Why Am I Here?

I'm reminded of the Book of Genesis. There's a story about this guy named Joseph, and at the end of that story—I'm not going to give you the whole story, I'll preach on it one day, that'll be a fun day when I preach on Joseph—but long story short, a lot of bad things happened to Joseph, and in the end he has this Revelation because although the bad things happened to him, God worked it for his good. And he makes this comment near the end of Genesis, he says, "What the enemy meant for evil, God turned it for good." And I don't know how that speaks to you right now, but whatever area you're in life, be it good, mediocre, or miserable, God's working something out. And it is incumbent upon us not to work it out—that's God's job. It's incumbent upon us to seek Him so that we might see how He's working it out and partner with Him in this process.

I don't think most of our issues come because God's trying to derail us. I think they come because while God's working it out, we try to jump off the tracks ourselves. Like, because we miss it, because we miss Him and don't see what He's doing, we live in these areas of frustration, anxiety, and struggle. And I know bad stuff happens, and it's not our fault, but even in the midst of those scenarios, God—what the enemy means for evil, God intends to be worked out for good. Remember that today.

I love that song, that's a good song. We're going to be in John chapter 4 today. We've been going through the Gospel of John, and we haven't really called it anything, we just. Gospel of John, it's good enough. Amen, somebody.

John 4 · chapter mention

Gospel of John is better than anything I could conjure up in my weird pun world of being a pastor. However, I did it anyways. In John chapter 4, there's a—one of my favorite kind of narratives or scenes in Scripture. You ever heard—anyone raise your hand if you heard of the woman at the well. Yeah, yeah.

John 4 · chapter mention

Okay, cool. So we're going to be going through that story, and I've kind of made it into a little three-part miniseries, so I hope that's okay. I'm taking God's word, we're going to go straight through it, but I'm going to call it something. And we called it, because they're in Samaria, we called it "Samaras" is what we call the series. You get it?

I'm so proud of myself. Some areas—so we're going to talk about some areas over the past, over the next couple of weeks. It's going to be fun. Y'all are not impressed. I'm impressed, and if I can humor myself, God's fine with it, you know.

You don't have to laugh at it. Speaking of laughing, hey, how did you guys enjoy our guest speaker last week? What, he awesome? Super good. Couple of y'all—he won't watch this, he won't.

Yeah. So we're going to be in John chapter 4 today. I'm going to cover the first six verses, but the series in general, I think, could speak to you if you lean into it over the next couple of weeks. I'd encourage you to invite your friends, because we're going to cover some areas that I think will be specific to some things they might be dealing with, cuz every one of us finds ourself in an area of life. It might be a struggle with finances, it could be an issue at your work, it could be something deeper like addiction or emotional struggles, trauma that you're dealing with.

John 4 · chapter mention

I could keep going down the list, but we're all in an area. You might even be having a good time right now, but even then, you're in an area. God's working, and if you don't see what God's doing, you'll find yourself missing the blessing of the area you are in. So we're going to talk about some areas over the next couple of weeks, and we're going to start in chapter 4, verse 1. So if you have your Bibles, turn to chapter 4:1.

It'll also be on the screens. "Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that He was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John."

So if you remember, a couple weeks ago we talked about Jesus and John's disciples and how they're having a conversation, the kind of comparison trap they're falling into about who's baptizing more people. So the Pharisees learn of this—although it was not Jesus baptized in, it was His disciples—"so He left Judea and went back once more to Galilee."

Now listen, this—verse 4: "Now He had to go through Samaria, so He came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as He was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon."

We're going to really go in on verse 4 today.

It says, "He had to go through Samaria." It's an interesting text, and I'm going to break that down for you utilizing a few different questions. Now, I remember the first time I ever went on a mission trip. So if you don't know what a mission trip is, a mission trip is when people here in the United States decide, "We're going to go help a nation, " and so a bunch of teenagers, 15 to 17 years old, are going to go over there. We're going to change the world by talking to them about Jesus. I'm being lightly sarcastic, but that's really a lot of times what a mission trip is.

