Have you ever felt a thirst in your soul that no drink can quench? Join us on the Weary Traveler series! In our quest for life's essentials, we often neglect the vital nourishment of our innermost being. This episode is a call to all those who've felt the pang of a parched spirit, inviting you to sip from the eternal spring of scripture and find true refreshment. Together, we'll examine the irony of a generation filled with Stanleys cups, yet thirstier than ever before for spiritual fulfillment.
As a fellow weary traveler, I hope to bring the stories of everlasting comfort and the whispers of hope that echo through the Bible's promises. By the end of our time together, I pray you feel encouraged and reminded to refresh not just your own weary soul but also to extend a hand to fellow travelers, sharing the life-giving waters we all so desperately seek.
Now get out into the world and be a woman who intentionally encourages another!
Have you ever felt a thirst in your soul that no drink can quench? Join us on the Weary Traveler series! In our quest for life's essentials, we often neglect the vital nourishment of our innermost being. This episode is a call to all those who've felt the pang of a parched spirit, inviting you to sip from the eternal spring of scripture and find true refreshment. Together, we'll examine the irony of a generation filled with Stanleys cups, yet thirstier than ever before for spiritual fulfillment.
As a fellow weary traveler, I hope to bring the stories of everlasting comfort and the whispers of hope that echo through the Bible's promises. By the end of our time together, I pray you feel encouraged and reminded to refresh not just your own weary soul but also to extend a hand to fellow travelers, sharing the life-giving waters we all so desperately seek.
Now get out into the world and be a woman who intentionally encourages another!
#women #podcast
Speaker 1:
Hey, good morning Encouragers. It's Jo. Happy Monday. Welcome back to our Weary Traveler series part two. If you signed on two weeks ago and listened in, you would have heard me talking and kicking off this series called Weary Traveler, and then last week we began explaining the necessities of the Weary Traveler.
Speaker 1:
So this whole idea is that you and I, believers who live in the world, who are still alive and journeying with God as we walk through life, are often weary. Life is hard. Life is full of difficulty and loss and struggle. Yes, it's also full of joy and beauty and comfort and fun. But somewhere along the way we can grow weary. We can grow tired in our spirit and even in our bodies. Right, our minds can also grow weary. So this series is just to first acknowledge that and say, hey, girl, you are not alone.
Speaker 1:
I have also been a weary traveler, and yet we're traveling together. We're not doing it alone. We know ultimately, god is with us. And yet we also get the gift of community to walk alongside each other. And there are times on the journey when we need to pick each other up. There are times when we need to redirect each other, encourage each other, cheer each other on. So that's what I'm here to do. I don't have all the answers. I haven't conquered it all either. I'm weary at times too, so I'm just with you and I'm here to encourage you this morning and remind you of another necessity for the weary traveler.
Speaker 1:
So last week we talked about food. We need food to survive. God designed our bodies to be nourished by the things he already created on the earth, and they keep us going. They help us literally grow and then, as we're, once we're grown, it helps us sustain and have life to its fullest and live a full, healthy life. And we're not all nailing that perfectly. But food is absolutely a part of that, and God explained himself as food. His word is the food our souls and our spirits need. So eating the word of God daily bread, being in the word of God every day to receive what it is we need for that day. So what happens when the weary traveler gets some food? Well, we're thirsty and I just think it's perfect timing for a message like this or an encouragement like this, because I think it's hilarious and I'm totally a part of the problem.
Speaker 1:
We are all walking around with these giant jugs of water, stanley's killing it in the industry, these huge mega cups, and I'm about it. I love a good straw and a good cup any day of the week. I've participated in the one gallon challenge more than once. We are like hydrated like never before and I think it's awesome and important and all those things. I love how my kids go to school with refillable water bottles. That was not a thing growing up. If you dared take a drink from the nasty water fountain in your school, you were really, really thirsty, right, we just suffered through it. I don't even know if they offered water at lunch, it just wasn't a thing. So I'm really happy to see that change and I know it's healthy for us to drink water, but we are thirstier than ever at the very same time. We are the most hydrated maybe generation that was and yet we're at times the thirstiest generation. We're at times the loneliest travelers. So there's that irony that we are so connected, we are so wise in a lot of scientific ways and yet we're thirsty. We're missing the real hydration that we need.
