When You Feel Like You Don't Fit In

Well, good morning, Christy Church.

How are you doing today? Oh, you look so good.

So glad to be here with you, be able to share God's word with

you. Welcome all of our locations

from all over this area. Everyone that's inside and

online as well. Thankful for all of you.

Hey, we're celebrating the 13th anniversary anniversary of the

Hannibal location. Let's just celebrate that 13

years. God has done so much at that

location. I wonder how many baptisms

they've had there over these 13 years.

I bet it's over 1000. Just absolutely incredible what

God has done at that location, how he's used whatever gifts

people have given back to him for that.

And I want a a reminder of you. You know, there's just been a a

real outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the crossing just

generally. And I think part of that is

because men have gotten very clear about their relationship

with the Lord. And I think that's happened.

A lot of that has happened through the Ministry of Uncommon

and Uncommon registration sign ups is now, you can do that now

and you do that now, You actually save money.

So it's a good time not only to register yourself and people in

your family, but also your friends because it's cheaper.

That means like you know, your money will go farther.

And I would even say you know people that you don't like very

much because if you if you register them, who knows, they

might end up being some of your best friends.

You just didn't even know that yet, you know, because God does

some pretty incredible things and he will with uncommon.

So we're in a series called Jesus is Better Than You

Thought. And the tagline that goes with

that is one you hear a lot at this church and that is God's

way is the best way. And no matter what the

circumstances is in life and I would imagine every single one

of us has had a time in our life, maybe experiencing it

right now. Maybe it's been more of a

chronic thing that we just didn't feel like we fit in.

Jesus is better than you thought, even when you don't

feel like you fit in. You know, when I was a kid, I

lived two separate lives. I'm going to describe this about

me, and I am not. I'm not going to be surprised if

it doesn't describe you too. So I had two separate lives that

I would live. Part of the part of my life was

lived with my school and neighborhood friends, and part

of my life was my church life. Now, the church life that I had

when I was a little kid and growing up was definitely the

best part of me. I I loved learning from God's

Word. I loved having the approval of

my parents and loved that they were proud of me.

And it was true that at church there was a different standard

that that was there for kids and also their parents.

It was a safer environment. It was a more predictable

environment. It was definitely a more loving

environment and and I really appreciated that now.

School and neighborhood life was a very different place, and it

had very different rules. And I learned a lot in my

neighborhood life and in my school life, but it was seldom

good. I learned a different language.

Did you all learn a different language in your school and

neighborhood life? Different set of expectation,

different set of behaviors? And that was before junior high

or Senior High, Junior high and Senior High, all that just amped

up and there was a change up. There was a change up in my

heart in the comparison between, like, the schizophrenic life

that I was leading with, my church life and my school

neighbourhood life. And it was this.

When you get into junior high and Senior High, people start

judging, measuring, condemning each other on the basis of like

all sorts of things. Like, you know, what kind of a

house you live in, what kind of clothes you wear, the people

that you hang out with, all of that.

Right? And we were going to a large

church at the time and the the youth group in that church was a

very clicked youth group. So there were like the cool kids

and there were the other kids, and then there were other kids.

And I was trying to fit in. And the problem with that

environment for me was it just felt so hypocritical that people

really weren't living out their faith in those cliques, and it

made me gravitate more to my school and neighborhood life to

invest in that, especially my sophomore junior year, senior

year. And I was looking for a place

that I could fit in, but I wanted to keep my foot in the

door of my church life or my religious life.

So I still went to church. But I don't think I could be

accused of really living that out.

It was really on the side. College, to me was just more of

the same, and it just amped up. There were things that happened

my senior year, my first second year of college at Indiana

University. All I can say is I'm just really

thankful for the grace and mercy of God.

You know, the mercy of God is not getting what you deserve.

The grace of God is getting what you don't deserve.

And there was plenty of that for me.

But you know, that wasn't the truth.

With a lot of my friends, I feel like I dodged a lot of bullets

that would have completely redefined my life.

And I wasn't making good choices.

And it wasn't until I was 20 years old that God put his call

on my life. And I I wrote here in my notes

that, you know, my direction was back to pursuing God.

And I don't know if that's really true.

I think it's more that God had always been there.

And I just, I just kind of got my a little bit more of my sense

back. It's not like I'm running after

God and he's like way out there. It's like he's been there, was

there before I was there and waiting for me to kind of make a

decision to make him first. And my life has never been the

same after that moment till this one right now.

The reason I'm telling you that is it makes me think about how

our lives are affected by our choices.

You know, it could just be one choice or maybe just a series of

choices. And maybe most of those really

weren't what you would perceive as being dangerous ones.

