Every one of us who are Christians are called to share the good news of the gospel, but

it can feel intimidating to attempt to have a meaningful conversation with a loved one. Today

on Truth For Life weekend, we'll look at the example Jesus said when he transitioned a natural

conversation into a life-altering event. Alistair Begg is teaching from John chapter 4.

Our focus in these days is a church family is upon the whole area of evangelism and particularly

of reaching out to our friends and relatives or our associates and our neighbors. For those of you

who were present the last time you will recall that we endeavor to set this conversation in its

context and we said that we would then go on to consider the conversation itself which we now do

and we notice first of all, indeed we concluded with this last time, that when we consider this

conversation we see first of all that Jesus Christ began naturally. The opening gambit there in

verse 7 is a very straightforward beginning. He asks the lady for a drink and by doing so

appeals to her sympathy. The response of the lady to this natural beginning was that she was

struck by it. It made an immediate impact upon her because Jesus had crossed two barriers in

particular. He had crossed the barrier of gender insofar as it was unfamiliar for a man to speak

to a woman in this kind of public context and he had also crossed the barrier of race or of religion

given the fact that he was Jewish and this lady was herself a Samaritan. And so it is that his

request for a drink of water is responded to by a question by the lady in verse 9, Yura Jew and

I'm a Samaritan woman, how can you ask me for a drink? It is interesting that Jesus chooses not

to launch into some kind of diatribe concerning this racial religious distinction. Instead, having begun

naturally, he then proceeds to arouse her curiosity. Now by means of this approach the Lord Jesus

raises this whole discussion to a higher plane. And he begins to show the woman that while she

assumes that she is in the position to provide what he needs, she is about to discover that she

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