Story and invitation, not a sermon

Here is the whole method in a line you can carry around:

I found better water. Come, let me show you where.

That is the Samaritan woman’s witness translated into a sentence you could say to a neighbour. Something happened to me. Come and see for yourself.

The image is not decoration. She was standing at a well when she said it, holding a jar she had walked out in the midday heat to fill, having a conversation about thirst.

Two better waters

Jesus is talking about water the whole time, and he means two different things by it, both of which matter to you.

For somebody who does not yet know him, he is better water than whatever they have been drinking from. Everybody is drawing from something. Some of those wells are obviously bad and some look fine from a distance, and all of them run out.

Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” — John 4:13-14 (OTB)

For somebody who already believes, the better water is water that moves.

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” — John 7:37-38 (OTB)

A spring and a river both run. Water that is only ever stored goes stale. So the question that sits under this whole class, for you and not for anyone else: how long has it been since your water ran toward anybody?

Testimony cannot be argued with

There is a second reason this is the safest tool an untrained believer can carry, and it comes from a different chapter of the same Gospel.

A man born blind has been healed and is being interrogated about it by people far more educated than he is. They want him to concede a point about who Jesus is. He will not, and his refusal is one of the great sentences in the New Testament:

He replied, “Whether He is a sinner or not, I do not know. One thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see.” — John 9:25 (OTB)

He does not have the theology to fight them and he does not pretend to. He has one fact, it happened to him, and it is unanswerable.

A sceptic can dispute a doctrine you have half-learned. He cannot dispute your experience. When you tell your own story you are standing on the one piece of ground nobody can take from you — which is exactly why the untrained believer should be telling stories and not arguing.

The two ditches

There is a ditch on each side of this road, and most people are only ever warned about one.

On one side: substituting an invitation for the telling. Come to my church and they’ll explain it. This feels humble and it is actually a handover — you have passed your friend to a building and a professional rather than telling them the one thing only you can tell them.

On the other side: turning your story into a sermon. You start with what happened to you, and then you keep going, into what they should therefore conclude and how they ought to respond. The moment your testimony grows a persuasive tail it stops being unanswerable and becomes an argument — and now they can dispute it, because now you are on their ground and not yours.

Say what happened. Offer to show them. Stop. Both errors are avoided by the same discipline.

Recite this

I found better water. Come, let me show you where.

Try it this week

Two things, and the second is harder than it sounds.

First, say the formula out loud a few times until it stops sounding like a slogan and starts sounding like you.

Second, answer the question this chapter aimed at you rather than at anybody else:

The last time my water ran toward somebody was ________________.

If the honest answer is I can’t remember, write that. The rest of this class is about fixing it, and it is much easier to fix something you have admitted to.