This post is based on a message from Pastor Todd Cosenza, given at Hope Church on Sunday, December 10, 2023. Click the link at the bottom of the page to watch the entire message.
The Lord wants to take us to a deeper place in Him. We are His people for whom He died, whom He dearly loves, and He wants a deep, close relationship with each of us. Shallowness is not good. Shallowness is actually unhealthy, if you think about it. A tree with deep roots is a strong tree, but a tree with shallow roots might not make it through strong storms. The Bible says in Ephesians 3 that God’s love for us is not just high, wide, and long, but also very deep! God’s love is meant to have deep roots in our lives and He wants to take us deeper in Him.
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17b-19 NIV)
You can travel wide and long just by walking or taking a car ride for an extended period of time. But to go deep requires more effort, you have to dig. It’s time for us to go deep with the Lord. Too many believers live a shallow life with God and then wonder why there is no power in their spiritual life or why they can’t hear God’s voice.
So how does Jesus take us deep? Let’s look at the story of an encounter Jesus had in John 4. Through this story, we will see three ways that Jesus takes us to a deeper place in Him.
Jesus will go to places in our lives we want to avoid.
“Now He had to go through Samaria.” (John 4:4 NIV)
Samaria was a place that most Jews at that time avoided. It was known as the place where “mixed-breed” people lived. To the Jews living in Jesus’ time, being a Samaritan (someone who was half-Jew and half-Gentile) was worse than being a Gentile. But Jesus didn’t avoid Samaria – He went through it. Jesus never shies away from going to places that others avoid. He went to the temple, which was avoided by Gentiles and Romans. He went to tax collectors’ homes, where “upstanding Jews” would never think of going.
We tend to think that since something painful is in the past, we can just walk away from it and ignore it for the rest of our lives. But we remain tied to our painful past until we go back to that point in time, give it to Jesus, and let Him have it completely. His power can heal the oldest of wounds and memories!
“Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well.” (John 4:6 NIV)
God had established a place, the well of water, where people could gather and find strength and blessing from being in community with others — but the Jews didn’t want to go there because of the people who lived there (Samaritans). When we avoid certain places because of the dysfunction we’ve experienced there, we run the risk of missing out on the blessing God wants to give us at that place. The place that we are avoiding may be the very place where God wants to bless us!
Jesus will ask us to do uncomfortable things.
“When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)” (John 4:7-9 NIV)
Jesus asked the woman for a drink, which would have been a difficult thing for her to do because of all the prejudice that surrounded her. She had experienced tremendous prejudice — as a Samaritan, as a woman, as a person whose choices reflected a lack of self-respect.
Jesus often asked people to do uncomfortable things. Jesus asked the man with the withered hand to extend his ugly, deformed hand in public (Mark 3:1-6). He asked James and John and Matthew to walk away from lucrative jobs (Mark 1:16-20) and trust Him enough to follow Him. When Jesus asks us to do something and we hesitate, it’s an indication that there’s an issue in our heart that needs attention.
Jesus invited this woman into an exchange: give Me some of your water, and I will give you living water.
“Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” (John 4:13-14 NIV)
To get to a deep place in Jesus, we must enter into an exchange with Him. We must exchange our life for His life. We must exchange our unrighteousness for His righteousness and our sin for His holiness. His life becomes the deep source that we need in order to live abundantly. A true well isn’t just a hole dug in the ground that collects the rainwater that falls into it. A true well must be dug deep enough to reach the flowing ground water underneath, which becomes a constant source for the well.
It’s time for God’s people to be finished with living a shallow spiritual life. What is your “well” connected to? Entertainment? Your love life? Friendships? Social media? Politics? Wealth or status? None of these things run deep and they are not life-giving, because they are not eternal. They are like the little bit of rainwater that may fall into the well. They can never be a source of life and they will always leave us thirsty.
Jesus will uncover what we’re hiding.
“He told her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back.’ ‘I have no husband,’ she replied. Jesus said to her, ‘You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.’” (John 4:16-18 NIV)
In this encounter, Jesus was “reading her mail” — He was showing her that He understands the reasons she had done the things she now regrets. (Notice how He had this conversation with her privately — there is no shame when Jesus addresses uncomfortable areas from our past.) We all have something other than God that we’ve looked to for satisfaction – a different well. Jesus was gently uncovering something in her life, showing her that in her past she was constantly coming up empty because she had been going from one man to the next to the next. She was looking for satisfaction in places where she would never find it. She desperately needed Jesus’ wisdom and healing touch in order to find true life.
Whatever isn’t touched by Jesus is going to prevent us from having true life and peace. Jesus doesn’t bring up our past because He wants to shame us, but because every broken area needs a touch from Him. When we repent (have a change of mindset) and ask Him for cleansing in those hidden areas of the past, He will cleanse us. His cleansing frees us to receive His life from the well of living water. We have to allow Him to speak to and address any area of our past (or present) that is hindering us.
Jesus wants us to worship Him because we know Him and have a deep relationship with Him.
“‘Woman,’ Jesus replied, ‘believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.’” (John 4:21-24 NIV)
God is looking for true worshipers who worship God from a deep place — “in spirit” and “in truth.” What does that mean?
- “In spirit” — We are body, soul, and spirit; but our spirit is the deepest part of us; it’s the essence of who we are. True worship is when our spirit connects with God’s Spirit. Worship is about having a connection with Jesus at the deepest level and not just singing songs in a church service. Sometimes worship can even be a cry or a groan, when there are simply no words to express what our spirit is experiencing.
- “In truth” — Genuine worship involves us worshiping God the way He wants to be worshiped, not how we feel we want to worship Him in any given moment.
The hunger we have for God is at the spirit level, the deepest part of who we are. This is why going through the motions will never satisfy. It’s only at the deep places, where spirit touches Spirit, that we are truly satisfied. The Lord is not satisfied with superficial relationships — and He knows we won’t be either. This is why Jesus takes us deep.
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