But you made some of these choices.

And then what it did is it just shifted the trajectory of your

life. Maybe it isn't your choice or

choices. Maybe it was the choices that

other people made that affected you.

Some of you right now may be feeling very victimized because

other people made choices and you're living in the reality of

those choices, right? And you wonder, like I was

wondering as I was preparing this, if those choices or

experiences had gone a different way, how would that have

affected the direction of my life?

Because we all have a back story.

We all have a director's cut of the movie of our life, right?

We all have alternate endings, and they may have just been a

single decision away. Now.

I don't know how many of you were like, what kind of students

you were in high school or college, but I like math and I

like science. And how many of you took a

physics class? I want to see a show of hands.

Physics. Yeah.

People that took physics are kind of like, yeah, I mean, it's

not like, yes, I took physics. I kind of liked physics.

I liked the laws of physics. You know, Isaac Newton was kind

of the he's kind of started the whole idea of physics and he has

three laws of motion and some of, you know, the third law of

motion. You didn't have to take physics

class to know this, right. Third law of motion is this

ready for every action. That's the third law of of

motion. For every action there is an

equal and opposite reaction. And the laws of life are a lot

like the laws of physics, because every action in your

life tends to have a reaction in your life.

You live in the reality of the results of the action of your

life. There's also laws of what's

called thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics

in physics is the law of entropy.

Now you may not. If I would say, would you please

define entropy for me? You'd go, Oh yeah, yeah.

But you know what? You know what it is.

And that is everything in nature tends toward disorder.

It's a law of physics, second law of thermodynamics.

Everything in nature tends toward disorder.

Wood rots, metal rust. Your lawn is going to need to be

mowed again, right? Any of you have a junior higher

living in your house, Just look at their room.

It's the law of entropy. Everything tends toward

disorder. I don't know a parent that says

would you please stop cleaning your room?

Would you please stop picking up after yourself?

Because it just bothers me. Everything tends toward

disorder. For us it might be a decision or

a group of decisions that we made.

It might be decisions that other people made that have affected

us because we all have self-inflicted wounds, wounds

inflicted by others or some combination of those that result

in those two things, reaction and disorder, right.

It's interesting how those laws of physics actually are laws of

life. And that's why the story that

I'm going to speak to you about today is so incredibly

important. It's in John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

It's so helpful. It's a story of a woman that

Jesus met at a well in Samaria. And this is what I want to

challenge you to do today with this story, because we tend to

want to read this story in the third person like that was she

did this, and then he did that, and then she did this, and then

the townspeople did that and the disciples did that.

No, I want you to read it and think about it in the first

person, and I think that's going to change the essence of the

story as it interfaces with your heart today.

That's what I want you to do. So let's begin now.

We're going to begin with this story in a place that most

people don't begin, but I think we need to because it sets up a

context to help you understand Jesus a little better.

In the story, it's in the first verse, John 41.

Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was

gaining and baptizing more disciples than John John the

Baptist, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized but his

disciples. So he left Judea and he went

back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through

Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria

called Cycar, 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. And it was about noon.

So a lot of people will read this passage and they'll just

kind of read over that. And I don't want you to do that

today because it sets up a context that we need to hear

about Jesus. And the Samaritan woman by kind

of looking at Jesus's back story, Jesus is living under

threat. You know, the Pharisees hated

John the Baptist. The Pharisees, the religious

leaders of Israel at that time, did not like the influence that

John the Baptist was having on the people.

And what this scripture is telling you, that they they like

Jesus even less because he was making even more disciples than

John was. Jesus was living under that

threat. As a matter of fact, that threat

was so pronounced that he had to leave Judea and head back to

Galilee. He was in danger.

Now I want to ask you this question.

Do you think that Jesus's mind would have been occupied with

that, like that would have been important to him?

Do you think that he would be affected by other people

threatening his life? Because I think a lot of us,

when we read about Jesus, we we feel like, like he was

impervious to that sort of stuff because he's God in the flesh.

So that's the question. Do you think it affected Jesus?

Do you think it affected him at all?

You know, the whole book of the of John, the Gospel of John was

written for one purpose and that was to prove that Jesus is God

in the flesh, that he was the Son of God and God in the flesh.

And yet you read this scripture and it's talking about not just

the fact that he's God, but that his humanity.

Right. And I don't want you to lose

this, to take away the understanding that Jesus is

fully human. Verse six that we just read is

telling you that he was tired from his journey.

Jesus got tired. He's at a well, which means he's

what? Thirsty.

He's tired and thirsty. As a human being, he was dealing

with those feelings, with those realities.

But does that humanity as human as he is, is that humanity stop

him from being fully into these upcoming moments?

