Thank you. Jesus commissioned his followers to take the good news to all the world.

Often, though, well-meaning evangelists get caught up in the wrong focus.

What exactly is the message we're called to share?

We'll hear the answer today on Truth for Life as we examine Jesus' interaction with an outcast woman.

Alastor Begg is teaching from John's Gospel, Chapter 4.

First of all, in fact, I have three points.

Number one, the encounter, number two, the impact, and number three, a lesson or two.

First of all, the encounter, the encounter between Jesus and this lady.

We didn't read it, and instead of listening in on the conversation, as it is reported in the third person by John, I want to suggest to you that it might come across with a little more

vibrancy if only we could have the lady hear herself to tell it in her own words.

Close your eyes, waggle your head twice, and then listen up.

It started out for me the way most days do, just a routine trip to the well.

So you'd understand when I say that I was caught off guard

even by the presence of someone else there, and even more so when the individual proved to be a man,

and then when he spoke to me. I found myself immediately recalling. I said, hey, we don't do that. You're a man, I'm a woman, kind of, and you are a Jew, and I'm a Samaritan, and we don't really converse. But he aroused my curiosity, because he created the sensation that I was the one in need of the water, although he was the one who was asking for a drink of water.

He just pointed to the well, and he said, everyone who drinks this water will will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst again.

Well, I said, sign me up for that, because I don't want to have to keep coming back to this well

to draw water. Then he says to me, go call your husband and come back.

Well, my first reaction was, which husband does he want me to call?

But all I could get out was, I have no husband.

Well, you know, he didn't try and probe. In fact, it quickly became clear that

he knew it all. And I immediately said to him, I can see that you must be a prophet. And indeed,

...