Hello my friend Dr. Brad Miller here with the Daily Bible Refresh.

This is your daily reading of the Bible from a progressive point of view.

In a bit I will read the New Testament lessons selected from the Revised Common Lectionary for this very day.

The reading is understandable.

I use the Message version relatable.

Please listen to the points to ponder and applicable with action steps you can take.

We pray and are done in less than 10 minutes.

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Here's today's reading and we're reading today

from the gospel of John 4, chapter 4, verses 5 through 42 from the Message to get there he had to pass through Samaria.

He came to Sychar, a Samaritan village that bored the field Jacob had given his son Joseph and jokes Joseph's Jacob's well was still there.

Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well.

It was noon.

A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water.

Jesus said, would you give me a drink of water?

His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.

The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, how come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?

Jews in those days wouldn't be caught dead talking to Samaritans.

And Jesus answered, if you knew the generosity of the God whom I serve, you would be asking me for a drink and I would give you a fresh living water.

The woman said, sir, you don't even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep.

So how are you going to get to this living water?

Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock and passed it down to us.

And Jesus said, everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again.

Anyone who drinks the water I give them will never thirst, not ever.

The water I give will be an artesian spring within gushing fountains of endless life.

The woman said, sir, give me this water so I won't ever get thirsty again, won't ever have to come back to this well ever again.

And he said, go call your husband and then come back.

I have no husband.

She said, that's Nicely put.

I have no husband.

You've had five husbands, and the man you're living with now isn't even your husband.

You spoke the truth there, sure enough.

Oh, so you're a prophet.

Well, tell me this.

Our ancestors worshiped God at this place, this mountain.

But you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?

Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father.

Neither here nor are at this mountain or nor there.

In Jerusalem, you worship guessing in the dark.

We Jews worship in the clear light of day.

God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews.

But the time is coming.

It has, in fact come when you're going to be called, when what you're called will not matter.

And where you go to worship will not matter.

It's who you are and the way you live that counts before God.

Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth.

That's the kind of people the Father is looking out for.

Those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.

God is sheer being Himself.

Spirit.

Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves in adoration.

The woman said, I don't know about that.

I do know that the Messiah is coming.

When he arrives, we'll get the whole story.

I am he said, jesus, you don't have to wait any longer or look any further.

Just then, the disciples came back, and they were shocked.

They couldn't believe he was talking with that kind of woman.

No one said what they were all thinking, but their faces showed it.

The woman took a hint and left.

And in her confusion, she left her water pot.

And back at the village, she told the people, come and see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out.

Do you think this could be the Messiah?

And they went out to see for themselves.

It's harvest time.

In the meantime, the disciples pressed him, rabbi, eat.

Aren't you going to eat?

And he told them, I have food enough to eat that you know nothing about.

The disciples were puzzled.

Who could have brought him food?

And Jesus said, the food that keeps me going is that which I will do.

The will of the one who sent me finishing the work he started.

As you look around right now, wouldn't you say that in about four months it will be time to harvest?

Well, I'm telling you to open your eyes and take a good look at what's right in front of you.

These Samaritan fields are ripe.

It's Harvest time.

The harvester isn't waiting.

He's taking his plague, gathering of his grain, and that's ripe for harvest, for eternal life.

Now the sower is arm in arm with the harvester, triumphant.

That's the truth in the saying, this one sows, this one harvests.

I sent you to the harvest, a field you never worked without lifting a finger.

You have walked in on a field.

You've walked in on a field, worked long and hard by others.

Many of the Samaritans from the village committed themselves to him because of the woman's witness.

And she knew about all these.

He knew about all these things I did.

He knows me inside and out.

And they asked him to stay on.

So Jesus stayed two days.

A lot more people entrusted their lives to him.

When they heard what he had said, they said to the woman, we're no longer taking his taking this on your say so.

We've heard it for ourselves and know it for sure.

He's the Savior of the world.

