March 11: The Gift of God...Jesus

John 4:1-42

Jesus Talks to a Woman at a Well

Jesus Tells about the Harvest

Jesus Preaches in Galilee

Mark 1:14-15

Matthew 4:12-17

Luke 4:14-15

John 4:43-46a

Jesus Is Rejected in Nazareth

Luke 4:16-30

This past Sunday night at our 6 PM prayer time at Christian Assembly, I asked those attending to offer some thoughts as to what the FULLER LIFE means to them. I got some really great answers, and the picture below shows some of those answers. Outside of the context of that prayer meeting, this list may not make much sense – I was quickly and probably not very clearly summing up in just a few words what was being shared during that time of prayer.

I’ll come back to this list in a bit…

The conversations that Jesus had with Nicodemus in John 3 and with the Samaritan woman in John 4 have some very interesting contrasts, really too many to explore in this blog. In our Adult Bible Study this Wednesday night at Christian Assembly, we will take a close look at all of these contrasts and their implications; but here are just a couple:

Nicodemus, a Jewish man, came to Jesus by night; Jesus met the Samaritan woman at noon.

The conversation with Nicodemus became an eventual monologue by Jesus, while he dialogued with the Samaritan woman throughout their meeting.

There are also many comparisons in these two accounts, but one stands out in my mind. In quite possibly the most famous verse in all of the Bible Jesus tells Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son…” (John 3:16a, emphasis my own). Jesus referred to this gift in his conversation with the Samaritan woman as well: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink…” (John 4:10 emphasis my own).

In both verses, Jesus is considered the gift of God; and when we apply the concept of the FULLER LIFE found in his words of John 10:10, we should get a clearer picture of what the abundant life really is. Yes, it involves all the answers that we wrote on the white board shown above, and it involves so much more that we didn’t touch on Sunday night in our prayer time. But one answer stands out in light of what Jesus said to both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman concerning his being the gift of God:

Jesus is the GIFT that keeps on giving! The real beauty of the FULLER LIFE is that we can have an over-abundance of HIM!

The rest of that John 3:16 verse says, “…that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And in John 4:14, Jesus said this, “Indeed, the water I give…will become…a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Don’t lose sight of the fact that the FULLER LIFE we are promised in John 10:10 is really just an INCREASE of JESUS!