Hey bbys! (Vessels? Readers? Visitors? Y’all? SOS)
Taking a quick detour from the Pati Path to head tooo… Samaria!
The inspiration for this journey came during a prayer meeting. I was sitting on the couch with my favorite fuzzy blanket (gotta love Mott House), waiting for a profound thought to hit me, and the first thing that came to mind was “John… 4… 4”. Excited, I pull up my Bible app just to see, “And He had to pass through Samaria.”. Didn’t sound too ground-shaking, so I started checking other translations. NKJV, “But He needed to go through Samaria.”. NLT, “He had to go through Samaria on the way.”. AMPC, “‘It was necessary for Him to go through Samaria.”.
*me trying to figure out what this verse has to do with anything*
I started to skim the chapter and quickly recognized the story, but I figured I could look into it more later and went back to praying.
Later did come, because a few days after the meeting I remembered that I needed to put together a lil devotional for one of my executive teams. I’d been thinking about the verse a lot since the prayer meeting, so I was pretty confident I could talk about it for a few minutes. Once I started to take notes on what stood out to me, I knew a few minutes would turn into a lot of minutes, so one devo turned into two, kinda like how this blog post just turned into three. Yes, three (at least), because I’m about to make y’all read pretty much all of John 4 so I’ll let this be an intro post. Don’t worry about the asterisks, they just indicate where the tenses of verbs were changed because the Greeks wanted to make the Scriptures spicy and make it feel like you were living in the moment. Imagine being there when Lazarus died, then un-died! Woulda been wild. Anyway:
‘1 Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were), 3 He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. 4 And He had to pass through Samaria.
5 So He *came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; 6 and Jacob’s well was there. So Jesus, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 There *came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus *said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8 For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 Therefore the Samaritan woman *said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” 11 She *said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? 12 You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15 The woman *said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” 16 He *said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” 17 The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus *said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” 19 The woman *said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 21 Jesus *said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman *said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” 26 Jesus *said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”
27 At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?” 28 So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and *said to the men, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” 30 They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” 34 Jesus *said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. 36 Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 For in this case the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”
39 From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of His word; 42 and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.” ‘
Based on how much I bolded, there’s a lot I want to get into! Is there anything else that you know or want to hear more about? Let me know in the comments!
be blessed bbys ✨
Vessel in the Valley 
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