Speaker 1:
So here today, I'm just here to encourage you to think about water, and from a spiritual perspective. You know I'm just Joe, this chick who loves Jesus and likes to talk to you and encourage you, but I'm not a Bible scholar. You could spend weeks talking about this. I'm just going to give you a teeny little encouragement, which I pray will spur you on to be thinking about this today, and that your cup will overflow so that you can pour some life giving encouragement into someone else's cup. Okay, that's the goal of mine today. That's a little bit grace upon grace. As I read scripture, I don't know all the things, but I know enough to encourage you with what God has said in His Word. So we're going to start and we're talking about water. You will see references to water at the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, and all the way to the end of the book, in Revelation. So, yes, we need the bread of life, we need water, but we need the living water.
Speaker 1:
So before I open up scripture, let me just say a quick prayer to open us up. Dear Lord, thank you that we get to travel together. We're acknowledging today that we're weary. There's aspects of our lives that are tiring and you know, I think of like the hot, sweaty traveler on a hike and you just thirst. You thirst for more. You want to survive this season and you want to do it well, but we know we need you to do it, lord. Thank you that we get to travel our trails and our roads and our races with others. Help us be hydrated this morning by your Word, and yet I pray that they do have a desire to thirst for more. Lord. These ladies get into their Bible and find a fresh quenching from you. Thank you for being with us today, lord, and just help my words speak what you want for her today in your name, amen.
Speaker 1:
All right, as I said, I'm going to go into scripture just a bit. I'm trying to make these encouragements faster, which is impossible for me, apparently, but I'm going to go into four little aspects of scripture. And it's legit, as I said, you can find this everywhere in the Bible, but from the beginning to the end he talks about water. God gives us visuals and Jesus gives us parables so that we can picture these things, so that our brains can understand them to a degree. So we have this beautiful visual of water and not just the Stanley Cup, the living water.
Speaker 1:
Genesis one, ladies. Genesis one here we go. In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth, so we're in creation right now. The beginning of time. Verse two the earth was without form and void, the darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So here he is, at the very beginning. I love this visual of God in trying. God, god, Father, son, god Jesus, holy Spirit hovering over the water. That's at the very beginning. Couple verses later verse nine and God said let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. Verse 10, god called the dry land earth and the waters that were gathered, god called the seas and God saw that it was good. He was over the waters. He creates water, he separates it from land, giving us real, true water, setting us up with this life source from the very beginning. Then we go ahead a little bit Now. I say a little bit. We're going to go from chapter one to chapter 26 in Genesis. And boy, a whole lot happened in between.
Speaker 1:
That I don't have time to explain right now, but it's the storyline of God, the beginning of God's people. We start off with Adam and Eve in the garden, then the fall and then the beginning of a very, very long story that we are still in today, which is the story of God's people waiting for the second coming of Christ. He came to earth once, incarnate as Jesus, but we're in the part of the story right now where Jesus has not come. Old Testament times he has given a promise to Abraham after the flood that he would protect God's chosen people. He would protect his people. And we are now in chapter 26 with Abraham's son, isaac, who I want you to hear this is the firstborn of the Old Covenant, the firstborn born into the generations that are promised God's people. He promised Abraham that he would multiply and that he would protect them. And here we have Isaac the firstborn.
Speaker 1:
And at this part of the story, isaac has begun to have blessings from the Lord and he is in the world, but being protected by God. He's surrounded by Philistines and he is looking at this part of scripture. As he travels, he is looking for wells that his father has dug and he and his servants are re what's the word? Excavating, if you will, the wells of Abraham. And as he's doing this, he's, in some towns, kicked out, you know, banished, if you will. He keeps traveling. Other towns share the well with him and there's beauty, but he's traveling town to town, uncovering these wells of his father, and he gets to Beersheba and here in this place, god reveals himself to Isaac and he says I am the God of Abraham, your father, fear not, for I'm with you and I will bless you and I will multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham's sake, for your dad's sake. So Isaac built an altar there and he called upon the name of the Lord, pitched a tent and Isaac's servants dug a well. So here we see, isaac's servants dug a well. A little bit later in this chapter they tell Isaac we found water, we dug, we dug and we have found water. It says in verse 32. And here the water and the well are being used as a reminder to Isaac of the covenant to God with God, from God, the first covenant, the first promise of protection given to the firstborn through revelation and water.
