say, did she say goodbye or did she just turn and book it?
She forgot.
So she goes and she runs to her town, and the implication is that Jesus and his disciples
are eventually going to go through her town, so she's going to see him again.
But she goes to her town, who are Samaritan people who have been hurt by the Jewish people,
and she's telling all these people, there's this group of Jewish people.
And I'm not going to say Jewish men because we're also female women, not female women,
but female female disciples following along.
So there's a group of Jewish people, again, who should not have been there.
The Samaritan people hate the Jewish people.
The Jewish people hate the Samaritan people.
And she's running in like, hey, hooray, the Jewish people are coming.
And they're like, hmm.
Like settle down.
Pass.
What's wrong with you?
Do we need to start a war party?
It's probably not a positive reaction.
And we don't know what her status was in the community, but whatever it was, she threw
it all to the side and probably embarrassed herself running around shouting through the
streets.
Now she's the crazy person.
We all got to be crazy.
And she's like, the Messiah is here.
We've heard about him, and he's walking down the street.
He's behind me.
You see him in the distance?
He doesn't have a bucket for the well, but he's here.
It's as she immediately left her water jug and goes into town.
So she didn't have a water jug either.
So because of her, tons of people in her town believe that testimony.
And it does say that like God intervened and people believed her.
Instead of these two warring people groups fighting as one went through town, they believed
her.
And Jesus, when he came, she preached alongside the disciples.
And now instead of her story being, you've had five husbands and the man you're with
now is not your husband, instead of that story, and I hope we can redeem her in a way because
that's so much to focus when you hear this in church services, instead of that, her story
is preaching.
I met the Messiah.
And I'm going to tell the world about it.
And the world is going to remember that forever.
She went and she preached the gospel to all of her people.
And we don't know what happens to her after that.
Did she keep preaching the gospel?
Did she get married for a sixth time?
Or seventh or eighth.
We don't know.
We don't know the rest of her story.
But we know in this moment, Jesus found her so valuable that he chose her to tell the
most important truth ever in the history of anything.
Some could say, our one true calling as men and women to share, preach and teach the gospel.
I read a really interesting piece one time and I'm trying to remember how I wrote it.
I want to say it was like Beth Helles and Bart, but I'm not sure enough to say that
for sure.
But I read an article and she had a seminar at a conference and it was about sharing your
faith.
It wasn't even necessarily about preaching.
It was about sharing your faith.
And it was at the same time as a cookie making seminar.
It was Beth.
It's in her book.
Was it Beth?
It was like a women's retreat and there was different classes.
And there was one for sharing the gospel or whatever, sharing your story, and there was
one for cookie making.
And they put them at the same time.
And so her seminar was so poorly attended.
There were very few people there to hear about sharing the word of God.
Because most of them wanted to go bake cookies.
And look, I love cookies.
Don't get me wrong.
I'll eat a whole plate full of cookies.
Love a cookie.
I would prefer someone else make them for me.
But I love a cookie.
Although I love cookie dough.
Oh, cookie dough is great.
We have frozen cookie dough balls at work and then we bake them for people like fresh
baked cookies when you come to the dentist office.
That's really a good selling point for us.
But sometimes we break into the freezer and just eat the cookie dough.
That sounds like a good time to me.
It is a good time.
Back to Beth.
Back to Beth and cookies.
She had a woman come up to her and say, I'm sorry I didn't come to your lecture.
I would have.
But really, my main calling is to nurture my family.
I don't need to worry about ministering to other people, other women, other whatever.
Now that's not a direct quote.
It's in her book.
I highly recommend.
Yeah, The Making of Biblical Womanhood.
So you can read all about that.
Definitely give that a listen or read it.
Whichever you prefer.
Grab the book by the butt and read it.
But I think that's the attitude of a lot of women in Christian circles because we've been
told our whole lives, your highest calling is your family.
So you don't really develop as much of a desire to go out and teach and preach God's word.
But I think what's important to understand is that gives me so much anxiety to think,
oh my true calling is to share the word of God.
But I think you just have to pray about it.
I think you have to say, God, if you want me to share your good news, give me an opportunity
and put those words in my head because they're not coming out my mouth from my head.
But I think it's also important to remember that God knows who you are.
So it's like you and I right now, I wouldn't think I'm fulfilling my greatest calling,
but look what we're doing.
We're sharing the word of God from the comfort of my bedroom.
It's a little hot.
It's not that comfortable.
I remember in vacation Bible school when we were little, they gave you little ribbons
and awards and whatever.
I loved those ribbons.
I did too.
I loved those ribbons.
And I would get all of them because I would memorize.
I was like the good student, right?
So I memorized all the verses.
I did all the things, but there was one and it was like, invite a friend.
And that gave me, I was, I couldn't have been more than eight.
That gave me a level of anxiety I cannot describe to you because I am an introverted introvert
who introverts, okay?
That should go on his shirt.
We could have so much merch.
Piss, piss, piss.
Piss, piss, piss.
I've always said that.
Introverted, introverted, who introverts?
I love it.
I have a shirt that has introvert embroidered on it, but I really am like that is who I
am as a person.
I don't like going out and initiating chats with people.
