Finding Freedom From A Broken Past

HOW DO I LET GO?

I am not afraid to share my story and I don't care what people think of me.  I am a child of God and he loves me.  He knows who I am and he he walks beside me every day and often he carries me.  He does not cause my pain and he does not get pleasure from my pain, but he does and has allowed it.  Why? You ask, well that is because my trials and experiences are what has made me who I am today.  They made me strong even though there were times that these trials broke me and I felt wearier that a baby.  God was there with me and he knew that like Job I would make it through that trial and the next and the next and the next and even the trial I am going through today. 

Have you ever seen people who let their pasts negatively dictate choices they have made for their future?  Yes, I have seen this many times in my life and I have even been that person but now I have changed.  I saw a girl who was a pregnant teen and she had very low self esteem and her decision was to feel sorry for herself and give up and that decision has shaped her entire life.  I saw a woman who felt a bottle of booze was more important that anything in the world even her marriage and her children.  that has shaped her life.  I know a couple different men who have let drugs and crime shape who the are, and they gave into it and let it ruin their futures and relationships.  I know a guy who chose drinking and the wild life because he didn't get what he wanted and it killed him, that hurt many people but the girl that told him no was devastated. It was not her fault and it does not shape who she is. 

Let's take and assessment of our lives.  Was there an event in your past that dramatically influenced  how you interact with the world?  Do you feel broken and needy or restored and complete?  Are you ready to find all the good God has in store for your life? There were several events in my life that impact how I interact with the world but many of them or why I no longer hide but I face the world and the trials head on.  I feel restored and completed even though I know that I have been broken and needy I have taken those times, experiences and lessons and used them to tackle many of my daily struggles.  I know some of what God has in store for my life but I can't wait wait to see all the rest that he has in store.          
                                             

A Samaritan woman was confronted by her past one day as she went into the city to draw water from a well.  As she was drawing water a stranger spoke to her and asked for a drink.    

Here is John's account of this interaction  in John 4:4-38                              

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman  

¹ Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— ² although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³ So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

⁴ Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon

⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹ 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.^[a])

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ 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.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸ 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.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ 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. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

The Disciples Rejoin Jesus

²⁷ Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

²⁸ Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” ³⁰ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

³¹ Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

³³ Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

³⁴ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵ Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” (NIV)

You can picture this woman speaking to the stranger, hoping against hope that He didn't know anything about her circumstances.  Little did she know that she was speaking with Jesus who knows every detail about each of our lives. 
What did Jesus tell this woman about her past?  What would he be able to tell me about my past?

Tune in for the second part of this blog to see what I learned and what God knows about me.