By Odon Bulamba (20th June 2003)
JOHN 4
Jesus carried on with his discussion with this Samaritan woman and you will see that Jesus answered questions that the woman didn’t ask and the woman would answer questions that Jesus didn’t ask.
Jesus asked the woman for water and the woman said, ‘you don’t have a bucket’. ‘I ask for water to drink and you speak about a bucket’. Jesus said, ‘if you want water I’ll give you water.’ and so forth. Sometimes we have to expect confusion in our lives when we say to the world something, the world will answer something else. When you say something to the devil, the devil will say something that is completely opposite to what you asked.
Jesus asked for water and then he started to ask the woman to get her husband and she said, ‘I don’t have a husband’. ‘But you have’, ‘no I don’t’ and the conversation that was about water become a problem of marriage. Was Jesus willing to marry this woman, no, so why did he want to know where her husband was? Because He had an aim, he wanted this woman to discover that He was the Messiah.
Jesus Christ didn’t drink the water and this woman didn’t give the water that He asked for. After that she went to tell all the people that I have seen the Messiah and all the people came. The woman discovered Jesus’ identity was not a Jew but the Messiah.
What identity do you give God? Is Jesus your mother, father, your friend, what identity do you give Him? Or is Jesus like a bank that gives you credits, so you go to Him and say, ‘Jesus I need that give it to me, Jesus give me,’ and you will take loan and loan after loan from Jesus but how are you going to pay back these loans? What is your boss’s identity and what is your own identity?
This woman thought that she was a Samaritan but she was not a real Samaritan because she knew there was a Messiah and Samaritans wouldn’t believe there was a Messiah. As for us Christians we have to make an effort to localise Jesus in our lives first. Jesus is the Son of God, He lives some where in heaven, or Jesus is my friend, we can give Him all the identities we want and that is true but we have to know that He is my saviour.
He is our saviour, that is the first thing and everywhere that we are we are together with him. Imagine if Jesus would visit your couple, what would you do? Imagine if Jesus would phone you and tell you tomorrow I’m coming to your house, what would you tell your wife? “Ah get ready, Jesus is coming.” ‘Where will Jesus come from?’ “No He said that He will come tomorrow, organise the house, organise yourself’. Maybe the sister will go to the hairdresser and maybe you will go too, and you will get ready but even a fly won’t go through the room on this day, if a fly comes there will be fly killer because there is a special guest and if we eat every day bread and salad, on this day that Jesus will come, the meal will change. It won’t be KFC anymore, I’ll say my, ‘wife let’s do something, how much money do I have in my pocket, I’ve got $500, so what can we prepare for Jesus?’
Sister what would you prepare for Jesus? “Roast chicken”. Here it is a really special meal and husbands will find their wives cook better meals for the special visitor than for themselves. I think on this day when Jesus will come, you will not be the same as you are with your husband on every other day. You will try to find a dress, or buy something new and everything will be nice and beautiful to look at.
Then while you are waiting for Jesus, Odon knocks on the door. The husband will say, ‘what’s the time, oh it’s 12 yes He must be here’. Maybe during this two minutes the husband will touch his hair and trousers and then say I will open the door now but the sister will say, ‘no wait a minute, mirror, mirror, am I right?’ OK open the door now, and when the brother opens the door Odon is there. What will be your reaction?
You will be disappointed and in your heart you will say, where does this one come from? The sister will say, welcome brother, how are you? But in the heart you will say let him go we are waiting for someone special, you must go now. Maybe where he is sitting is special covers and he might have damaged them in the way he is sitting and after three minutes, ‘oh I have to go now, may I pray for you?’ You know that he normally prays a long time, 15 minutes to waste. No problem brother we will pray later, thank you very much.
The man goes, you rearrange your chair and after three minutes someone knocks at the door. The husband says, ‘You open the door, this time I’m not opening it might be him again’. You look first out the window to see if it is him, if it’s not him you will say now is the time. A man comes in, someone you don’t know, and you will think this is the real Jesus, what will be the first thing you will do when he comes into your place? You’ll discern if this is really Jesus or not.
When Jesus comes into your couple what are you going to do brother and sister, everyone here. Will you open the door, what are you going to do? Bow down? Or say welcome, take a chair? What are you going to do? You’ll be scared? What are you going to do if Jesus comes in, maybe you are going to lose control. Sometimes you even forget what to say and sometimes you might even shake because you see the presence of something very powerful in your life and when Jesus is here instead of getting clothes, or bow down you might even faint, this happens. You might not even say welcome, or come here, you will say I’m tired, I’m really hot let me take off my clothes and you are a little bit confused, why that?
Because when the physical body we have discovers spiritual matters, this body becomes weak and when it becomes weak we might be in confusion. We might answer the way this Samaritan woman answered Jesus, she answered as if she would talk to an enemy. She talked to Jesus as if Jesus was low and she was very high to the point that she said, you don’t even have a bucket. Maybe Jesus didn’t have one there but had one at home. As for us when we come close to Jesus in our lives we must have a certain strategy, we must have a plan.
