So Loved // Bridging The Gap

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

Visit us online at thelookout.church.

Good morning.

It is so fun to be here this morning.

I actually was focused on Jesus, but I did take a little peek around the room during worship.

And it's so fun when you get to love Jesus with those that you love and those that you've prayed for during worship.

I got to see Alex Garcia up here with his hands out, um, just honoring the Lord.

And he's a student that I used to volunteer in the student ministry for, and he was one, he was one of my ones.

Like I would pray for him daily that the Lord would get a hold of his heart.

Um, and to see uh who he is and his heart for the Lord, it blesses me.

And I think this series that we're in, it's like kind of a like an easy series, like when you hear it.

So loved, yeah, we got it.

Like John 3.16, for God so loved the world, he gave his only son.

But really, this series is so vital for each and every one of us because if we do not get this, we miss it all.

Yeah, we're just noise.

So if we do not receive that we are loves, and if we do not realize that we're called to pick up our mats when the Lord fills us with his love and bring it to the world, then we've missed it.

So I'm gonna open up this morning, and um oh hey Gunnar.

He's he's one of my ones.

I love Gunner and Harley.

Um so Lord, we come to you and Lord, we just say we can't do it without your love.

God, in my weakness, you are strong, in our weakness, you are strong.

God, I thank you that you are a God, that you don't just sit up high in judgment, but you are a God that you seek us, that you go after the one.

So, Lord, I just say speak.

Anything that I had planned that you don't want me to say, cancel it.

And anything you want to do, do it.

I pray in the name of Jesus that chains would be broken.

I pray that those who have felt like the least of these, that they would realize that you have a seat at the table for them in Jesus' name.

I pray that those who have walked in pride and narcissistic attitudes, Father, I pray that you would humble them and they would be able to receive a genuine love and learn how to lead the way you lead and love the way you love.

God, we trust you.

God, I trust you, God.

You you have never let me down in every valley you've sat with me, in every mountaintop.

I've felt your love.

So, Lord, let's have some fun this morning.

Amen.

Amen.

Um, Luke opened us up last week uh in this series with John 3.16, as I mentioned earlier.

And it's for God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life.

You are the world.

God loves you so much that he sent Jesus to make a way for us.

Uh, sometimes you hear in the church like, just forget the old testament, it's kind of dry and hard to understand.

And I was in a conversation recently uh with some friends, and and just focus on the gospels.

But if you actually come to understand that the the Old Testament, the Lord is speaking through the bloodlines over and over through the stories.

If you look at it in chronological order, and in the New Testament, it's through the blood of Jesus.

Jesus was sent when the Bible says salvation comes through the Jews, just to help you understand, he means through Jesus.

Okay?

Jesus is the one that made a way for us.

He's um have you ever been in a situation where someone took the blame and you know it was you?

That is the most humbling experience.

Um and that's Jesus.

So you are loved, and he and we're focused and camped out on this so loved because he's called you to love.

Um this morning I'm gonna be focusing out of John 4.

And I I I came across this video, and at first I thought, nah, I can't do a video.

And it just, every time I watched it, I cried.

And so we're gonna take a look, it's from the chosen, and then we're gonna jump in.

Would you give me a drink?

Did you hear me?

That's bad, huh?

What you would you?

Ask for a drink from me as a meriting and a woman.

I'm sorry.

I should have said please.

You know it's not safe for you to be alone out here?

Nor you.

Why haven't you come with others?

Why so late in the day?

Don't women come to the wells in the cool of the morning?

Yeah, well.

None of them will be seen with me, so I have to come out there.

In the heat.

You have so kindly reminded me.

Why won't they be seen with you?

Long story.

I'd still like a drink of water if you can spare it.

You see what a parched throat will do.

Aren't I unclean to you?

Won't you be defiled by this vessel?

Maybe some of my people say that about your women, but I don't.

Yeah.

And what do you say?

I say if you knew who I am, you'd be asking me for a drink.

Really?

And I would give you living water.

Would.

Except that you have nothing to draw water with, and this is a deep well.

Besides, what do you need from me if you have your own supply of living water?

Long story.

But Jewish water is better than Samaritan water.

That's not what I say.

Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob?

Who dug this well?

Your water is better than his?

I know Jacob.

And everyone who drinks this water will thirst again.

But whoever drinks the water that I give him will never be thirsty again.

