The Fourth Chapter

I read John 4 this morning. That is one seriously chocked-full chapter. I could spend an entire blog on just the first half. But I'll just kind of give snippets of what I thought was important.

First-
I'm having a discussion with a friend about salvation. That friend thinks that salvation is an ongoing thing, it doesn't happen only once. I'm of the persuasion that when we accept Christ, we're ultimately saved. We can lose that salvation if we turn away from God, but then that makes me question the first acceptance. Christ says in verse 13, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." It seems to me that when we drink of the water that Christ gives, we'll never have to drink again. Our thirst for life is extinguished.

Second-
Christ says, "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth." I wrote a blog a while back that talked about this. To me, spirit is emotion and truth is knowledge. The true worshipers will learn to harness the balance between worshiping with our emotions and worshiping with our knowledge. There are a lot of churches who are great with the emotions, but lack the knowledge, and vice versa. The successful churches for the building of Christ's Kingdom will be the ones who can excel at both.

Third-
After Jesus talks to the woman at the well, his disciples say, "Rabbi, eat something." Then Jesus replies, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." This is the ultimate expression of power. It's like the line from the MTV diary show, "You think you know me, but you have no idea." The disciples were following Jesus personally and they still didn't understand that Jesus was in full communication and presence with the Father. He didn't need a thing.

How are we, in our every day lives, underestimating God?