Testament
One Interesting Fact About the Women of the New
Testament
By Beth Moore
“If you only knew the gift God has for
you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living
water”
(John 4:10, NLT)..
.
There is a dreamer somewhere in all of us.
.
This dreamer wants to believe in ridiculous
things like happy endings, enduring romances, quests and kingdoms, buried
treasures worth hunting and valiant adventures worth sweating and bleeding
for.
.
We have a dreamer in there who wants to believe
that good really can overcome evil and that, one glorious day, the poorest of
the poor will be the richest of the rich (James 2:5).
I am talking about the kind of dreamer that
believes every life has an actual purpose and that a plan is in motion that can
and will and must turn out well.
.
The Bible shamelessly validates every single one
of those dreams with a corresponding reality.
Eternity Set in Our Hearts
The Maker of heaven and earth embedded deep
within the human psyche an innate suspicion that He is out there.
.
We can silence it, of course, but it takes a
fair amount of commitment to keep it silent.
.
More often it whispers in the quiet when we are
all alone and squirms in the stillness when we’ve got no place to go.
.
The writer of Ecclesiastes called it “eternity set in our hearts” (Ecclesiastes
3:11).
When
we are courageous enough to sit in the dark without the light of a cell phone,
we know instinctively this life cannot be it.
We know that our physical bodies seem
ill-fit for our ageless souls.
Though death and dying are as natural as birth
and living, we are insulted and offended by them with the vehemence of a
creature designed to outlast them.
.
Something in us keeps on insisting that dying
seems wrong, like we are malformed for it - maladjusted to it, even after
innumerable generations of sons and daughters who cannot, for the life of us in
all our evolving, find a way to avoid it.
.
We have never really believed that seeing is
believing.
.
We stare at the sea wondering about the deep. We
stare at the stars wondering how far we are from a whole different world.
We are All Looking
We know somewhere deep inside of us that God is
out there, that He can be found and known.
.
And that perhaps the person we were created to
be is found and known in Him. We may not want to want Him.
.
But we do. We were fashioned to.
.
We are dying to find someone worthy of our
unabashed, wholly unguarded trust.
We are all looking for Jesus. We just
keep looking for Him in other faces, palms and places.
When we do find Him, we find the Giver (Romans 8:32).
That part of us dying to find someone to freely
give ourselves to was created in His image.
· If Jesus wants your hands free, He has something to
put in them.
· If He wants your feet loose, He has somewhere to
plant them.
· If He wants your mouth shut, He has a new set of
words to put in it.
He is not trying to cheat you or trick you. He
is not placing bets on you or playing games with you.
He does not dispense grace with an eyedropper.
He drenches us with it.
He does not offer bare existence. He extends
life abounding in blessing, power, passion and purpose.
.
If people tell you God is stingy, they do not
know their Bible. .
4 Life Changing Words from Jesus
There
is this fabulous scene in the Gospel of John where Jesus sends His disciples to
town to grab some lunch. He stays behind and meets a woman at a well.
.
She had been preoccupied for years, repeating
the same relational cycle, filling up the same empty jar the same empty way,
looking for the life she was longing for.
.
We are not told her name. It is easier that way
to give her ours. She had no idea that audacious love was staring her right in
the face.
.
Jesus said four words to her that I think He wants to say
to each of us: “If
you only knew . . . ” (John 4:10a, NLT).
“You.”
.
Not someone else you know. Not someone needier,
less self-sufficient, gutsier or more religious.
.
Once the woman knew, she left that jar, ran into
town, and told everybody she could find to come and see.
.
Because, once you
know, you want everybody else to know, too.
“If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are
speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water” (John
4:10, NLT)..
That’s what Jesus said. If you only knew what He
has for you. Not only after you kiss this life goodbye but, here on this earth
and now in this season.
.
If only you knew, your heart would be so swept
up in audacious love that nothing could keep you from the life you were born to
live.
.
.One Interesting Fact About Women of the
New Testament
You can forget about not being His type.
.
I did a little research in the New Testament
from the first page to the last and drew up a list of every female on sacred
record who was personally impacted by Jesus.
.
The age-span stretched the slack out of a tape
measure all the way from a little girl to a woman in her 80’s.
.
Some among them
were single; others married, widowed and divorced.
.
Some were impoverished; others were wealthy.
Some were just getting by and some were of means enough to support Jesus and
His band of disciples on the traveling circuit (Luke 8:3).
Some of the women marked by Jesus were moms and
some were not. Some were in ministry; others were merchants.
.
Some were religious types. Still others, not.
But no matter what, they were all His
type. And they were just like us.
In Acts 16, a very successful businesswoman is
just one verse removed from a girl enslaved and trafficked (Acts 16:14- 16).
Among the women who encountered Christ in the
pages of Scripture, you find the devastated, bleeding, busy, grieving, sick,
dying, doubting, thriving, adulterous, ambitious, wise, despised,
demon-possessed and severely oppressed.
.
If you are drawing breath, you are Christ’s
type.
If Mary Magdalene could not run Him off with
seven demons, then you cannot run Him off with your problems.
.
He has come looking for you. And somewhere deep
inside of you is a girl looking for Him.
.
We all wish to be desired -- to be loved and
accepted.
God has met this need through the most loving
act ever done in the history of the world.
.
God loved us so much that He sent His son
to earth to live as a man.
.
We are separated from God due to our sin, so God
provided a way for us to spend eternity with Him in heaven.
.
In a great act of love, Jesus died on the cross
as a perfect substitute for each of us. He died, was buried, and rose again.
.
When we acknowledge His gift and accept it, He
comes to guide our lives and love us as we have never been loved before.
.
God has made it possible for you to know Him
and experience an amazing change in your own life by receiving His Son,
Jesus Christ, and have eternal life.
.
Say the following prayer:
“Father God, I confess I am a sinner and
my sins have separated me from You.
I am truly sorry. I now want to
turn away from my past sinful life and live a new life pleasing to You.
Please forgive me, and help me avoid
sinning again.
I believe that Your Son, Jesus Christ
died for my sins, was resurrected from the dead, is alive, and hears my prayer.
I invite Jesus to become the Lord of my
life, to rule and reign in my heart from this day forward. Thank You that
according to your Word, I am now born again.
Please send Your Holy Spirit to help me
obey You, and to do Your will for the rest of my life. I promise to study Your
Word – the Bible.
Please use me for Your glory.
In Jesus' Name I pray. Amen.”
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Excerpt taken from Audacious, by Beth Moore.
http://www.lifeway.com/Article/Audacious-Beth-Moore-Ministries
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