Jesus came to heal broken hearts and not only as a side benefit; it’s one of his life purposes!  That’s good news because all of us who are in this world have experienced the pain of having our hearts broken in one way or another.  If we look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels, we find that he moves throughout his days interacting with humanity and healing broken hearts. That healing takes many expressions. Today I want to look at how Jesus healed the heart of a woman as recorded in John 4 and what that healing means for us now.

Let’s take a look at the story.

Jesus was exhausted from his long trip. He had gone to the city well to get a drink of water. However, what followed was not a chance happening at all because we are told that Jesus “needed” to go through the region of Samaria; he was compelled to do so.

 Jews did not have anything to do with Samaritans in those days. Samaritans were considered half-breeds and unclean by Jewish tradition. Yet Jesus, a Jew, chose to go through the middle of Samaria instead of making the usual trip around the area as most Jews did in order to avoid the Samaritans.

Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman at the well. He broke cultural and religious rules by speaking to her. Men didn’t speak to women in public in those days and a Jewish man certainly would not speak to a Samaritan woman. What transpired changed her life.

Jesus navigated through the woman’s resistance and avoidance and brought up a major issue of her life, not to condemn her, but in order to heal her. Jesus spelled out that she had had five husbands and was now living with a sixth man. The Samaritan woman yet again tried to avoid her heart issues, but Jesus persisted. He revealed Himself to her as the “Christ”.

He first encountered her in his humanity, a man who was thirsty and tired. He bridged cultural and religious differences in order to “do the will of Him who sent me” (vs. 34). He confronted her avoidance and resistance, bringing her life story into the light and then offering her “living water”.  In essence, Jesus communicated to her that there was nothing about her that would prevent her from having a relationship with God; not her religious background, her cultural background, nor her personal history.

Although the story doesn’t specifically tell us, I believe the woman took Jesus’ offer. Amazingly, we see her leading many to believe in Jesus because of her “testimony” – There is a man who knows all about me and didn’t reject me; he gave me life-giving water.

He healed her heart. Jesus dealt with her shame. He dealt with her guilt. He cut through the religious, cultural traps and did the will of God, offering healing to the broken hearted.

He is still the same today. He is offering life and healing to all the thirsty, empty, broken-hearted.

Do you need his healing? Allow your resistance and avoidance to fall away. Lay down any religious, cultural, or matters of personal history which you believe disqualify you from knowing God and/or receiving His healing for your heart. Allow Jesus to move you past your shame and guilt and into the living waters.

He desires to purposefully encounter your heart right now. Your heart is important to him. Your heart and my heart were the hearts he was talking about when he said he had come to heal the broken-hearted.

Are you spiritually thirsty? Jesus freely offers living water. Drink deeply of the rivers of this living water for its flow will heal the broken places in your heart.

And may the Church represent Jesus well and offer the same to all today: healing, regardless of  personal history, cultural background, or religious beliefs. When we do, we will find that his living water refreshes and restores and testimonies of his grace will lead others to him as well.

• How was this desire awakened?
• Why was this desire awakened?
• What does this desire say about my heart and its needs?
• What could the purposes of God be for me as I face awakened desire?
• What could the purposes of the enemy be as I face awakened desire?

I pray you will be able to see clearly what God desires to do through your awakened desires and the end result will be that you know more of your own heart and more of His.

In 1969, Paul Simon wrote a powerful song which he and Art Garfunkel recorded in 1970. The expression of Paul’s heart in the song conveys the message that he would be a friend when friends could not be found; that he, himself, would be a bridge over his friend’s troubled water.

I was so struck by this thought yesterday as I listened to a lovely lady share how she had endured so many difficult things, felt alone so often, but God had revealed to her through a prayer team at our church that He had been her bridge every time over those troubled waters. She had not, in fact, been alone. God was there.

How many times have we felt abandoned during our hard times? And truthfully, many people do abandon us, but one thing I have begun to ask God in the last couple of years is that He would show me where He was during dark moments in my past. I, too, find that He has been my bridge, and that often the way He has done that was through others as they became “bridges” for me to walk on. My heart was moved to write these thoughts…

The Bridge

I hear the water below me
The power of its rushing
Stirs the fear within me
Yet the other side  
Beckons me to keep walking

This bridge under my feet
Gives me strength
Although it doesn’t completely
Take my fears away

Providing a place to step
Giving passage over the raging waters
Moving me onward to the other side

When I pause to look down at this bridge under my feet
I question whether it can hold me
And over the chasm it answers
Only with its presence

A voice within me rises up
Crying for a way to go back
But the former place
Has no solace any longer

Once on the other side
I look back at my bridge
 “My God!” I cry,
“That was too dangerous!
How could you entrust me into
The hands of human bridges?"

His Spirit whispers to me
That it was One
In the form of a human bridge
Who laid himself down over the waters for me

And I realize that my steps
Across the bridge
Ripped another layer of self-reliance
From me

My trip across the troubled waters
Stirred within me wrong ideas I had
About You and others
And the bridge revealed to me
The truth of who You are
The reality of Your love

You gently remind me that Your path of rescue
Is always revealing
Revealing You
And revealing me
Your love, passion, strength, purpose
My fears, struggles, weaknesses, doubts

And I find that places within my dead, numb heart
Are renewed to live again
My understanding is clearer
My heart is becoming whole

I fall on my knees
And I thank You, Lord, for being my bridge over troubled waters, and
I thank You for those who bridged the waters for me

And I wrestle…

Struggling to come to another truth…

But finally I see…

And in surrender I release my thanksgiving to You

…for the troubled water itself