And so my first ever international mission trip, the first time I'd ever gone overseas, we were going to go to Brazil, and we had spent 8 months prepping for it. I'd gotten some scholarships cuz it was an expensive flight, and we were amped as a team, and we were ready to go to Brazil, specifically Florianópolis, Brazil—they call it the Miami of Brazil. I thought that was Rio de Janeiro, but I learned it was Florianópolis. Maybe they just told me that to get me on the trip, I don't know. But we were going to go there.

We're going to work with some of the kids in the favelas, we were going to do some vacation Bible school, assist some missionaries, and, you know, there was beaches too, so it was a God-vacation—that's what we used to call them. Anyways, we were—I was excited about it, and we were really believing that God was going to use our team of about 25 to 30 people to do something in Brazil. So we get on our flight—I lived in Little Rock, Arkansas at the time. I don't know if you know where Little Rock, Arkansas is, it's in Arkansas. I don't know if you know where Arkansas is, it's in the middle of the country.

So we got in, the plane, we flew to Miami, and when we got to Miami—this is my first experience dealing with international stuff—we had to do some things before we left Miami, and it turned out, I don't even remember why it was, but there was a delay. It was about a 4-hour delay in Miami. So that was annoying—that's annoying. It was evening, we were going to be flying through the night. It was annoying to get stuck in Miami.

The team started to complain a little bit. And, when we hopped on the plane, we went through, and we woke up in the morning, it was about 6:00 a.m. To the intercom or whatever they call that thing in the plane, and the pilot was saying, "Hey, because of weather in São Paulo, which is where we're going to go first, because of the weather in São Paulo, we're going to have to stop in Rio de Janeiro for a couple of hours."

And y'all think, "This trip, this is going to go really cool." Like, we got out at Rio de Janeiro and got to go. No. We got there, and because of the weather, we stayed in the plane for 2 hours and 45 minutes. I remember this—I was in Rio de Janeiro, and I was in a plane.

And then we took off again, and we flew to São Paulo, and when we got there, we waited in customs, and because we were so late, we had missed our flight to get to Florianópolis, and the next flight was 10 hours later. So my team, we were frustrated in Miami, but when we got to São Paulo, we were really frustrated because it was 10 hours, and the team was like—I wish, I wish this was me so I could talk mess about myself—I was just sitting there not knowing what was going on, but a couple people in my team were like, "Why is this happening to us? What's God doing? Why are we stuck here? We were supposed to go on this trip, man, this isn't working out."

And I'm just—I'm new to faith at this point, I don't even know what's going on, I just knew that there was like a mall there.

And so we started walking around this mall in the São Paulo airport because we had 10 hours to wait, and then eventually I got bored with that, so we sat down. And this team—the team starts complaining, and we're wondering what God's doing, like, "Why are we stuck here?" And it wasn't—I wish this was me too—but somebody decided to say, "You know what, we're on a mission trip, we're here to talk about Jesus. Just because it's not the kids in the favelas doesn't mean the people in the airport don't need Jesus."

And so we get up, we start walking around—the adults had to deal with a liability, "You got to go with so-and-so, you got to go with so-and-so"—and we walked around, and we went shopping and looked for opportunities to tell people about Jesus. And we found in that moment that God could use a very difficult area or scenario to reveal Himself to us. And what he revealed to me in that moment was that even though it was American Airlines' fault—I got stole, it definitely their fault, I mean, that's just bad business on their part, I'm not talking mess, if you're watching, American, they're not watching, who cares, Delta would be watching but not American Airlines, I don't know what I'm saying—, God, even in that area where someone had done something, or someone had screwed something up, God was still sovereign over that situation, and He moved.

And we were in a—a store, I think it was Lacoste, because I remember there was all these golfing guys in my church, and they wanted to go to Lacoste to buy some polo shirts or whatever they do, and we went in there, and we end up starting conversation with somebody who worked there. And guys, I need you to know, I don't speak Spanish—and me saying that, even when I'm talking about Brazil, makes you think I'm dumb. I know they speak Portuguese in Brazil, I'm not dumb, I saw you over there, I know they speak Portuguese. But I was in Spanish too in high school at the time, so that's what I had. And so I'm sitting here trying to talk Spanish with this guy who's speaking Portuguese, and I knew three words: I knew "koro, " "orri, " and "buo, " and it wasn't night time, so I didn't know what to do, you know.