Wouldn't that be nice?

The water I give will become in a person a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

Really?

Yes, really.

Prove it.

First, go and call your husband, then come back.

I will show you both.

I don't have a husband.

You are right.

You've had five husbands.

And the man you're living with now is not your husband.

I see.

You're a prophet.

You're here to preach at me.

No.

Usually the one good thing about coming here alone is I can escape being condemned.

I'm not here to condemn you.

I've made mistakes.

Too many.

But it's men like you who have made it impossible for me to do anything about it.

How?

Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain.

But you Jews insist Jerusalem is the only place for true worship.

They say that because the temple is theirs.

Exactly where we're not allowed.

I'm here to break those barriers.

And the time is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

So where am I supposed to go when I need God?

I've never received anything from God, but I couldn't thank him even if I did.

Anywhere.

God is spirit.

And the time is coming and is now here.

And it won't matter where you worship, but only that you do it in spirit and truth.

Heart and mind.

That is the kind of worshiper he's looking for.

It won't matter where you're from or what you've done.

Do you believe what I'm telling you?

Until the messiah comes and explains everything.

And sorts this mess out, including me.

I don't trust in anyone.

You're wrong.

When you say that you've never received anything from God.

This Messiah you speak of, I am he.

The first one was named Ramin.

You were a woman of purity who was excited to be married.

But he wasn't a good man.

He hurt you.

And it made you question marriage.

And even the practice of your faith.

The second was far as on your wedding night, his skin smelt like oranges.

And to this day, every time you pass by the oranges in the market, you feel guilty for leaving him.

Because he was the only truly godly man you've been with.

But you felt unworthy.

Why are you doing this?

I have not revealed myself to the public as the Messiah.

You are the first.

It would be good if you believed me.

You picked the wrong person.

I came to Samaria just to meet you.

Do you think it's an accident that I'm I'm here in the middle of the day?

I am rejected by others.

I know.

Not by the Messiah.

What would you like?

Ah I have food to eat that you do not know about.

Who got food?

He says, Who got you food?

Um so as I've looked into this passage and studied, what I actually didn't know before was that Jesus, a Jew, being raised as a Jew, and her a Samaritan woman, they had several hundred years of uh deep division, racial divides.

The Jews, it was very prominent.

You do not speak to Samaritans and you do not eat with them because it would be unclean.

And the crazy thing about this is it wasn't that one was an unbeliever and one was a believer.

This was, they were one of the main arguments was where to worship Jesus and how to worship Jesus.

And so their tendency was just to let's lean out and not acknowledge, and we'll both do our own thing, and it brought great isolation and division and judgment.

Does anybody else identify with those tensions in our present culture today?

I see it in the political divide, I see it in the confusion with sexual identity, and in anything that makes us a little uncomfortable, we are so scared of discomfort in our culture that we lean out.

And and I I say this often, if you hang out with me, I'm like, you know, the enemy, he loves to take a truth, twist it, and just isolate us.

He may not take your faith, he may not take your salvation, but if he can isolate us and cause judgment and defense, then the battle's won here.

But the thing is, the Lord says heaven to earth.

What was happening there with Jesus in the Samaritan woman is that was heaven coming to earth for the Samaritan woman.

Now, some of you might say, I don't, I can't be like Jesus and lists every secret that the woman ever had.

And I'm telling you, that is actually a lie.

Don't want to freak anybody out here, but um, I about a decade ago, I have shared this before a little bit, but I was in one of the most broken seasons of my life.

I was in, it was affecting my physical health.

Um, it was uh I I lost community, I felt I got thrown into a different culture that I did not fit into, and I was just kind of disappointed with the world and God.

And um, I remember in my home praying and in my car, I just said, God, if I'm gonna do this thing, if I'm gonna trust you through this valley, like show up.

I give you permission to show up.

Let's really, I want to hear your voice.

And what ended up happening is I surrendered my comfort zones to the Lord and I said, Lord, I gotta find out now.

If this Jesus thing is real, sh I need, I need, I need to see your power in my life.

And so Jesus started showing up and giving me very specific words for people.

Like, uh I mean, one time I was in Chick-fil-A, I'd paint all over my I had triplets, so they were about three.

They were playing in the playground, my husband was out of town, and I was exhausted.