And the answer is no. But the other thing that we need

to see is, is that Jesus understands what it's like to be

human. He understands what it's like to

feel certain ways, like maybe how this woman at the well would

feel. He knows what it's like for us

when we make bad choices, even though he didn't make them.

He knows what it's like when other people make choices that

make life harder for us. Because that did happen to him.

He just didn't let it control him.

He was there for a divine appointment.

John 4/4 says this now. He had to go through Samaria.

I want to. I want to.

I want to emphasize that word had like he had to.

Like really was. He was.

He was he forced to? Well, as a matter of fact,

that's really an interesting part of the story.

There were three different ways you could go from Judea to

Galilee, and the one way you didn't ever go was the way he

went. You never went through Samaria.

Samaritans and Jews hated each other, so there was a mountain

Rd. There was the King's Hwy.

There were two other ways to get up there.

They weren't as easy of a of a journey, but it was the way that

Jews went. But Jesus doesn't go that way.

Do you know why? Because he had a divine

appointment that he wasn't going to be late for with a woman who

was at a well in Cycar of Samaria.

Let me ask you this question. Do you think that Jesus has

divine appointments today? Yes or no?

Say it out loud. Do you think he has divine

appointments with you? He does.

But you know what? If we really look at our lives,

some of us, I think, actually think that he has more important

things to attend to than to bother with you.

I can assure you that Jesus never misses an appointment and

you are every bit as worthy as the woman in this story.

The question isn't whether or not Jesus will be at that

appointment. The question is how do you

respond to those divine appointments when they come upon

you? Now, let's get into the bulk of

the story, OK? Starting in verse seven, it says

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her,

would you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town

to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him,

You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman.

How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with

Samaritans. Jesus answered her.

If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asked you for a

drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you

living water. Sir, the woman said.

You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.

Where can you get this living water?

Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and

drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock?

Jesus answered. Everyone who drinks this water

will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I

give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them

will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal

life, the woman said to him. Sir, give me this water so that

I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water,

he told her. Go get call your husband and

come back. I have no husband, she replied.

Jesus said to her, You're right when you say you have no

husband. The fact is you've had five

husbands and the man that you are now have is not your

husband. What you have said is quite

true, Sir, the woman said. I can see that you're a prophet.

Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain.

But you Jews claim the place where we must worship is in

Jerusalem, woman, Jesus replied. Believe me, time is coming when

you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in

Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you

do not know. We worship what we do know, for

salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and now has

come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in

spirit and in truth, for they're the kind of worshippers the

Father seeks. God is spirit and his

worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth, the woman

said. I know that Messiah called

Christ is coming. When he comes, he'll explain

everything to us. And Jesus declared I the one

speaking to you. I am He.

Here comes the appointment. Everything about this

appointment makes the case that this woman does not fit in.

She knows it. She's coming to the well at

noon. Nobody comes to the well at

noon. They come at the crack of dawn.

But that's when all the other women come to the well, and this

woman is avoiding the confrontation that that brings.

What Jesus prophesied about her was quite true, and it

definitely had something to do with her reputation.

As she points out, she's a woman and he's a man.

Women and men did not associate socially in any circumstance.

In the ancient world. Men stayed with men, women

stayed with women in about every circumstance.

She's a Samaritan and he's a Jew.

Jews considered them half breeds compromisers on faith apostates,

so they wanted nothing to do with them.

She does not fit into talking to Jesus, at least in her own mind.

And I think that many of us don't feel worthy to talk to

Jesus because that is what exists in our own mind.

Whether it's the life that you have now, whether it's the

results of the things that you've done in the past, the

choices you made, the choices that other people made, there's

something that just makes you feel like you just don't fit in.

You know, we really don't know much about her back story, but

I'm sure there were choices. I don't know why she was married

five times. I don't know why she was living

with the man she wasn't married to.

Maybe they weren't her choices at all.

Women didn't have a lot of choices in the ancient world.

Maybe they were other people's choices.

Maybe she looked back on her life and felt like it was very

unfair, like Clayton talked about last week.

Maybe it was a combination of others choices and her choices

that put her life into this place of reaction and disorder,

which is definitely where she is, you know, that's why I think

we have to read this in the first person, because it might

be or could be every single one of us.

We look at this woman like like, you know, she's tainted, like

she's polluted. And I'm going really?

Are any of us any different? Why can't we look at this and

understand that in so many ways we resemble this woman?

In any case, Jesus comes up against this whole array of

defense mechanisms. Like, she starts talking about

religion, I mean, to someone she already recognizes as a prophet.

You worship in Jerusalem. We worship on this mountain.