And so I'm chatting with him, but in the end, we got to preach the Gospel message to him. I don't know what ended up happening after that, but we went back and sat down. They pushed it back another 4 hours, and we finally got to our location, and it was a great week. And on that week, I felt called to ministry, and I think most, back—not to the end of the trip, but to the beginning of the trip—and what I want you to know is that in a moment that was not what you anticipated, in an area that you would not have gone to, God can do some of His greatest work. And so I want to give you my sermon title, very similar to the complaint that my team had when we were sitting at this airport for over 10 hours: "Why am I here?

Why am I here?" I want you to contemplate that today. Why are you here? Why are you here at church today? That's a good question to ask yourself: why are you here at church today? You could have skipped out on church, you could have gone and benefited from this very pleasant weather—anybody?

Amen, somebody, it's beautiful outside. We've been setting up, tearing down in 110 degree weather. Today it's going to be a high of like 80 or something, I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself, I'm going to relax today, it's going to be good. You could have done that, but God inspired you to come here this morning. What's He want to teach you?

You might be in a financial situation where it's really stressing you out, and you're like, "God, why is this person in such a good position, but I'm in such a terrible position?" Even in that area of your life, God can do something. And we've got to get to that place where we ask God why we're here, lean on Him, and say, "What are you doing in the midst of the scenario that I feel like I have no control over?" Even in your trauma, where you look back at your life and you think, "Why did this stuff happen to me?" You can look back as someone who is a follower of Christ and say, "No, no, no, no, now I see." Just like Joseph, what the enemy meant for evil, God can turn it for good. And this is where Jesus finds Himself. I'll open this up for you, Current position, the first question is, where am I? Or, how, yeah, where am I?

Where am I? Look at your neighbor, ask them this question. Say, say, "Where are you, " and the neighbors should respond and say, "I'm here." Y'all aren't playing the game with me, man. I don't know why I walk back here. I'm not going to read anything.

I'm just trying to deal with the fact y'all didn't laugh at my joke. Why am I here? Where am I? Where am I? I think this is a helpful question.

You might think it's too pedantic for you. You might be too much of an adult, too mature, to ask this question. I think the biggest problem many of us run into is that we have not identified our current location. I'm not just talking about physically — I know you're sitting in a chair, I know you're in this room, I know there's a light shining right in front of you, I know there's a preacher in front of you, I know you got a car right out here, you're in Buckeye — I almost said Missouri — you're in Buckeye, Arizona. I know where you are.

But there are certain areas you are delving into right now in your life. I can't identify them, and a lot of you can't identify them. Where am I? You, you, you, you might need to look at your spreadsheet and say, "Where am I financially?" But many of us are scared to look at the bank statements or the credit card statement because we know that we're not going to like what we're going to see. But unless we look, we don't actually identify where we are.

And if you don't identify where you are, you can't really solve the problem. You don't even know the questions to ask your Creator or the people around you who can help you solve the problem. A lot of times I'll be sitting around the house moping. I'm going to show you what it looks like — it doesn't look like that, but it's not a couch — so I'm, I'm, I'm open, and my, my wife inevitably looks at me 'cause she's a great spouse — y'all should be great spouses to your husbands too — she's great. She's said, "What's wrong, man?" And she's super empathetic and nice about it.

"Oh, I feel bad today, there's something going on, " and she's asking me the question, "What's going on?" But I can't even tell her what's going on 'cause I haven't identified where I am emotionally or mentally or even spiritually. You got to ask this question: where am I? I'm talking to the men in the room for a second. Those of you who grew up just like I did, full of, needing to develop this macho skill, this "macho mode" that you've got — I don't even know if I said that right, maybe it's "muchis mode, " I don't know — but you got to develop this manliness where you got to hold a gun or you got to do this or that, or you got to hide your emotions, 'cause when you hide your emotions that makes you more manly. But you've never identified where you are emotionally, and so then you blow up on somebody, you yell at the kids, or you spend way too much time doing the corporal punishment — or you're, I don't know if you do that or not, maybe you're soft parenting — but regardless, you don't know, and since you don't know, it's affecting you in ways that you don't comprehend.