Well, that's the reading for this scripture.

Let's really powerful scripture with the woman in the well here.

And so let's get into a couple points, points to ponder.

The first one is this.

Jesus crossed every line in, in his culture that he was told not to cross.

And that's where the gospel broke open.

The gender line, he crossed it.

The ethnic line, he crossed it.

The religious line, he crossed it.

The social respectability line, he obliterated it.

This woman was on the wrong side of every boundary that mattered in this world, in that world.

And Jesus didn't just tolerate her.

He chose her as the person to receive one of his most profound theological teachings.

He told her, not the Pharisees, not the disciples.

He told her that God's spirit and those who worship must do so out of their very being, their true selves.

He revealed his identity as Messiah to her before almost anybody else.

And his own disciples couldn't handle it.

They were shocked.

Their faces showed it.

And I think the church still struggles with this.

We say we believe in radical grace, but when God shows up on the wrong side of the boundaries we have arbitrarily set, when the gospel breaks over through something, we don't expect someone we've been told doesn't qualify.

We look a little bit like these disciples.

Shocked, uncomfortable, saying nothing.

But our faces show everything.

A second point to ponder.

The first evangelist in John's gospel is a multiply marginalized woman.

And she preaches her own story.

She doesn't quote scripture.

She doesn't present a Theological argument.

She just says, come see a man who knows me inside and out.

And her testimony is her life, all of it, including the parts that the religious establishment would have used to disqualify her and the entire village believes because of her witness.

Now I do a weekly podcast that helps cancer impacted people navigate their journey with hope and humor.

And I could tell you the most powerful testimonies are never polished.

They're the raw, honest ones.

The ones where someone says, here's what happened to me and here's what I found on the other side of it.

This woman didn't have the credentials, but she had a story.

And that was enough.

That was enough.

So don't let anybody tell you and your story that it's not enough.

I want you to notice one more detail.

When a woman left to go to tell others in the village, the text says, in her confusion, she left her water pot behind.

She came to that well for water, but she left without it because she found something that made the original errand irrelevant.

She came for what she thought she needed, and she left with what she actually needed.

That's how grace work.

That's how grace works.

It rearranges your priorities so completely that you forget where you came from.

Now here's an action step.

The woman's power wasn't telling her story honestly.

So I want you to share one real powerful story, unpolished piece of unpolished story from your life with someone else.

Not necessarily the highlight reel, not the version where you got your act together.

The version where you were kind of like the woman at the well, avoiding everybody, not sure you belonged to, and just share your story, maybe with a friend.

Or maybe it's.

Maybe you need to write it down or put a Facebook post together.

But let your real story be the offering of this week.

You might be surprised how the whole village in your life shows up because of it.

Before we pray, I want to remind you we have a great resource for you called the ABC 123 Bible Study Method.

Go over to our website, voiceofgoddaily.com that's where you can pick that up.

Let's pray.

God, thank you for a Jesus who sat down at wells where he wasn't supposed to sit or talk to people he wasn't supposed to talk to.

And he trusted his deepest truths to the people the world counted out.

Forgive us for the times when we've been in shock, like the shocked disciples standing at a distance, judging who you chose to work with.

For anyone listening today who feels like that woman at the well, showing up but kind of wanting to avoid the crowd carrying shame in your heart.

Would you meet them today the way Jesus met the woman at the well?

Not with judgment, but with a conversation that changes everything and for all of us.

Give us the courage to leave our water pots behind and help us to stop clinging to what we need, what we think we need, and open our hands to what we actually are being offered.

So let our messy, honest, real life stories be the thing that leads someone else to living water.

Amen.

My friend, I am delighted you chose to join me for today's reading.

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My name is Dr. Brad Miller and I'll be right here tomorrow with your Daily Bible Refresh.

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Remember, God's loyal love doesn't run out.

His merciful love hasn't dried up, it's created new every morning.