How can you know you're a Jew? I'm a Samaritan.

She comes up with all this stuff.

Right? Let's go back to physics.

You know what Newton's first law of motion is?

The third law of motion is the law of conservation of energy.

Energy is conserved. That means every every action,

there's an equal and opposite reaction.

First law of motion is this. An object at rest stays at rest.

Yeah, you know that, right? OK, well, that's how we are in

our lives. We're just the same way.

Don't move my keys. You know I don't.

I think my life is pretty lousy. It's pretty crummy.

But, you know, at least I know how to live it.

At least I know what the rules are in it.

So I'm just going to stay here and quit trying to mess me up.

Quit trying to change stuff. This woman is resisting.

Jesus. She doesn't want her life

changed. Why?

Because at least it's predictable.

At least she knows where she stands and whatever this guy's

doing. I don't know, You know?

And I really, I really don't want that.

So she puts up all these defense mechanisms.

We want to protect our lives from change.

Even though change is what she needed the most, we get used to

not fitting in. So when Jesus comes up to you

and he has a divine appointment with you, what defense

mechanisms does he run into? What do you put in front of him?

Look at the 27th to the 30th verse, it says.

Just then his disciples returned and were surprised.

The Bible's so full of understatement, to find him

talking with a woman. But no one asked what?

What do you want or why are you talking with her?

They're all saying it in their mind and you know, in their

heart, but they're not going to say it to Jesus.

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and

said to the people, come see a man who told me everything I

ever did. Could this be the Messiah?

And they came out of the town and made their way toward him.

This is my favorite part of the story.

She left her water jar. You see, that was the whole

point of her being there. She had an agenda.

There was something she was supposed to do, even though it

was noon. She was supposed to get water

and bring it back home. From her point of view, that was

what the day was about. That was what that moment was

about. She needed water and she wanted

to get that water and not of and avoid conflict.

And it makes me ask this question, how many of us spend

our whole lives just filling up water jars that you just do it

this way because you always did it that way, because that's just

what you do at this particular time of day.

Like you're kind of into this groove, you know, no matter how

you judge yourself or what the circumstances are, you're just

filling up the water jar. And I want to ask you this

question right now, right now, what are you filling your water

jar with? I've seen people put out so much

effort to fill their lives with things that they don't need and

that things that will never fulfil them.

How about you? And yet keep going back to that?

Well, we keep lowering that jar. We keep filling it up thinking

that something will change. You know, Jesus, what he says to

her. Everyone who drinks the water

from this well are going to be thirsty again.

Everything that you fill up your water jar with, it's not going

to satisfy people. Sell out for that next jar of

water. Take a lesson from this lady.

It's time to leave the water jar behind and capture something

greater. Second thing that's so

incredible about this part of the story is how instantaneously

Jesus turns her tragedy into her testimony.

It's awesome, you know, that there wasn't a single thing that

changed about her past circumstances.

All those choices, whether she made them or other people made

them or they were some, you know, group of those, none of

that changed. What did change was her attitude

toward them. Her attitude had changed.

There was plenty in her life to be ashamed of, but now there was

something that was greater than her shame.

There are plenty of things in your life and in my life to be

ashamed of, but there is something here in this room and

in all of our rooms that's greater than our shame.

If you can just capture it, you can just see it was greater than

her circumstance and God was letting her know that she fit

into his plan for the ages. Jesus made her into the catalyst

for the greatest gift that anyone could receive for all of

her townspeople. He can do the same thing for

you. Do you think that Jesus was

doing a gift assessment on her? Like, do you think that like she

was filling out a form and it's like, oh, here are the things

that you're actually good at. There wasn't any of the any,

none of that, that she was good at nothing, right?

Not from her point of view, But look what God did to her.

Look what God did through her. I want to ask you what tragedies

in your life can God turn into? Testimonies won't stop the

tragedy from ever happening in the past, but your attitude

toward it can change verses 39 to 42.

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him, Jesus,

because of the woman's testimony.

He told me everything I ever did.

So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with

them, and he stayed for two days.

And because of his words, many more became believers.

Listen to this, they said to the woman, We no longer believe just

because of what you said. Now we have heard for ourselves

and we know that this man really is the savior of the world.

See, this divine appointment began with this woman who was

far from God, but it didn't end with her finding faith.

That wasn't the end of the story.

We leave this story with a whole town, finding faith, finding

faith in Jesus. And while the Samaritans faith

is a great part of this story, Jesus has something greater in

mind. Why?

Because Jesus is better than you thought.

He's better than you thought. What are we seeing?

Faith comes when ownership shifts from the giver to the

receiver. I'm going to say that again.