You got to ask this question: where am I? Where are you spiritually? Where are you spiritually? We say that there are 5G's at our church: gather, grow, group, give, go. A lot of the questions I'm asking, like, "Hey, where, where are they at?" Because they're not here, right?

But you need to ask this: where am I? You say, "I feel a certain way right now, " or, "I don't feel like I should." Let's ask the Spirit, where am I? Where am I? Did, did I — when's the last time I went to church? Not that church is the be-all-end-all of your spiritual walk, I want to be clear.

You reading your Bible, connecting with God, that's a huge importance. But a lot of times when you don't go to church, you're probably not at home just sitting there reading your Bible on the regular either. Where am I? "I'm reading a fiction novel, a romance" — I'm not talking to the men anymore, we don't read romance novels — "I'm just reading a romance novel, going to see the film with everybody else." Where am I? "Well, I'm hanging out with the girlies, drinking mimosas." Where am I?

I thought that would get more of a laugh. Maybe I'm too, too hard, close to home. Where am I? You've got to identify where you are, because the way that you feel is coming from where you locate yourself, both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Where are you?

That was my struggle when I was 29 years old. There were things that I would interact with, and I would have results that I didn't want — whether it was in an interaction, maybe you interview for a job, maybe, they're just things that you do that are annoying other people, or things you're not doing that you should be doing, but because your lack of awareness of your own emotions and where you are, you don't do them, and it's frustrating other people. So what I learned to do, when I was 29 — and this has been a long process — is I started to ask that question, where am I? And so I started to see a counselor, not because I'm crazy, but because I wanted to be healthy emotionally. And when I started to see the counselor, I asked them, I said, "Hey, can you help me be more emotionally fit?

Like, I know how to work out anaerobically, I know how to work out aerobically, but when it comes to my emotions, I'm not very fit." And they taught me this — they said, "Hey, just identify your emotion." Because there would be a lot of times where I'd be sitting there, and my wife asked me, I said, "I don't know, I don't know where I'm at, I'm just depressed." And "it's not always depression" is what this person told me, and then they gave me a book that said — it's called, "It's Not Always Depression." Then I read that book, and it talked about identifying your emotions, and I love — learned very clearly there — that it is crucial for us to identify where we are. And when we look at the Scripture, I want to help you identify where Jesus is taking the disciples. I said the term "Samaria, " but that doesn't mean necessarily anything to some of you, and so I want to identify where they are. It says this in verse one: "Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although — in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples — so he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria." And so he is going to a place called Sychar, in Samaria — that's where they're located.

But let me tell you a little bit about where they are, because this might not mean anything to you, but to his disciples it meant a whole lot, the fact that Jesus went there — it meant a whole lot. Now, before I show you the map, I want to tell you about the Samaritan people group. The Samaritans were a group of people who — the Jews would call them half-breeds, or a mixed race of people — and what they were was a mix of, Jewish religion, or ethnic Jews, and ethnic Assyrians, or pagans, or whoever came into that area. So when Israel became a country, eventually they split in two. There was the northern kingdom that they would call Israel, the southern kingdom that they would call Judah.

Eventually the northern kingdom, called Israel, was conquered by the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian Empire took a lot of the people from northern Israel, they took them out of the country, and then they supplanted in the country people who worship pagan gods, a different race, different religious belief of people, and over time, those people would start to mix. So the people in Judah, the southern kingdom, would get frustrated because of the religious and social implications of them mixing with the Assyrian people group — let's be real, it's racism. And so when Jesus goes to Samaria, this is a significant component, because Jews didn't only think they were different and impure, they thought religiously they had no stake in the kingdom of God. But let me show you a map here too, because I want to show you where it is in Israel.