I'd been painting our two-story, like balted ceilings, and I'm sitting there, just the kids are finally quiet, eating my chicken nuggets, and the Holy Spirit falls on me.

And I'm like, Lord, what?

Why, why do for me?

It's like my heart starts beating, and it's just something drops in my mind, and so I'm like, I okay, what are you saying, God?

And he very specifically had a word for a man over there, and he was sitting with another man.

I walked over, I could see my kids, don't worry.

And I said to them, I want you to know I am not hitting on you, and but I love Jesus, and this is what Jesus is speaking to me, and maybe I'm totally wrong, and if I am, I'm so sorry.

And the guy's face dropped, and he he actually invited me to his church.

He had just come back from a year working with Hillsong in their worship program.

And the word I had for him was, You have just you know you're gifted, but the Lord has called you to a season of character in your art.

And if you do not get the season of character, it will it will throw you off track.

And he said, I needed to hear that.

You're right, my character's weak.

And I said, Well, get it right with the Lord.

In that same season, in that same season, I was in a really bad mood one day.

I had to pick up my sister from the airport, and she had the guts to show up with a broken ankle when I was tired.

So that meant I had to go to the urgent care with her, and I was just like, Oh, I'm so tired.

I don't want to do this at nine o'clock at night.

But we go, and and as she's getting the x-ray, and I'm in my bad attitude, the Holy Spirit arrests me and says, Have you thought to pray for her?

And I was like, What?

Okay.

So I laid hands on her and she was like, Oh, I feel so much better.

I think I can walk out of here now.

So then we're driving, and we the Lord led us to a church, and we stopped in the church and we laid hands on some people there.

And then by the time I get to the Kroger store parking lot, because I needed a bottle of wine after all of that, I didn't need it, I wanted it.

Um, I pull up and there's this SUV, and and immediately the Holy Spirit says, she's dealing with a spirit of suicide.

She has a call on her life.

I want her to knock it off, and I want you to pray for her.

And I was like, uh-uh, nope.

I live in Atlanta, Georgia right now, father.

You do not knock on tinted windows at after dark in a parking lot.

Don't do it.

And so I argued with God, and sure enough, divine appointment.

It's a much longer story.

Her and I are still friends to this day.

We message each other.

So I'm sharing these testimonies to say that the miracles of the Bible are not just the Bible, they're for today.

And I believe this morning that God wants to break chains of that's so cool that she can speak, or that's so great that they have a testimony, but that's not me.

I'm seeing, I'm not seen.

I don't even know why I'm here this morning.

I'm kind of jaded.

God wants to set you on fire for the kingdom.

He wants you to know that you are so loved.

And he wants to use you to love the world around us.

What's happening here in John 4 is Jesus was the very people that this Samaritan woman felt the most judged and victimized by.

And not only that, she was an outcast of her own community.

She was actually the least of these.

And he the Lord sent him, this is right as his public ministry is coming into full action, and the Lord sent him to meet with her and set her free.

It says later on in the chapter that she um ran back to her village, and over the course of a few days, they invited Jesus to teach.

And because of her testimony and hearing Jesus preach, many, many were saved.

Later on in the chapter, it also talks about how we get to harvest what others have planted.

And I think sometimes.

As Christians, we can get stuck in this.

Well, it feels really overwhelming to go out and win souls.

How am I gonna do that?

The what I have seen the Lord do time and time again is He will bring divine appointment after divine appointment.

It says right here in um 421.

Do we got that team?

421.

She said Jesus says, believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem.

You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him.

For salvation comes through the Jews.

That's Jesus.

Jesus is not shaming her here when he says we know all about him.

He's actually exposing their weaknesses too.

But the time is coming indeed, it's here now, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

The Father is looking, God is looking for those who will worship him that way.

For God's spirit, for God is spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

He's saying to her, throw all the tensions and the judgments and the problems of our day off.

The Father is seeking you to worship him and embody him.

Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and everywhere you go as a temple filled with the Holy Spirit, you are Christ's ambassador.

And guys, when you are embodying the Holy Spirit, it will just happen.

Shannon mentioned yesterday, I was like, I've been, you know, I didn't speak for a really long time.

And it was a very hidden season.

And just in the last year, I've started doing a little bit more, and I'll do it as long as the Lord blesses it.

But I there's as you walk with the Lord, the Lord asks you to mature in things.

And so in this season, the Lord has really been um teaching me to embody the peace of the Lord as I serve Him and love my family.