Faith comes when the ownership shifts from the giver to the

receiver. So Jesus was the giver, and the

woman at the well was the receiver, right?

That ownership shifted to her, and then it changed.

And then she became the giver. Come and see a man who told me

everything I ever did. And I can imagine there were

towns of people going, well, that's going to take a while,

yeah, You know, judging her, condemning her.

And then they did. She was the giver.

They became the receivers and they said it.

They go, now we don't believe just because of your testimony.

We believe because we've heard it ourselves.

And that faith was no longer her faith that found a home in them.

Now it was their faith. And even though the Bible

doesn't tell it, you know that these Samaritans took that story

of faith and shared it with others because that's the nature

of it. That's the nature of faith.

The ownership of faith continues to come as givers.

Share with receivers. Jesus is instructing his

disciples because this is what Jesus does.

He's just going to write another new story and another new story

and another new story in somebody else's life.

And in John 435, when he's teaching his disciples, he says,

don't you have a saying? It's still four months until the

harvest. I tell you, open your eyes.

Open your eyes and look at the fields.

They are ripe for harvest. Just look around you in all the

places where we are assembled right now.

Just look around you. Harvest is right there.

You're going to go to lunch in a little while.

Just look around. You might be hanging out with

your family later on. Just look around you.

You're going to go to work maybe tomorrow.

Just look around you. You're going to go to school.

Just look around you. It's all around you, all right

now. And you, if you can be the

receiver, can then become the giver.

We're moving to a time of decision.

How many years ago did we launch Macomb Clayton 2000?

Seven. So 1717 years ago.

Gosh, you're a lot older. I'm not.

Huh. So I don't know how many of you

know this or not, but Macomb and Quincy share one wonderful

thing. They both have an El Rancho Rito

people ready. Come to the steps right now.

And so we hadn't launched the. We hadn't launched the location

yet. It's one of my favorite stories

about Macomb. And we went to lunch at about

just about two blocks from the church on the same side of the

street as the El Rancherito and back.

Back then McComb felt like a long way away 'cause there

wasn't a four lane highway, it was a two lane Rd. back then and

and we were cleaning up a building that was pretty nasty

at the time. And there's a lot of hard work

that went into that. And we were in the process of

that, had a brand new young team there that I don't think anybody

would have ever thought could ever do anything worthwhile.

And it was amazing what God did. But I remember taking that team

and some people that were working to that El Rancho Rito

that day and here we are feasting on chips and salsa and

it was it was during the school year and so is packed.

Was just completely packed with people.

And I don't know, it's before or after we prayed or maybe we'd

already ordered. And I said I want you to just

look around, just look around, look around you right now.

And so they did. They probably thought and I am

pretty weird. So they probably thought, you

know, that's weird. Why am I looking at all these

people? And I go these people they don't

even know. They have no idea what God is

going to do in their midst. They have no idea.

We had no idea. But I can tell you this Jesus is

better than you thought. And he has done a great work

over those 17 years in that place, and he's done great works

in a lot of other places, right? And we're thankful for that.

But what about in this place, your place, your heart?

What is he doing there? How about right now?

In the words of Top Gun, it's time to quit kicking the tires

and start lighting the fires. Quit attending church thinking

that if I bring my water jar, I can fill it up.

Just quit that. Leave your water jar and find

the living water. Find Jesus himself in an

intimate, personal relationship. If you're here and you've never

made that decision, there's going to be somebody right over

there by that baptistry. Would love nothing more than to

talk and pray with you about that?

How in the world can we be in an environment where we saw 32

people accept Jesus Christ to be baptized last week and not

realize that we're in a life changing environment, eternity

changing environment? And why does that have to be

everybody else? Why does the object at rest

always have to stay at rest? It's the time to move.

If Jesus can come all the way from heaven to earth to be in

this room, to be on the other side of your computer, if you're

online or in that prison right now, you can make up that little

difference of space and just walk up to him and he will

change your life every bit as much as he changed that woman in

Psycharf, Samaria. And many of you are here today,

and you've made that decision for Christ.

But you're carrying all these burdens.

You're trying to be tough enough.

You're trying to be strong enough, trying to do it on your

own when you will always be a child in his eyes and to just be

that child and come to your father, come to your savior, and

pour out your heart. That's what these steps are for,

Just to pour out your heart and to move.

Would you stand with me, Heavenly Father?

I'm reminded of a good friend who who taught taught me to not

say God showed up because God never does.

He never left. It's not us that need to wait

for God to show up. He's waiting for us to show up.

And your son Jesus, he never misses a divine appointment.

But I pray that we won't let this one go by and that we will

show up for you right now in Jesus name.

Amen.