In this episode, I share more about how this truth has played out in my own life — and the steps you can take to make it real in yours.
The World Will Tell Us That We’re Unworthy. God Won’t.
It was my senior year of high school. I had two friends that I’d known since second grade.
Both of them had recently entered into a personal relationship with God and wanted me to experience His love, too.
Their intentions were good. But they were young (i.e., teenagers), new in their faith, and still retained certain religious ideas from their upbringing in the local church.
So instead of lovingly and prayerfully walking alongside me as God did a similar work in my own heart, they sat me down one Saturday and pressured me to give my life to Jesus.
They even went so far as to give me an ultimatum. If I didn’t give my heart to Jesus in that moment like they wanted, they could no longer be my friends.
I lost two long-time friends that day. In addition, I lost the only two people in my life who could show me who God actually is.
They had found me unworthy. But God hadn’t.
God Is Focused on Our Hearts – Not Our Performance
God will never force someone to be in a relationship with Him.
As 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NLT) says, “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” [Emphasis mine.]
Rather, God desperately yearns to give us living water for our hearts and souls.
What do I mean by “living water”? Well….
In John Chapter 4, we read about Jesus’s interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well.
Side note: Jesus is part of the Triune God: God the Father, Jesus the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was born into human history and was both fully human and fully divine.
This was a woman that the community looked down on – and to some degree she probably looked down on herself.
One, according to verse 18, she’d had five husbands and was currently living with a man that she wasn’t married to.
In this time and culture, that meant she was highly ostracized. It’s why she was visiting the well at noon.
The normal practice was for the women to visit the well in the morning when it was cool out. But because she was shunned, she visited the well during the hottest part of the day when she would be alone.
Two, she was surprised that Jesus was even talking to her.
Jesus was a Jew. She was a Samaritan. And the two groups didn’t get along.
This is why in verse 9 it says: The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?”
Instead of answering her question from a place of cultural differences, Jesus replies in verse 10: “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”
Note that Jesus says “the gift of God” and “ask me.” Again, God doesn’t force Himself on people.
In verses 13 and 14, Jesus goes on to explain: “Anyone who drinks this water [meaning the well water] will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”
When Jesus used the term “living water,” He was referring to having a spiritual relationship with God.
In other words, Jesus was saying, “Your heart – your soul – longs for something. It has a never-ending thirst. But nothing in this created world can quench it. Only a relationship with God can.”
And He’s imparting this truth to a woman that’s been labeled – by others and likely by her own inner voice – as unworthy.
But Jesus wasn’t focused on her performance or perfection.
In fact, a few verses before this, He revealed that He knew of her five ex-husbands and the man she was living with.
And in verse 26, Jesus says, “I am the Messiah!” This is the first time Jesus revealed Himself as the Messiah – and it was to a Samaritan woman who was deemed unworthy within her community.
In essence, the last person one would expect Jesus to make that revelation to for the first time.
Yet, above all else, Jesus was focused on the state of her heart.
Jesus knew that what she truly needed was God – and He purposefully pursued her:
By traveling to Samaria and sitting at that well at noon when only she would be there.
Proving that He knew her in a way only God can.
Revealing who He was to her.
And then staying in her village for two days, preaching and causing many more people to believe in Him as the Messiah (verses 39-42).
Thousands of years later, God pursued my heart with the same loving intention.
He kept pursuing me despite the damage that came from that Saturday morning with my two childhood friends. (In fact, He redeemed that situation by using one of those friends to bring me into a relationship with Him several years later.)
He kept pursuing me despite my sin, mistakes, and imperfections.
He kept pursuing me regardless of the ways the world labeled me as unworthy or not good enough.
Friend, I want you to hear me loud and clear when I say that God doesn’t see you as unworthy of His love. Plain and simple.
