What Do We Do With Our Shame?

Hi Friends,

On Sunday, Bryan and I will be preaching out of my upcoming book, Reaching for Wonder. Specifically, we'll be talking about the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at a well. They talked of living water, of the Messiah, of worshipping God in spirit and in truth. But those are all tangents. John 4 isn't a story about theology, it's a story of a woman whose shame and pain was transformed to glory through an encounter with a stranger at a well. Perhaps we will encounter him too ...

Here's a bit from the chapter to consider ...

Who Is This God?

There’s something about empty jars at Jesus’ feet. The Samaritan woman by the well, the woman who wept and dried Jesus’ feet with her hair in Luke 7. In that passage of Luke, we read about a sinful woman who brought an alabaster jar of perfumed oil to the house of a Pharisee and, after crying and wiping Jesus’ feet, she kissed them, and poured out the perfume from her jar. She emptied her jar. “I tell you that her many sins have been forgiven,” Jesus said in response. (Luke 7:47) She came with her sorrow and her sins and she left her jar at his feet. She left forgiven and filled with new hope.

There is something about leaving our emptiness with him. Something about leaving all our shame, guilt, ugliness of the past . . . and we walk away new. And that’s what it means to drink of the living water. That’s what it means to worship in spirit and in truth. We pour out our jar of perfume at his feet and worship him. We drop our jar, and our shame, and worship him with the words, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done!”

         Our God is the God of the Empty Jar.

         We must only bring our hidden shame, our hidden pain, our emptiness.

         Jesus is waiting for you, for me, at the edge of the well in the heat of the day. Will you bring your jar to him?

Lord, help me to trust you enough to come to the well

and leave my empty jar at your feet.

Uncover my shame and transform it for your glory.