Every Woman's Bible Journaling Edition, Filament Enabled - Book - Page 23
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Samaritan Woman
THE
IDENTIT Y
AT THE WELL
Filled to Full
Why do we settle for empty when Jesus came to fill us to full?
On his way from Judea to Galilee, Jesus was tired and thirsty. The one who brought water
into existence sat by a well and longed for a sip.
At the hour of noon, and all alone, a woman approached. Life had not treated this woman
well—she may have experienced infertility, she had likely been sent away by more than one
husband, and she wasn’t married now.
When Jesus asked the woman for a drink, she reflexively pulled back. How bizarre! A
Jewish man requesting a drink from a Samaritan woman? This violated a social taboo: Jewish
teachers rarely spoke to women in public.
Jesus responded, “If you only knew the gift God has for
you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I
Why settle for empty
would give you living water” (4:10). Jesus spoke straight to her
when God came to
emptiness: “Those who drink the water I give will never be
thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them,
fill us to full?
giving them eternal life” (4:14). The sense here is not just a
spring of water welling up but welling up and over.
Like the woman at the well, we can pull back from God’s abundant filling, determining that
we deserve only a sip. Looking at our past mistakes, current circumstances, or simply the
disappointments of life, we conclude we’re beyond God’s love. When the unnamed woman
in John 4 accepted Jesus’ offer to the full, everything changed—for her and her whole town
(4:39-42). Will you accept?
THE SAMARITAN WOMAN’S STORY IS TOLD IN JOHN 4:1-42.
IDENTIFY
How is God offering you
“living water” to fill you to
full? How might you reflexively refuse his filling?
What do you need to
accept the risk of letting
God fill you with his love?
“Perhaps the hardest step
we can take in our life
with God is to risk letting
him fill us with his love. But
what if when we let God
fill us with his love, we are
actually loving him back?”
ELISA MORGAN, MDiv,
speaks, writes, and cohosts
podcasts for Our Daily
Bread Ministries. For
twenty years, she served
as president of MOPS
International, now as
president emerita. Her
motto is “Living really . . .
Really living.”
