Welcome to Waymaker Church! We are so excited to have you join us today! We exist to Encounter, Live for, and Advance the Kingdom of God!

I am going to talk to you this morning about worship. This is a question that doesn’t need to be answered out loud, but internally answer this question: What do we think when it comes to the word worship?

What may come to mind is our favorite song, that 30 minutes at the beginning of our Sunday service. We may think of k-love, family life radio, or air 1. We may think of words coming on a screen. There are so many things that come to mind simply by bringing up the word worship. I don’t think I am telling you anything new this morning, but worship is not just a genre of music, it is not just the beginning of a church service, it is not church karaoke, it is not just a radio station.

The word worship has such a deeper meaning than music.

There is an amazing book on worship called “How to Worship a King” by Zach Neese, it is probably on my top 10 list of books especially for getting a deeper understanding of what seems like a basic principle of the faith.

Here is how worship is defined in that book: “To give something worth - to demonstratively attribute value, especially to a deity or god.”When you think the word worship think worth-ship. Here is what I will ask you today, “What are you giving your worth to?Where we spend our time, what we think about, who we spend our time with, praying, reading the word of God, and so on these all show what we put our worth in.

Let me ask you this question: What do we worship?

Let me set up a story here that is one of my favorite stories in the bible because it reminds me a little bit of my own story. Jesus and the disciples are traveling from Judea to Galilee, the only problem was that there was a country between the two called Samaria. The Jews did not like the Samaritans. In fact they would add another couple of days to their travels to go around Samaria. But Jesus wanted to travel through Samaria.

Jacob’s well was there, the one that was dug all the way back in Genesis. The disciples go into town to get food, and it says that Jesus was growing weary from their journey, so he sits at the well. It’s about noon. A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

As a reader this would make your ears perk up a little bit, because nobody would really come to draw water at noon. It is in the heat of the day. Getting water for women was the modern day girls going to the bathroom together. Women used the gathering of their water as their social time. So the fact that this woman is trying to avoid that time, should make you sit up just a little bit.

Jesus asks her for a drink and she looks at him kind of sideways and says why is it that you a Jew asks a drink from me a samaritan woman. Jesus replies to her if you knew who it is that is asking for a drink you would have instead asked him and he would have given you living water.

She states kind of the obvious. She is looking around and totally missed what Jesus just told her, she points out that he doesn’t have anything to draw water with and the well is deep. She asks him, “are you greater than our father Jacob who dug the well?”Here is where we pick up in Verse 13

We are all spiritually thirsty but where are we going to fulfill that thirst? Do y’all remember back in the day, when someone kept throwing themselves at someone or at multiple people we would tell them they were thirsty. She has had 5 husbands and is now living with someone who isn’t her husband.

She was spiritually thirsty and the way she kept trying to satisfy that thirst was through relationships, she went from relationship to relationship. More than that to be completely fair men were usually the sole providers during this time and so every time she lost a husband her sense of security is gone as well. So whether it was bouncing from relationship to relationship or jumping into relationships to have a sense of security. This is where she was putting her worship, this is how she was trying to fill that God-sized hole. Jesus tells her that everyone who drinks from this well will never get thirsty again.

Jesus tells her that he is the living water, he is the one who should be the object of our worship. We worship in the truth of Jesus and by the spirit, meaning that worship is not tied to a building or a place. Jesus is saying that the father is looking for such people people to worship him.

Just then the disciples come back and she gets so excited about this encounter that she leaves the water jars and runs back to her town and tells everyone “come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

Can I tell you something? Jesus is the living water, he is the only one who can truly satisfy.

Some of us walked in this place much like the Samaritan woman. She was going to the wrong well. Some of us are going to the well of relationships, friendships with the wrong people, the well of looking at things we shouldn’t be, the well of financial security whatever well it may be this morning, we keep going back to it and back to it.

Because without realizing it those wells leave us dry and coming back for more and more. Jesus is telling you this morning that he is the living water.

The account goes on that the disciples come back and they are shocked that he is talking to a woman and they are also concerned that he hasn’t eaten. It begins what is to me a funny dialogue between Jesus and the disciples but you can read that later. I want us to focus on the woman’s response to what Jesus just had to say.

I want us to focus in on this because if we were in the lady’s shoes this would be a very hard thing to hear. Jesus just called out basically her entire adult life, and he didn’t know the lady. Imagine a stranger coming up to you and spilling the beans on all you ever did. Sometimes the Holy Spirit convicts us when a message is brought in a Sunday morning service, a midweek service, a small group, or other bible study and if we are being honest sometimes our first response is to get upset, to shut down, or to run away.

Can I challenge, encourage, and tell you this morning that when a word from a speakers mouth, a scripture, or from the Holy Spirit convicts not to have a negative reaction, but to see it as God desires for us to leave that behind and to get even closer to Him. There is a reason why that is making you feel some type of way. It means that it is not meant to be there. Let’s look at the woman’s response

It says the woman left her water jar. Can I tell you what the water jar represents? It represents the routine of your life before Christ. I get it we are not technically in the bible belt but we are close enough that church attendance is the routine, worship is the routine, hearing a message is the routine, but what if this morning we laid down our routine, we laid down our jar at the well and took the offer Jesus made to the woman because he is making it to you this morning.

This morning he is saying lay down whatever you brought in with you this morning and pick up a fresh encounter with me. Yes I know all that you have ever done, but it will not be all that you are. He is telling you this morning that your routine, your normal, can become your testimony. Jesus does in fact know everything you have ever done, but he is not pushing you away, instead he is offering an open invitation into the Kingdom of God.

Jesus offers living water that will never make us go thirsty again. When we worship Him we find full satisfaction, not needing to turn to all the rest. I want to close with this and then I will pray over y’all

If you have given your life to Jesus today or rededicated your life to him, don’t keep it to yourself. Tell people. This woman was no longer ashamed because she had an encounter with the savior. She then ran and told everyone.

I love what they tell the woman at the end, “We no longer believe because of what you said, since we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.

Our Jesus story, what God has done and is doing in our life can lead to someone else having encounter.