Several months ago, an evangelist came to our Church and spoke about, of all things, the love of God. Growing up as a Pastor’s kid who constantly found herself in Church settings, I believed the love of God to be a topic I was beyond well-versed in.
However, I came to a new understanding of it one Sunday evening while hearing a passionately convicted evangelist issue an irresistibly eloquent altar call to our congregation. As I earnestly prayed for God to help me show His love to others, which is what I automatically do with this sort of sermon, something in me unexpectedly switched.
I suddenly began praying for God to let me personally feel the reality of the love I had known my whole life to be true. I felt a little foolish fervently asking to feel something I had been so familiar with, but I was compelled to do so anyway!
At that exact moment, the previously entrenched evangelist suddenly halted his appeal, violently pivoted, walked straight to me, and said, “I’m not even sure why I came over here, but God said it was very urgent that I do so.”
God hadn’t deemed it urgent in that` ordained minute of undivided attention to tell me that I needed to get my life together. God had didn’t deemed it urgent to come let me know there were things in my life that I could do better. God hadn’t deemed it urgent to convict me of a more consistent prayer life or rebuke me into a better attitude, as He would have every right to do.
The matter of greatest urgency to God was that I knew how much He loved me! I joyfully wept that day for the urgency of the love that turned the heel of that gregarious evangelist toward my weary, war-torn heart!
It is the most urgent matter today that you know God loves you in that way and He will drop the mic on whatever else is going on around you to let you know so!
“When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, (Though Jesus Himself baptized not, but his disciples,) He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee. And He must needs go through Samaria. The cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to His son, Joseph.” – John 4:1-5 (KJV).
The longest recorded conversation Jesus had in the Bible was with the nameless woman at a well in John 4. It wasn’t with one of the disciples, a high-ranking Roman official, or a young, celebrated Jewish priest. The longest conversation recorded conversation Jesus had in New Testament Scripture was with a divorced and misunderstood woman of uncomfortable reputation in Samaria wearily trudging to a well alone trying to avoid all conversation. This was the preordained person Jesus chose to share His urgent and undivided attention with!
The longest recorded 3-day revival in the New Testament personally held by Jesus was also for this isolated, lonely, outcast of a woman in the infamous town of Samaria that no upstanding Jew ever wanted to find themselves in! Before this passage, Jesus had been shipping out the disciples on area missions to preach the good news of the gospel on His behalf, but for this woman, Jesus came in-person! The phrasing “must needs” used in this passage is also the very same Greek expression used in Matthew 16 to detail the necessity of Jesus’s journey to Calvary’s cross!
“From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” – Matthew 16:21 (KJV).
The intentional urgency with which Jesus met the woman at the well and bore that indescribably heavy, flesh-destroying cross, is the same urgency with which His love meets you today! Just as that Holy Ghost-led evangelist dropped his mic to find me where I was, Jesus will meet you where you are in the same way!
Further, there is nothing more important we could do than allow our lives to be directed by that very same urgency in sharing the love of God with others around us! Never underestimate the power of your testimony!
It might seem ridiculous to everyone else that you are still choosing to look for Jesus in all your unrelenting dilemmas, disappointments and disastrous situations, just as was the woman at the well, but keep doing it anyway!
Revival doesn’t look like a famous man dressed in a suit standing on a platform. Revival looks like you!
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