So when you read the Bible — maybe you haven't read the Bible, but let's just say this — Israel is right there, on the Mediterranean, on the eastern side of the Mediterranean. This is Jerusalem, we hear about a lot, a lot in the Bible. This is the Sea of Galilee, right up here, where Jesus did the bulk of his early ministry. Jesus spent the majority of his life right here, around Galilee, in the place called Nazareth, and he would regularly take trips to Jerusalem. We see several trips in Scripture, but we can gauge, based on Jewish festivals, that he would have gone from Galilee to Jerusalem many times.

Now, Samaria is right here in the middle, between where Jesus lived the majority of his life and Jerusalem — it's right here, it's in the hill country. You see Mount Gerizim right here, Mount Ebal — those, those things, those mountains, are just 1,500 to 2,500 feet, right, nothing crazy. I mean, it's like a Camelback Mountain though, like, it's a little height, you know what I'm saying? So this is where Jesus found himself. Now, Jewish people, because of the history with the Samaritans, would avoid Samaria.

Like, I know you guys, if you got frustrations or beef with somebody because they believe differently than you — maybe you're a Republican and they're a Democrat, or vice versa — and so you, just because you don't want to see the Harris-Walz sign, you're, you're driving around a different road, you know what I'm saying? You might avoid going down that road so you don't see him walking their dog, you know what I'm saying, like, that's, that's what you might do. It took them three extra days to avoid Samaria sometimes, right? You see this track — it takes them over there on flat ground, by the Mediterranean. And this red one right here, the trail that they would take, took them by the Jordan River.

Now, granted, I've got a logical excuse — it's a little more flat, it's an easier route, I got kids, I got camels, you know, it's an easier route — but the real reason that they would skip that journey is because they did not want to pass through Samaria. It made them feel icky or unclean. That's pretty significant, but we see Jesus here going into Samaria when his disciples, and all the other Jews he would spend time with, would not have been a fan of Samaria. We see this in the passage, as we'll talk about over the next couple of weeks. That is where Jesus is taking his disciples, and I think identifying that is helpful, because many of us, when we walk into a season, because we haven't understood where we are, we don't ask the right questions, and thus we don't get the right knowledge or information that we need in a season.

Some of us, maybe we were doing something wrong, God revealed something to us, but because we never really identified what the issue is, we keep falling back into it, back into the issue. I mean, I keep talking about finances, but I could talk about anything that you're addicted to. I could talk about the friend groups that you regularly spend time with. I'm, I'm, I'm an adult, I'm 36 years old, I've been around people long enough to know what they are dealing in — even myself, I struggle with some of the same things over and over and over. One of the things for me that's really difficult is God's giving me Revelation that I should be healthy and in shape, my body is a temple unto the Lord.

Yeah, for some reason, every time I go into the pantry and I see my kids' lunch stuff — which my wife and I talked about it, she need stop buying them those little muffins, you know I'm talking about, those little muffins that they get, like the Funfetti version of the muffins — if you don't have kids, you don't understand, but if you do have kids, you understand how good those things are — but it takes you two seconds to eat them, and so you eat five packages, that's me, right? And so in my normal day, I fail to identify the things that are causing me pain, if you will. But when I identify them and I understand where I'm at, I can then talk to my wife, and I can say, "Hey, let's remove this from the pantry because it's becoming an issue for me, " and when we remove that out of the way, I can then solve it and put myself into a better position. I just identified for you the issue with the Samaritans and the Jews — that's where Jesus is going. Now the second question I think is helpful for us to ask — because identifying where you are is helpful, but if you just identify where you are and not know how you got there, you might be missing a crucial component to your solution.

So the second question you ask is, like, how did I get here? How did I get here? Look at your neighbor, say, "How'd you get here?" God, y'all got to particip I have learned that if you got to identify how you got to a place, it gets you that much closer to a solution. Let's bring up the emotional thing that I was talking to you guys about. I identified that I was not good at identifying my emotions.

It affected so many areas of my life, and what I started to do was I did a family history and tried to understand, hey, why do I operate the way that I operate? Why am I more stoic than some people want me to be? Why am I super intense in some of these areas? Why do I feel this way when I'm doing certain things? And I started looking at my family history, and I realized something.