Speaker 1:
And this well will provide a different kind of quenching Right Now. Fast forward. And there's a lot there. I can stay there. There's fast forward. We are now going to go much further. If you can see how I'm turning, how many pages I'm turning here in my Bible. Here we're going to go way forward to John, and we are actually in John 5. I'm sorry, john 4.
Speaker 1:
And here is Jesus. This is after Jesus has come back and he is in ministry. He is actually just about to begin the next phase of his ministry. So he's with the disciples and they've stopped in Samaria. He intentionally went through Samaria instead of around it, as most people would do in that time, because Samaria were, you know, aloathed people. And he very intentionally shows up at what A well of water once again. And he is speaking to a woman, a Samarian woman, and she has a troubled past. She has a troubled past. She is a weary traveler, ladies rejected by man, considered unclean, and here she is with Jesus at the well.
Speaker 1:
This was so significant. Not only was she a woman considered unclean, not desired by the world, but God was using this moment. Jesus was intentionally showing up on the scene, seeking out, waiting upon this woman's arrival at the well, to show us the new covenant, to explain the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant, his promise to Abraham, his remembrance or his reminder to Isaac about protecting his chosen people. And now we're here with a woman who has access because of what Jesus has done, because of the cross, because of the plan of God to save his people. He's now saying all can come, jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female. This is huge.
Speaker 1:
We all have access to the living water and in this moment, the woman from Samaria who, as I was saying, is a weary traveler God is showing himself through Jesus as the continued redeemer. He is here to save her and Jesus is saying it is through me, I am here, I am the Christ. Jesus said to her in verse 13, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, the actual water from the well, the Stanley Cup water, will be thirsty again. We'll need to refill it, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again. The water that I will give him will come from a spring of water which wells up to eternal life. It will become inside of us a spring of water which wells up to eternal life.
Speaker 1:
Now she doesn't just hear this and keep it to herself. She takes this message from Jesus, learning that he is here, this Messiah, this Christ, the one that the generations from Abraham till now have heard of, have waited for this long, long, long story. At this part of his ministry, he is acknowledging that he is that Christ which changes and you know, wow just blows up the trajectory of his ministry. People start hearing and she is a part of this. He chose to tell a woman first that he is the Messiah. She doesn't keep it to herself, she turns right around and I love it if you've seen the chosen. They depict this so beautifully. It makes me cry every time she turns around and she runs. She just starts running. I'm picturing her jumping and dancing and just, oh my, you know I've met the Christ. And she runs and she tells everyone that she can find in Samaria about this encounter and later on in this chapter, verse 39 says many Samaritans from that town then believed in him because of this woman's testimony.
Speaker 1:
This woman's testimony and it's amazing and encouraging for us, as women who choose to be encouragers, to think about this this access to the living well that we have inside of us, that we can share about it and help other people gain access to the only thing that's going to quench their thirst. Everything is temporary. Every other kind of hydration tool that they have to quench their spiritual thirst is going to be temporary and it will fade, just like Abraham's wells, but the living well, the living water that is inside of us can spring up and give us eternal life. Remember, I said that God mentions water from the beginning to the end. Well, in Revelation we get a picture of what it will look like in times to come, in eternity, forever, and once again we see this reference to living water. I'm in Revelation 7.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to start off in verse 15, read till 17. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and they serve him all day and all night in the temple, and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more. The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat, for the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd and he will guide them. He will guide them to the springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. That's the promise we still, to this day, hold on to, that there will come a time when we will not thirst anymore and although we have access to this living water and it is swelling up in our spirit because of the Holy Spirit, because of Jesus coming and leaving the Holy Spirit to be our helper, that's inside of us.
Speaker 1:
Our job is to pour that out into the world, to go, like the Samaritan woman, and run down the hills and go tell all your people about the hope that you have found, the quenching of the thirst that you have found. And yes, we need to renew our spirits daily. We need to take in the Word of God, the Word of God. We need to be aligned and be connected and be with the one who wants us, who wants to quench our thirst. Well, we also need to go and tell. We need to go and tell.
Speaker 1:
So I pray that this message reminds you, encourages you, number one, that you're not alone, that we understand and we are with you in the travel. We are weary, but that there is a source of life. We can have the bread of God, the bread of life. We get to have the living waters and we get to have them forever. Wouldn't you want that for her? Get out into the world and tell somebody about the living water today and encourage her. Be a woman who chooses to encourage her and know that I'm here praying for you, weary traveler. We're in this together, sister, and I will see you again next Monday. Happy Monday.
