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.

And we become aware. Awareness is one of the purposes of fasting. When we fast, we quickly become aware of the power our flesh has. That is a good reminder for us. Flesh is powerful. Seasons of denying the flesh are profitable for us for many reasons.

Awareness is important for us to live a life in tune with God. As God made us body, soul, and spirit, He created us to be aware of our physical needs, our emotional needs, and our spiritual needs. We have many enemies of that awareness, including busyness which is chief for most of us. We learn to ignore the signals our body sends. We learn to ignore the signals our emotions send, and even more sadly we learn to ignore the signals our spirit sends.

Fasting ups our awareness. Jesus said that those who hungered and thirsted after righteousness would be filled.  So my prayer for us all today is that our hunger and thirst would make us aware of our need to depend upon God and of the need for our flesh to be crucified. I pray that our hunger and thirst would increase our desire for righteousness for that desire leads to being filled. And nothing can satisfy us like God for we were created to be filled with Him. Allow your fasting to remind you that there is someone who can fill your deepest hunger and quench your deepest thirst.