In one particular area, we moved around a lot when I was young. I think it was like 17 times before I turned 17, not always different cities but different places. So we moved around a lot, which in some ways inhibited my ability to develop long-lasting relationships. And so when I hit 29 years old, you start to look back and you realize, oh, I struggle here because I didn't develop that here. Now that's not the solution, but it is helpful for you to understand where you came from.

Now let's look at the Scriptures for a second. How did Jesus end up there? Now we know that God wanted them to be there, especially if you know the story. But let's take it back to the logical trajectory here. It says at the beginning of the passage, "Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although it was his disciples, not him, who was baptizing." It says this in verse three—put verse three up there—it says, did it say.

And then he left Judea. It says, "So he left Judea." The reason that he left Judea is because of what happened in the preceding verse. The Pharisees were finding out that he was baptizing a lot of people. This was not a good thing, and since they were finding that out, Jesus knew that it was a little too early in his ministry to deal with that kind of issue. So he knew to avoid confrontation.

There was a way that he could avoid that confrontation, and so it makes sense to me—yes, God had a bigger plan, Jesus always intended to go through Samaria—but this situation made it make sense to go through Samaria. Let me show you this map one more time. The Pharisees and Sadducees would take the blue route or the red route. Jesus is taking the middle route because he knows he's going to avoid unnecessary confrontation with the Pharisees. Now again, God has a primary reason that supersedes this logical reason, but I still think it's important for us to understand how we got here.

There's a real reason God intended something bigger, but it's good for us to look at the minutia so that we can understand how we got here, so that we don't get here again. The way that Jesus got that route is because of persecution. I think it's helpful because then you can take it immediately into the book of Acts. In the book of Acts, what happens is the Gospel starts to be spread in Judea, mostly in Jerusalem. That's where the disciples are huddling, hanging out.

That's where the Holy Spirit is sent to them. That's where all those people got saved at Pentecost. That's where it starts, in and around Judea. But pretty quickly there was persecution by the Jewish council, Pharisees, Sadducees, and other leaders, such that they had to start expanding where they were preaching the Gospel. It was a logical reason, but God utilized it later, and the first place that they start going—you see this in Acts—is Samaria.

Like, some of the first ministry that you see outside of Jerusalem is in Samaria. It was persecution that caused that. And if I'm Jesus, I'm looking back at the past, I am calculating how I got here. I know where I'm at. I'm in Samaria, where none of my disciples want to be.

And we want to act like Jesus is only God, but he's fully God and fully man, which means he is tempted with the same stuff that we're tempted with. And I think insecurity is a huge temptation for all of us. Anyone in here agree with that? Say amen. We all struggle with insecurity, right?

And if Jesus was fully man and fully God, I have to imagine that temptation came, and Jesus could have sat in insecurity. Because, man, I'm just baptizing more people than John, and now the Pharisees and the Sadducees are trying to kill me. I could be frustrated that I have to go through Samaria. I could be frustrated I'm taking the people that I'm trying to get to follow me to a place where they're going to question my leadership. But he takes them through, and I think he has an adequate understanding of how we got there, and part of it was persecution.

You are in some of the areas in your life because somebody did something to you. You were in some of these areas—maybe you did something to yourself, but because the environment that you grew up in caused you to operate in a certain capacity. I think it's important for you to start looking back into your past. One of the greatest things you could do in your life is go look back at your family history and try to understand where you came from and how you got to where you are. It's easy for some people, but for some of us it's much more difficult.

You can't just go onto the 23andMe or the Ancestry.com and find that stuff. Mine is weird—they like hop, skipped, and jumped, and my timeline does not make any sense at all. But praise the Lord for my brother, who makes bank at Amazon—he paid for more stuff to get done, so I know a little bit more about my history. But looking at that is really helpful. I understand more about how God wired me and who I am because I went back and looked, and I think, in this type of scenario, very similar to when I'm stuck in this airport, it's really helpful to say, hey, how did I get here?