And um, so yesterday I was getting ready for this morning, and don't judge me.

I just turned 40 and I wanted to feel good this morning, so I went and got my lashes done.

Okay.

Um, it's healthier than Botox.

So that's my reasoning and justification.

And I'm lying on the table as Shannon mentioned, and I'm literally just like, okay, God, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna focus on you.

Anything you want to say?

I'm not gonna stress, I'm just gonna meditate while my technician makes me look great.

And um, I I've never had this technician.

She was in her mid-20s, and she like out of nowhere.

What in the world is this peaceful energy you have?

She's like, from the moment you laid down, there is so much peace, and I cannot shake it.

And I I just started laughing, and I just said, honestly, it's the love of God.

I'm just lying here thinking about and preaching about the love of God tomorrow.

And I'm just lying here thinking about God's love and how he's met me and in the different ways.

And she just she was just like, Oh my gosh.

She's like, Okay, well, I'm thinking about getting married.

How do I be married?

How do I carry this peace?

And she she's like, When I have kids, I gotta call you.

Like, she just could not shake the presence, and so, but in this moment with Jesus and the Samaritan woman, she Jesus was leaning in when he should not have leaned in.

Being raised as a Jew, he had every excuse to ignore this one.

And I believe that Jesus had the capacity, he didn't shame her, he actually spoke through her sin.

He had the capacity to speak through her sin, and he valued her enough to invite her seat at the table in the kingdom.

He says, You, I came here for you today.

He was able to value her and step across whatever junk he was raised in because he knew he was a son of God first.

And so the question, it's very simple.

My heart today is this.

Considering our present day, where you turn on the news, you get on social media, and you feel like the moment you look out at the world, you're really irritated with someone and you can't stand them, and you don't know why they're that way.

My question to you today is can you put on, can you receive how loved you are?

And can instead of stepping away and only loving those that are easy for us, can you surrender your judgment of them today and ask the Lord his heart for them?

My challenge, didn't ask Luke for this permission, but my challenge to you in this who's your one, that if you're not praying for someone that you really are challenged with, I would ask you to add someone.

Ask the Lord, Lord, who makes me uncomfortable?

Who am I disappointed in?

And Father, I'm just gonna pray for them every day.

The word says to pray for those that curse you.

And so that's one.

I I have a sense that some of us need to repent for judgment on others, and then the second is this some of us have felt deeply rejected, whether it be from the church or outside.

I had um, I had a friend one time, they were um gay and uh they were uh a believer and we were really close and uh they actually worked in academia and um they because uh he was white um that he was told that he could not um basically he couldn't feel victimized because he had white privilege and and he called me broken, and you know I just sat with him and I just said it's not true.

Your journey is your journey, and the Lord is with you, and I I believe that if you just focus on the Lord and surrender to him, whatever transformation needs to happen will happen, but you do not let the world or even the church tell you who you should be, you seek the secret place.

You get some that might offend someone, and please know my heart.

I'm fully submitted to the will of God for my life.

I am not preaching either or there.

Here's what I'm saying.

Here's a I'll bring it down a level.

I had one of my children come home to me at the beginning of the school year and they were clearly bothered.

If you have kids in here, you can read your kids.

They're just really bothered by this kid.

And I, what is going on?

Well, they're they believe this, and they they identify with this, and they I get uncomfortable every single time they're around me, and I just I can't stand them, mom.

And I had to get really, really low with that kid, and I had to say, honey, I understand that you feel uncomfortable with this, but you believe in Jesus, right?

And you believe in the love of Jesus.

They said yes.

And I said, as a believer in Christ, our job is not to add to the pain and shame and judgment.

God will do the judging, and I've seen the Holy Spirit transform people like that.

Our job is to pray for them, love them, and speak truth as the Holy Spirit leads.

And in my kid, it's been so at first they said, You're wrong, mom, no.

And I just started praying over the situation, and in my kid, I saw this like it would come up a couple times, and I would say, remember, you're not called to add to the pain, you're called to love.

And I've seen this total 180, where they have a heart and they're building connection and they're inviting this child in.

And and guys, as believers, we do not need to be afraid of the brokenness and those that are different than us.

If you know that you're a son and daughter, you are a temple of the Holy Spirit, and God invites us in.

We're we're light bearers, guys.

So I I mentioned that.