Father's House Blog

One of the great stories of the Gospels concerns a woman from the nation of Samaria who encounters Jesus at a well just outside the town where she lives. The story’s told in John’s Gospel, chapter 4.

As she meets Jesus, she goes through three very discernible stages in what I call ‘The Journey into True Freedom’.

Stage 1 is the IN stage, in which she gets her own inner wounds exposed. In this part of the story, everything is about her and her needs. For example, she says to Jesus in verse 15,

"Sir,give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

Notice the Me-centred nature of her anguage. In this part of the story, her shadow is coming into the light - the part of her where her secret hurts, habits and hang-ups are hidden. The core ofher problem is that she’s looking in men for what she can only find in her Heavenly Father. That’s why Jesus talks about her five husbands in verse 18.

Stage 2 is what I call the UP stage, in which Jesus redirects her attention from herself to the Father. In this stage Jesus is teaching her that her deep need to be loved is only to be found in the Father’s embrace. So he talks to her about worshipping the Father. The word worship means ‘to approach someone to embrace them’. The word ‘Father’ is the word ‘Abba’, which means Daddy. So in this stage of the story, Jesus introduces her to the Father she’s been waiting for, the love of all loves. As he says inverse 21,

‘Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father’.

As Jesus teaches her about Abba, Father, she enters the third stage of her journey into freedom. I call this the OUT stage. Her heart is now seized with the power of a greater affection – an affection that eclipses every other in her life. This is the Father’s love that Jesus has been speaking about. At the well, she experiences that love and it compels her to run into town and tell everyone. As it says in verses 28-30:

Then,leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people,"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

This is the OUT stage. Whenever anyone has an authentic experience of the Father’s embrace, it should not only move them to worship Abba, Father with greater passion, it should also move them to witness to their friends with greater power and to take the Father’s love to the fatherless with greater compassion!

The journey into true freedom is accordingly a process involving three stages. It may take minutes (as in thecase of the woman of Samaria), or it may take months, sometimes even years. But this is the journey which Jesus wants us all to take. The journey of IN, UP and OUT:

 Jesus wants us to be HEALED FOR THE HARVEST. As he says in John 4.35:

‘I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest’.

Is it time you took this journey into true freedom?

In the next blog I will give you an example of someone who has taken this journey in the last 12 months.

Her name is Nycolette, and you’re going to be richly blessed when you hear her story!