Dear Friend,

I want to ask you a very important question today: Is there anything more important, more precious, and more powerful than an encounter with Jesus? Is there anything that could happen in your life that is more important or more powerful than a one-on-one encounter with Him? I can answer that question for you right now: No, there is nothing.

Now, a lot of people try to replace this experience. You may know people like that; they’re searching for an experience, but maybe they try to get it with drugs, sex, or alcohol. Maybe they try to get it with all the riches or all the education they can attain. These people know that they are missing an experience of some kind, but all the things they try are shadows compared to the real thing, an encounter with Jesus, because that encounter will completely change your life.

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Before I tell you about the life-changing, one-on-one encounter that you can have with Jesus, I want to remind you that this is not some strange or frightening thing. The Word of God tells us:

“But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”

—1 Corinthians 6:17

It is so important for us to understand this, because God is saying that we are one spirit with Him. This means that you’re not over here in the corner while God’s off across the room or up in Heaven, and you have to wait for Him to come back to you for your encounter. Instead, God is on the inside of you in the person of the Holy Spirit!

We’re not trying to get to God because He already lives inside of us! He didn’t save us so that we would obey all the rules and keep all the regulations, but He invited us into a divine relationship, a divine communion with Him. When the Holy Spirit came inside of us, He didn’t say, “I’m going to stand over here, and you’re going to stand over there.”  No, He said, “We’re going to be one spirit. Together.”

He is always with you, and it’s normal for us to have an encounter with Him, but when we come to Him, we can’t walk away with our lives looking the same, and that’s what I want to talk to you about today. 

Someone You Wouldn’t Suspect

Sometimes we can forget who Jesus came for. If you’re in a good place where you’re not doing any huge sins and everything’s going right in your life, it can be easy to start judging people who are struggling with sin, and when you are the one living in sin, your shame can make you think that God doesn’t want to be near you. Neither of those thoughts are right, but we still think them, and that’s why the person that I’m going to talk to you about, who had a one-on-one encounter with Jesus, is someone who was not living a good and godly life: the woman at the well.

In John 4, starting in verse 4, we learn that Jesus and His disciples were traveling, and He was tired, so He sat down at a well near this city, and His disciples went into the city to buy food. While Jesus was leaning on that well, a woman came to get water, and verses 7-9 tell us about this exchange between them:

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food

Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”

This interaction tells us that what Jesus was doing was against culture. It was very inappropriate for a man and a woman to be talking alone, and what was even worse is that she was a Samaritan and He was a Jew. If He wanted to act properly, Jesus had no reason to be talking to this woman, but He wasn’t trying to obey cultural rules. He was on assignment, and it involved something that was going to happen with this woman.

Now, this interaction was not just culturally inappropriate; this woman was living a lifestyle that even her own people would have looked down on. We can see this in verses 16-18:

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

Think for a moment about the picture that we get of this woman. If you knew a woman that had been married five times, what would you think? I know I would probably think that she’s not a very nice woman. We might think this woman has probably hurt a lot of people and has a lot of enemies. Even more than that, she is currently living with another man that she’s not married to. Well, now you might be thinking that she’s very wild and unfaithful. She probably has emotional problems because she can’t stay married to anybody. People probably talked about her so that if you had walked down the streets of Sychar, you would have heard somebody talking about this woman and how terrible and unstable she was.

We might think or say all those things, because we’re human, and our minds and our emotions can get caught up in judgement, but Jesus was focused on something else. Maybe she did have all these problems with her behavior and her personality and her reputation, but He knew that that was not her real problem. Yes, her life was a mess, but the real problem, the problem that Jesus wanted to fix, was that she didn’t know the gift of God yet.

Friend, maybe you’ve seen the blessings of the Lord, and you’ve lived a life faithful to Him, but you need to recognize this problem. What’s the difference between you and this woman? What’s the difference between you and that stranger who’s caught up in a horrible lifestyle? What’s the difference between you and that family member whose actions you are just aghast at and can’t believe that someone could do something like that? What’s the difference?  Is it that you’re better than them? Do you have the right to look your nose down on them and say, “If I had their problems, I would never act like that”?

No! The real difference is that you know the gift of God and they don’t. Have you ever broken a rule that you just didn’t know was there? Have you ever forgotten a rule you did know and made a mistake? Then you have experienced the same problem as this Samaritan woman. On the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them” — why? — ”Because they don’t know.”

This precious woman didn’t know the gift of God, but Jesus was coming into her space. She was having an encounter with Him, and this woman was beginning to know some things.  

A Life Changed

This is her encounter with Jesus:

The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”

And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”

The woman then left her water pot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

—John 4:25-29

The thing I want to point out to you today is that that woman came to the well to get water, but when she had the encounter with Jesus, what did she leave at the well? 

Her water pot.

This woman was so amazed by who she was talking to and what He was saying to her. She was so amazed by His very presence that she forgot that she even came there for water, and that is what it means to have an encounter with Jesus! When you have a one-on-one experience with Him, you can’t walk away with what you brought, because you have your hands full with something else. That woman came to the well for water that would perish, but she left with living water!

What did you leave behind when you came to Jesus? What did you take a hold of in that exchange? Friend, it is so good to remember these things; think of that precious woman, look at all that she left behind. Water was the most important thing for her that day, but she left it behind and took a hold of living water. She left behind her messy life and took hold of a testimony about a man who had changed her life and knew everything about her, and it was so powerful she just had to tell the whole city to come and talk to Him.

Remember today what you left behind when you came to Jesus. Maybe you’ve picked up some of those things again. Maybe you’ve picked up offense or worry or ingratitude. The wonderful thing is that Jesus doesn’t just give us one opportunity. He doesn’t say, “You had your chance. You shouldn’t have picked that up again.” He knew we would pick those things back up, and He wants to encounter us and make the exchange all over again. Whatever you’re holding onto or whatever you’ve picked back up, it’s time to leave it behind. Instead, pick up thankfulness; pick up trust in God; pick up forgiveness, because that’s what an encounter with Jesus gives you. 

I know it can be hard to drop what you’re holding onto. Maybe you don’t even know what it is yet, or maybe you know exactly what it is but you’re just too ashamed that you went back to it to tell anybody. Maybe you’ve even fallen into judging others for picking back up what they left behind in Christ. Wherever you are in your journey, our prayer team is here for you! We are ready to pray with you for anything you are facing, so please give us a call at 1.844.473.6637 or email us your prayer requests at prayer@deniserenner.org.

Before I close, I also want to invite you to my weekly program, TIME with Denise Renner, where I get the opportunity to open up the Word of God and share with you what is on my heart. You can watch live every Monday at 7:00 AM CT on Facebook or YouTube, or Wednesdays at 12:00 PM CT on Facebook. My program is also on Victory Channel Mondays at 2 PM CT and on Daystar Wednesdays at 8 AM CT. I am always so grateful to be able to share this time with you, so I hope you will join me!

We are moving forward together,

Denise Renner