If we had started with, hey, where are we—we're in the São Paulo airport—and if we went to the second question, say, well, how did we get here? It's because we all collectively chose to go preach the good news of Jesus in another country. We would have really quickly gotten to the, well, we are in another country, that's how we got here—let's get to it, let's do what God called us to do. Many of us are like the rest of my team, sitting in the airport, laying on those really uncomfortable chairs. Man, it's been 8 hours and I'm still not in Fernando de Noronha on the beach sipping—we can't sip half the stuff you would sip on a beach on a mission trip, but you know what I'm talking about.

We're not doing what we wanted to do, we're just moping. You don't see Jesus moping. He immediately goes to a well and starts a conversation. But if I were in that scenario, if you were in that scenario, many of us spend a huge portion of the "intro time" moping because we failed to ask the question, well, how did I get here? Maybe you have found yourself in this place where relationally you're struggling, financially you're struggling, and you're just spending all your time frustrated and moping.

And I'm not telling you that you shouldn't feel a certain way, but what I am saying is the moping in victimhood isn't helping you get where God wants you to be. And so spend as little time there as you need to, so that you can get to the mission at hand. If, if, if you're like—I've been a couple times in my life—if you're just straight broke, you look at the account, you're like, I don't even know what I'm going to do next, man. If you go into this place, man, it stinks. So and so just had their parents give them money and they're just so lucky.

I'm in this bad spot because my parents weren't there for me, and they didn't teach me this like they should have. And, man, if I would have just been able to afford college, then I would have gone there and gotten a finance class that I wouldn't have learned anything from anyways. And I—the moping, I do it. So I'm not trying to make fun of you, but the moping prevents you from accomplishing your mission. And I don't know, maybe the disciples moped—we just don't hear about it in Scripture.

They did mope quite often in Jesus's ministry, but Jesus is like, "Y'all persecuted—shake the dust off my feet, I'm going to move forward and I'm going to talk to him." It's very similar to Paul in Acts, where he gets kicked out of a city, ends up in Athens, and the brethren tell him, hey, hang on until a couple other people get there, don't do anything stupid. Paul—nope. Paul gets right out of the safe house, goes in, starts doing ministry, and he preaches the Gospel at the Areopagus, which is a place where they talk about weird philosophy in Athens, Greece. He's just going, he keeps doing it, because no matter what area he is in, he understands, hey, how did I get here? With Paul, I got here because of the love of Christ Jesus.

With Jesus, I got here because of persecution. But ultimately there's a call of God that is greater on my life, and so I know I'm going to Samaria for a reason. With you, I would encourage you—no matter where you are in life, whatever area it is—yes, ask, where am I? That helps you identify, that helps you become aware. Yes, how did I get here?

It helps you understand the things that led up to this point. But we have to get to this third question that will be the most helpful question. This is a question we ask directly to our creator, we ask this—this is the title again—why am I here? The quicker you can get to the question direct to your creator, why am I here, the quicker you're going to solve some of the situations you're in. The quicker you're going to exit the area you don't want to be in, or the quicker you're going to be actually okay with the area you're stuck in.

Why am I here? It's funny, because there's something in the Greek that actually helps us understand what Jesus understood, what John later understood as he was writing this—and this scholars say this too—that helps me understand the passage better. It says this in verse 4, it says, "Now he had to go through Samaria." The Greek word for "had" there is "dei." It says "now he had"—another way you could translate that is "it was necessary that he go through Samaria."

The word "dei" isn't just used randomly in Scripture. It's not one of those things and "now he had to do that, he had to watch the dishes before he went to bed otherwise his wife was going to get mad at them" or something like that, right? That's not how they utilized it.

"Dei" was used as more of a divine imperative, meaning God had a plan, and in order to fulfill that plan, it was necessary he had to go through Samaria. This is something we see behind the text. I think it's important for us to recognize the persecution that led to this point, but even though the enemy meant it for evil, God had something that was necessary for Jesus to do on this pathway that could have been perceived as a detour—and it was, by his disciples. And for you, wherever you are, when you get to this question, why am I here, you might have this "dei" principle sticking in your mind. Maybe—just maybe—it is necessary for God to do a work in me.