I just, I can't.
And even growing up as people are like, share your testimony, share God's word, share whatever.
I'm like, no thank you.
I don't want to do that.
But God made me who I am.
God made me an introvert and he didn't make me wrong.
No.
He didn't make him.
Well.
Shut up.
I think a lot of times in the church extroverted people are really raised up and like, look
at them, they're amazing.
And they are amazing, but so are introverted people.
People are amazing.
Period.
No buts.
Yeah.
God made introverted people.
And in that, what I never expected was that God would give me an outlet to share his word
here.
She's pointing at the computer.
Here on this podcast.
I just think it's really cool that when you feel like you don't have a purpose anymore,
when you feel like your tragedies are too much or your personality is too much or whatever
it happens to be, that God has so much for you that Jesus would come up to you and reveal
to you the first time that he was the son of God.
And it's going to be shaped uniquely for you and all of the attributes that you possess.
It doesn't matter if you're extroverted or introverted.
It doesn't matter if you're short or tall or if you've been married five times.
No.
If you've been not married at all, God is going to find your purpose and he's going
to shape it around all those little unique things about you individually that he knows
about you.
He knows every hair on your head or the lack thereof.
And I think it's important to remember that not just he knows it, he made you.
Like a potter with a lump of clay.
I did a lot of ceramics and not a lot came out of that.
I know.
I used to imagine, because I have super curly hair and I've said that before, but when I
was a kid, for some reason, this image was always in my head that when God was making
me up in heaven, like I imagined little tiny toddler me, I don't know why I was a toddler
instead of a baby, but I was a toddler.
And you didn't know where babies came from.
Nope, did not.
I imagined that God took each piece of my hair around his finger and twisted it around
and that's why it was curly.
That is so sweet.
I really do.
Oh my gosh.
You know, I wanted to die young, so I would be young in heaven because I thought it would
be more fun than being old with like bad knees.
Our stories are very different.
We need to go to bed.
Time to sit.
Okay.
Because that was kind of my image in my head as a kid and that was me feeling God's love
very deeply as just a little kid.
So I hope that you can think of yourself like that.
Whatever type of image you want to use that God created every aspect of you.
He created your physical being, but also emotionally who you are.
Your soul.
Yeah.
I think in an episode recently, any flaws that you may see in yourself, God created.
God put them in there knowing that you would be exactly who you are and still having, not
in spite of it, but because of it, having all these plans for you.
Maybe we should be a little bit kinder to ourselves.
When you look in the mirror, say, God made me special and he loves me very much.
Oh, but really I think we spend so much of our lives worrying, especially women, worrying
about all of the flaws that we see in ourselves rather than being like, I'm beautiful and
I'm kind and I'm moderately smart.
And people see that as being vain, conceited, but it's not.
If you're beautiful, you got to show it off.
God never said, put yourself down.
He never said be less than I made you.
You'd be putting God down, really.
God made you smart.
God made you beautiful.
God put you in the position you're in, in the place you're in, in the community you're
in, all for a purpose.
And that's so easy to preach it.
It's so much harder to live it.
For sure.
For sure.
Because I'm saying these things and I, in the back of my mind, I'm like, I'm nearly
years old and I've done nothing.
I think we can all look at our lives like that.
When you look at, they say this about social media, when you look at everyone else's highlight
reel versus your worst moments.
Yes.
So true.
Everybody has totally different paths.
And we're going to talk about that a little bit in some other episodes.
Brie's doing one, actually it'll come out before this.
Done one.
Brie just did one on singleness in the church and next week I'll do one on being married
in the church.
I think it's so funny when we call it singleness because it's so ingrained in my head that
that's a dirty word.
That's a sad, sad word.
But it's so not.
But it's not.
Actually, it's very freeing.
And I hope that, like I haven't recorded that episode yet.
I hope I had good things to say.
I'm sure you did.
I'm sure you were inspirational and they all loved it.
Honestly, I'm sure I was.
I'm sure I cracked a joke and picked every good song.
Every good song.
Several by Beyonce.
All right, so I'm going to wrap this up because if we don't, I'm going to have a heat stroke
and die.
You'll be young in heaven.
Great.
Not that young.
You're right.
Not that young.
So we've been every week challenging ourselves to see if we can expand our listener base
a little bit and asking you guys to share with someone in a specific place.
So Brie has a specific place that she would like to share this week.
Nebraska.
The moon.
Where else could I say?
Brie, pick one place.
Spain.
Spain!
I've always loved you, Spain!
So if anyone knows anyone in Spain, not the moon.
We assume you don't know anyone on the moon.
But if you know anyone in Spain, please do share it with them and share it with anybody
that you think would enjoy our craziness and our laughter and wants just a moment of utter
insanity in their lives.
Go ahead and share it with them.
What are you trying to say?
Have you listened to these episodes?
Have you ever been wanting to hang out with two fun sisters?
We should have a promo video.
Oh no.
Did you just wish you were one of the girls?
Listen to the podcast.
That was a great promo.
Thank you.
We can't even manage to film real TikToks.
No, I really struggle.
Okay.
So like, comment, share.
And peace and blessings.
We love you.
Goodbye.