Morning Devotional
April 14, 2005
"The Woman at the Well" (Part 8) 
    by Don Emmitte

"Please, sir," the woman said, "give me some of that water! Then I'll never be thirsty again, and I won't have to come here to haul water." "Go and get your husband," Jesus told her. "I don't have a husband," the woman replied. Jesus said, "You're right! You don't have a husband-- for you have had five husbands, and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now." (John 4:15-18 NLT).

 

Yesterday we saw that Jesus offered the Samaritan woman the gift of grace. Today we see it emphasized in a very dramatic way. When Jesus told the Samaritan woman to call her husband, He was revealing to her His divinity. He had never met her before, yet Jesus knew what was in this woman’s heart. In addition, in spite of this knowledge (or perhaps because of it) Jesus offers her the gift of eternal life, “Living Water.”

 

Jesus always knows what is in a person’s heart. The fact is, Jesus is actually more concerned with a person’s heart than He is their mind, emotions or their actions, because the heart is the root of everything that a person thinks, feels, or does. Solomon certainly understood this. He wrote:

 

Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do. (Proverbs 4:23).

 

What is in a person’s heart really is who the person is. What’s in your heart? The question is not what are you thinking, or what are you feeling, or what are you doing. The question is “what is in your heart?” When everything is stripped away except what is deep inside your heart, what does God see?

 

I often use an illustration like this. If someone really loves golf, what can you expect them to want to do on a sunny, pleasant day? What is in their heart? Golf, right! The illustration could be fishing, shopping, or gardening. Even if you take that person away from what they love to do and try to force them not to even think about the activity, their heart will still take them back to what they really love. Because, we always tend to think, feel and try to do what we really love.

 

This is all to say that what Jesus wants in our heart, more than anything else, is a place of abiding residence. When Jesus sees Jesus occupying our heart, Jesus will be what we tend to think about, feel, and do. It’s all about the heart! In the old television program, The Beverly Hillbilly’s, Jed Clampett would often invite people to “come on in and set a spell.” It was the homespun welcome to all to rest in his home. Jesus just wants to come on in and “set a spell”! Why don’t you make a conscious decision to do just that!