The encouragement women (actually) need: Part 1

Messages targeting Christian women, whether from books, podcasts, or even (some) pulpits, are often confusing, contradictory, and sometimes even simply unbiblical. Sometimes light hearted attempts at encouraging women result in vague, silly, or unintentionally condescending platitudes. 

Women don’t need to be told in yet another creative way just how wonderful we are. Hopefully we already have some awareness of our strengths, but we also know all too well the ways that we feel like we are failing, the areas where we are pretty certain that we are just not measuring up. 

What our souls need is truth that brings life, not just a pat on the back to make us feel a little better about ourselves.  We are starving for encouragement that leads to greater and deeper love of Jesus - a love that beckons invitation to live purposefully for His glory.  

Looking at Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well in John chapter 4, we find four biblical truths that bring life.  

Here, we will look at the first two encouraging truths: 

Jesus chases after us. 

“…Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water..” (John 4:6-7)

Jesus was traveling with His disciples from Judea to Galilee, and going through Samaria was the quickest way to get there. However, many Jewish people so despised the Samaritans that they chose a much longer route to avoid the whole area.

But Jesus intentionally chose the path that would lead them through Samaria. 

More than that, He chose the path that would lead Him to this woman. 

And once encountering this woman,  Jesus does something truly astonishing - He asks a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. This encounter was a shocking break of culture and tradition.

Out of love, Jesus engages with the women at the well. 

Out of love, Jesus still chases after us. 

1 John 4: 9-10 says:  “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Jesus still chases after us. 

No gift is as sweet as the One who gave His life for ours.

No expression of love can be matched by our Creator God who longs for us to know Him.

Jesus calls us out of hiding.

Sitting at the well in the heat of the day, Jesus and this woman have a conversation about water. 

He’s been walking and He is thirsty. She walked some distance with a large jug to gather water for her house. Water is the topic of the moment. 

 Talking about water, Jesus begins to reveal His true identity to her “Whoever drinks from the water I will give him will never be thirsty again,” He says (v. 14). 

 The woman does not quite understand. I can imagine her thought process was something like:  “Yes! Ok, thank you very much - I will take some of this water that you say promises life and will end my thirst, and then I can eliminate one of my daily tasks and move on to the other many things I am supposed to get done.”

 But Jesus will not allow her to ignore the deeper issues of her heart. 

Jesus calls us out of hiding. And He calls us out of sin. 

 Out of love, Jesus presses into the pain that she thought was invisible. 

“Go, call your husband,” He says (v. 16)

 Out of love, Jesus begins to peel away at the layers of sadness, sin, and idolatry this woman was attempting to conceal. 

 It may be tempting for some of us to view this woman as if she was some kind of major, special sinner. She’d had a lot of husbands. We don’t really know whether those husbands died or if they abandoned her.  We do know that she was now living with a man who wasn’t even her husband. Maybe somewhere along the way she gave up on the idea of marriage and decided companionship would have to be enough. 

 The truth is though, we were all just like this woman at the well. 

 Romans 5:8 tells us: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

We were enemies of God, living life on our own terms, when Jesus chased after us. 

And when He chased after us, Jesus also called us out of hiding and called us out of sin.  

And Jesus still calls us out of hiding.  

We all hide. This woman at the well was hiding by going to get water at the hottest part of the day when she wouldn’t have to see anyone else. She was hiding by avoiding people. 

“Women today may not have to worry about getting water at the well, but we hide in many other ways. We hide by painting smiles on our faces and saying we are “fine” regardless of what is truly happening in our lives.”

Women today may not have to worry about getting water at the well, but we hide in many other ways. We hide by painting smiles on our faces and saying we are “fine” regardless of what is truly happening in our lives. We hide by staying busy - filling our schedules with so many commitments that there’s not ever time to wrestle through deeper issues of our hearts, or to even  have honest conversations with other human beings. We hide by immersing ourselves in the latest fad, fashion trend, diet, or entertainment obsession. We hide in a million different ways, so afraid of admitting our vulnerabilities or sin struggles, so terrified of being truly seen. 

We buy into the world’s lies that we have to have it all together all of the time. 

“We buy into the world’s lies that we have to have it all together all of the time.” 

But the truth is that we are all messy messes desperately in need of grace.

Jesus is not fooled by this woman at the well and He isn’t fooled by us. He doesn’t tiptoe past our pretense or our coping mechanisms. He will pull back the layers and speak right into the thing we are hiding from. It may be painful. But it is necessary.

The call to follow Jesus is a call to faith and obedience. No part of our lives remains untouched by His grace, and no part of our lives remains our own. 

Out of love, Jesus chases after us. And out of love, He will reveal our idols and uncover our deepest wounds. Jesus calls us out of hiding and into a life of freedom and joy with Him. 

We will take a look at the next two truths we can glean from the story of the woman at the well in the next installment of this article series, but for now let's ask ourselves these questions: 

Do we really believe Jesus pursues us and longs for us to know Him? Where in our lives today is Jesus calling us out of hiding? Let’s ask Him to bring light to the dark places of our hearts, to reveal sin that has been hidden, and to bring healing to wounds that have long festered.

As ministry leaders, we need to be sharing this kind of encouragement. Are the women in our churches being told that Jesus loves and pursues them even in the midst of their sin?

Are they encouraged to walk in freedom and joy in Christ? Is this message communicated consistently from our leaders, staff, and from the pulpit? Are there spaces and opportunities in our churches for women to not only learn about Christ’s love, but to also grow in confession and experience healing?

Jess Proudfoot is an urban missionary in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She is part of the church planting team and also serves as the Director of Women’s Ministries at Grace Harbor Church in New Bedford.