Jesus met a Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob, and the thing that amazed her was that He knew her story without her telling it. When she ran back to town to get everybody to come meet Jesus it wasn’t because of His theology, or His miracles, or His amazing personality. It was for one reason: “‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did'” (John 4:29). He knew her story.
Knowing someone’s story is a big step in caring for them. It puts the focus off of you and onto them. It says that the events in their life – the things they care about – are important to you as well. You want to know them. For Jesus, of course, it was evidence of divine knowledge, but evidence, still, that He cared about her. We don’t get the benefit of divine knowledge, but we can show the same amount of care by wanting to know someone’s story, and by taking the time and effort to hear it.
That’s why we’ve chosen to illustrate this with live interview techniques, because every aspect of this process of gaining a good interview can also help us understand how to be good listeners.
But there’s another reason for all this attention to story. It so happens that gathering stories is going to be the theme of our next Isaiah House event next Thursday, February 16, 2012. We are going to have two cameras set up to record each woman telling a piece of her story for posterity. As in all our events there, the focus will be clearly on the women. They are the stars. They are the “sought-after” interview. They are the big story. We intend for this to also be a metaphor of their importance as individuals.
It also so happens that this theme goes well with the subject of our teleconference Bible study tonight. We will be talking about how we hinder the work of God in our lives when we refuse to tell the truth about ourselves. It’s the real story that carries the real power, not the one we make up, or the one we hide by wearing veils or masks of our own adequacy. If you’ve never joined us before, tonight would be a great place to start. Don’t worry about coming in late. I always begin each session with a brief review of where we’ve been so far. Also, if you’re new, send an email to Marti at [email protected] and request a copy of our free study guide. It will help you get more out of our time tonight. I would love to have a bunch of new folks on our call tonight.
What: Teleconference Bible study – Catch On
When: Tonight, Wednesday, February 8, 2012, 7 pm Pacific; 10 pm Eastern
How: Dial 218.237.3840 and use access code 124393.
John Fischer The Catch 
To add, another one of the reason’s i have loved this story of the Samaritan woman, is the example of the Lord knowing her and us completely and yet still loving and caring about us – and to me that is simply amazing!
One question: What happened to the fishing pole in the emails and on the website?
We changed our format some time ago.
John… Don’t you think that the miracle He presented (His knowledge of all her past husbands), was more importantly, to validate His claim of having Water that would forever satisfy her thirst… and even more astoundingly, to prove to her that He was in fact Messiah! She was one of a very few that had Him directly proclaim who He was. This is the real point of the story! This little bit of “His theology”, and “His amazing personality”, should not be downplayed to a second degree reason for her excitement at a personal encounter with the Saviour of the World! Think again. Ralph Gaily
“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” My point was simply that her conclusion was based on Jesus’ knowledge of her story.
no John…. her conclusion was based on His words, “I that speak unto thee am He”.
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