It was necessary that American Airlines screw up so that I could be stuck in São Paulo and have a personal conversation with the dude, with my chopped-up Spanish, while he's trying to speak Portuguese, and I don't understand a single word, until the translator comes in and starts talking to him. It was necessary, because it spoke to me in such a way that by the end of that trip, God revealed to me that I was called to do this for the rest of my life. That was me. It was necessary for you—it might have been necessary for you to go broke so that you can understand how to manage. It might have been necessary that that thing happened to you so that you would cling to God as opposed to your own effort and ability.

Whatever it is right now—I'm not saying it had to happen the exact way that it happened, there are some things that happened to you that never should have happened to you—but that doesn't mean currently God's not intending it to be utilized for your good and His glory. You might write this down: the "dei" principle—D-E-I, or, I don't know, Delta Epsilon Iota, "dei" principle—it'd be helpful for you. It is necessary. Some of these things are necessary. It was necessary for him to go to some area, and it is necessary for you to delve into some areas in your life.

I don't know what they are, but if you can just stop, be open, recognize some of this stuff is necessary, then you'll get to the mission. That's what we want, that's where we want to end up being. And over the next couple of weeks, yeah, I'm going to talk about the specifics of this scenario, but I'll give you the summary here: it was necessary that Jesus go to Samaria because he needed to preach the Gospel to a woman in desperate need of it at a well, who would then run from. That we'll leave her jar and go to the city of people who probably had shun her at a certain level, bring them back and tell them about Jesus, so that he can — and the disciples can — preach to them. And I believe, at some level, what Jesus did there primed them for what the Holy Spirit was going to do later.

And I think, in your own lives, whatever happened to you, no matter how frustrating this is, has the potential to prime you for what God's spirit intends to do in you throughout the rest of your life. It was a difficult area for me when I was dealing with those emotions, cuz you're 20. You're 29 years old, right? You're like, "I should have dealt with that stuff." Like, why do I deal with it now? I wish I'd dealt with it when I was 16, like this person did.

But I'm 29, having to — I'm, I'm, I'm stuck in this area of trying to figure this stuff out. But it just so happened that there were the right people around me during that season, and so then I start embracing this development process rather than moping about it. And afterwards — now, even two days ago — I was having a conversation, and I felt a certain way afterwards, and I was able to quickly identify two of the emotions that I felt, and it immediately took me back to a place where I was recognizing my calling in life. I know that might sound like a jump, but for me that was — it's a big deal to be able to identify these things, know where it comes from, but know where to go, and why it's happening. It could be that whatever scenario you're in that drew you here today — maybe for the first time, or for the season — whatever drew you here is something that was necessary for you to show up to church.

Whatever area you're in could be what was necessary for you to listen to the word of God. Whatever area you're in could be what was necessary for you to start living in purpose and move out of your anxiety and frustrations. I don't know. I'm convinced that the Lord brought you here on purpose. That's why I say it every week.

I don't know if you came from the club the night before. I don't know if you came from a tough situation at work. I don't know if you came from being perfectly happy, ready to go to the farmers market. I don't even know. But I know whatever situation you're in was necessary to get you here.

And one of the greatest aspects of life is being able to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, cuz now I know the why. Now I know why I'm here. I'm here to accomplish God's mission. And now I get to look at how I got here, and I get to see the work of God over and above all my stupidity in life. That is my testimony.

And once I can look back at that and look at where I am, I'm astounded by the work of God, and I want that for each of you too. And so, if that's you, and you're in a situation — it might have been necessary for you to be here today so that you could have an opportunity to trust, trust in Jesus. And I want to give you an opportunity right now to trust in him. So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, I'm going to pray a prayer out loud. We do this together here for the benefit of those who are praying it for the first time.

Repeat after me, say: "God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Christ, I believe he died on the cross and rose from the grave. Father, forgive me of my sins. Make me a new creation, and I will follow you for the rest of my life. It's in Jesus' name that I pray.

Amen."

Hey, can we celebrate those who just made that decision for the first time today? Woo!