When your wedding was organised there was a program to follow, there was this, this and that, first thing the couple will come in and it will be that way, that way, that way. For someone who has never been married, they don’t have the time to think about how a wedding is organised they have other programs. Me, who is not married for example, you cannot ask me to welcome someone in my place like someone who is married. I know that if I go to Peter’s, his house will be a nice place because there is a woman living in that house but if you go to a bachelor’s place, don’t be surprised if you find a shoe on a chair. Don’t be amazed if you see the banana skin that he ate three days ago under the chair and when he realises that he will take it, apologise and throw it away. Maybe a glass that was used to drink water five days ago is still on the table and when you come in you can see that it is really unorganised and untidy and you will think is this really someone’s place or is it a pig living here.
‘Brother I’m going to pray for you in your bedroom’ and maybe he hasn’t changed his sheets for 15 days. You’ll find one blanket here and the pillow over in the corner, the clothes he took off are on the floor and you find the pens and sheets of paper all over the place and when you get close he will start wiping the chair and say you can sit here. This is normal life and these pictures are also pictures the spiritual life.
If really you are not married to Jesus and you want to live in a Christian life as a Christian bachelor you can be sure that your life will be disorganised and how do you become a bachelor Christian? It’s when you put Jesus outside your life, to say Jesus I want to organise myself, I want to make my own decisions, I don’t want you to tell me. Jesus feels pushed aside because he’s not there to assist you anymore, for example when you wear your shirt and when you put it on back-to-front, nobody is going to help you but if the brother does it today, the wife will say no, stop where are you going there, that is not the right way to wear a shirt, she will take it off and put it right and sometimes there are women that will say, I don’t like this shirt, take it off, Michael you won’t go to work with sandals like this, you will leave this here.
Michael will say, it’s cold and he wears his jacket, Sylvie will say this jacket you wore this three times, it’s dirty. So she will take the jacket and put it in the washing machine but he will say, I don’t have another one, I am cold now. She will say, ‘tomorrow you can buy another one’. Michael will think I suffer but she is right, and he will buy another one tomorrow.
This is the Christian way, Jesus is there to control us and say, this is missing you must put this here, you must put this at this place, this doesn’t deserve to be there because I am going to visit you. When He comes He watches how you welcome Him and watches how you get close. My sister imagine if you receive Jesus at your place and you prepare mussels and Jesus says, is that what I am going to eat and you say yes. How can we eat that, you might have to teach him how to eat mussels, he might eat it with the shell so you will have to say, this is the way we eat it at our place but I think that if you really welcome Jesus at your place you won’t prepare mussels, you will prepare something special.
Sometimes when you pray you know that you are going to meet your Lord, what do you bring as a meal. What do you give Jesus as a prayer, or perfume or nice smell? I give you a last example, one day there was a competition somewhere and for this competition everybody had to get well clothed and there will be a competition about it. So you must get ready accordingly and as for us who are going to judge we will look at the quality of clothes you wear and the perfume you wear. Everybody bought perfume and beautiful clothes and everything was expensive and a man looked and in his pocket he didn’t have $2000 and he looked at what people wore as clothes and it was very expensive. A pair of shoes would cost $3,000 for example while himself didn’t even have $2,000.
He went home, he took a ride on mower because this man didn’t have a beautiful car so he wore his boots and work clothes and didn’t have perfume so he had a hen in it’s place and took the waste from a hen and mixed it with water and put it on his body and went to the ceremony. When he went in, the person beside him looked at him and walked away. He got close to the second person and this person fled also. He made all his adversaries flee, he wouldn’t talk but the smell he had made the other people unable to complete the competition and eventually he was the only candidate, there was no competitors and he won the prize.
So what do we have to do to win the prize in our prayers, we must have a strategy and if we apply this strategy we will win. Has my prayer a good smell in God’s eyes or is my prayer a good smell only for man’s eyes. You can ask Odon to pray in English and you will find 20 mistakes but when someone who lived here and studied here prays in English all the words will be at the right place to the point the people will say I like how this person prays. This person knows how to pray but when Odon prays everybody is tired.
We are going to stop here, we have to analyse the life of this Samaritan woman and we must get ready all the time to meet Jesus and Jesus is also asking us for water to drink, what are we going to offer Him? Although He lives in our lives we are liars and drunkards, we are drunk with our sins but Jesus is there and accepts to be in our lives knowing that one day we are going to change and be transformed. The little faith we have, we have to give to Him and say, ‘Jesus this is all that I have. I know my faith is very small Lord, my faith is very small but you can help me to have a faith that won’t be thirsty anymore. You will help to have a faith that will help me to know who I am and I will discover you are really the Messiah so help me Lord to get ready to be always ready to meet you in my life and when we walk together I will be proud to walk with Jesus and when we sleep together with you Lord I will be proud to be with Jesus in my bed’. Make sure Jesus is always in your life
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