Are you one of those persons who feeling hopeless.
Nobody cares. Nobody’s interested in you. You’ve had all kind of experiences.
You’ve had all kind of things, and you’ve been with all kind of people, but some that is something that tonight.
Today on in touch when all hope is gone.
The word hope is a very, very important word.
It’s a word of optimism, a word of cheerfulness, expectation.
All of us need hope about many different things in life.
And when you have hope, you do anticipate. You expect You look forward to something.
When you have no hope, there’s a sense of dread.
You find yourself in the muck and mire of something that you can’t put your finger on.
Where is my hope? In other words, what am I living for?
And there are multiples of people today who do not have any hope.
They don’t have any hope about their marriage. They have no hope about their children.
They have no hope about their health, about their finances, about their future, about their job, their profession.
They have no hope about life itself, and they have no hope about life after death.
They have no hope about eternity.
They’re living in the muck and mire of this sense of existence that go in nowhere.
They’re just there. That’s never the intent of almighty God.
intends for us to have goals in our life, to have a sense of confidence and assurance, and many people don’t have it.
And what I wanna talk about in this message is a beautiful example of a person who absolutely was hopeless.
There was nothing about their life that gave them hope, and I trust that you will identify with it because it has a wonderful ending.
but a very bad beginning. So if you’ll turn, if you will, in your bible, to John chapter 4.
And let’s read a few verses of this chapter.
Let’s start with this first verse to give you a little background. Alright?
Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John.
Although Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were.
And I thought this was this had something about Jesus.
That is, he didn’t wanna take away from anything about John.
He left you dead and went away again to Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria.
He came to a city of Samaria called Saicar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Josie.
And Jacobs Well was there, so Jesus being wearied from his journey was sitting thus by the well.
It was about the 6th hour or about 12 o’clock noon.
There came a woman of Samiri to Joel Water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
Therefore, the Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you being a Jew asked me for a drink since I’m a Samaritan woman?
But Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
Jesus sensitive and said to her, if you knew the gift of god and who it is who says to you, give me a drink.
You have asked him and he would have given you living water.
She said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.
Where then do you get that living water?
You’re not greater than our father, Jacob, are you, who gave us a well and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle, Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will first again.
But who it drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.
But the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life.
The woman said to him, sir, give me this water.
So I’ll not be thirsty, but come all the way here to draw.
This is one of the most beautiful stories in the bible of people who are hopeless. and helpless.
Don’t have any way to turn. There’s nothing good about it.
And I want you to look at this woman for a moment and see what hopelessness is all about.
And what can happen in a person’s life when they become hopeless?
Sometimes people are hopeless because of what they’ve done, because the way they’ve lived, because decisions that they’ve made.
And then sometimes, it’s not always that person’s fault.
And so when I think about this woman, I’m gonna give you a little description of her.
Number 1, she’d been married five times.
And she was living in an adulterous situation, immoral situation with the man she was living with at that particular time.
And, of course, having been married 5 times, she had suffered a lot of difficulty in hardship with these first five men, or they were to still been there.
She must have been a pretty good looking gal to have attracted 5 men.
And so there she was.
And one of the problems, though, is that she endured terrible rejection from the community.
To have been married five times in the small community, she was the talk of the community.
There was nothing they could say good about her.
What kind of woman is this who has been married five times and divorced, and now she decides just to live with this guy and not even be married to him.
And so she seemed to have been trapped by this insatiable sexual desire to have her needs met or to meet somebody else’s needs.
She was emotionally empty. To be married 5 times, nothing works emotionally.
so she was empty and seemingly failed to meet the needs of these lovers of hers.
And so she felt very morally dirty. You ever felt that way?
Am I talking to somebody who feels morally dirty that because of decisions that you’ve made in your life, you feel dirty spiritually.
You feel dirty emotionally? You could be in a situation just as badly as she was.
You’ve tried it all and nothing worked. You’ve been there, and it didn’t make any difference.
You’ve been loved by this one and loved by that one and hated by this one and hated by the other, and used by all of them, and nothing satisfied you.
You don’t have anywhere to go. All of your goals and dreams have been shattered.
And the truth is, you don’t have anything to hope for.
At this point in your life, your gentleness, your disobedience, or your rebellion returned off god a long time ago.
So where are you in life? You’re lost.
It’s dark, dingy, dismal, And there you are. It’s like being in a swamp emotionally.
There’s nothing there that is attracted to you.
And so you’ve sort of given up, but given up to what? And given up why?
And given up when? Those are the things you have to think about.
And I think there are many women today and men who have no hope.
This is the reason some people commit crime. they they can’t see any hope of doing anything.
At least in prison, you could have friends.
Least in prison, you got 3 meals a day in the place to eat, and you get even to watch TV.
There are a lot of people who are very, very hopeless.
And we’re living in the time when more people are hopeless.
This is why they cross borders.
This is why they do anything to find a little hope and a little help.
Yet even that doesn’t work. And so this is where she was at this point.
And then the personal encounter with Jesus Christ radically changed her life. and it’s radically changing people’s lives today.
And so when you think about who she was and what was going on in her life, at this particular point, she’s come into the well.
to draw water for the day, but she’s coming at noontime, which was not the right time.
But she came at noontime because the women didn’t wanna be around and they asked her sizer, and it just made her feel worse to try to be there when everybody else was there.
So in the middle of the day, here she comes for water.
And strangely, this man is sitting there.
He sent his disciples into town to buy food.
And looking at him and knowing that he was a Jew, and she was a American, she was shocked when he said, give me a drink of water.
And her response was, what do you mean give you a drink of water? You’re a Jew.
I’m a Samaritan’s. Jews and Samaritan’s do not have anything to do with each other, and you certainly wouldn’t expect me to draw your water for you.
And Jesus in his quiet and loving way began a conversation with her.
And all of a sudden, she realized that the barriers were coming down within her.
because the barrier was there. First of all, she’s talking to a man alone that in itself was enough.
The fact that he was a jew and she was a Samaritan, all of those barriers were coming down.
She can’t tell you why. She just knew that there was something about him that attracted her that had nothing to do with what usually attracted her something physical.
And she began to listen.
And Jesus said to her, give me a drink. That’s what had started the conversation.
And she said he said to her he said, you give me a drink, and I’ll give you a drink of living water.
And so Jesus began to talk with her, and they began to chat.
And so so Jesus distinguished between this well water and the other water that he was talking about.
And so she enthusiastically asked him for it, And so when he had described it, she the woman said to him, sir, listen to that.
She asked she addressed him, sir. Give me this water.
I’ll not be thirsty nor come all the way here again.
And then Jesus said to her that sort of disrupted the conversation because everything was moving right along and He was talking about living water.
And then all of a sudden, he said, call your husband. Oh, I’d mess the conversation up terrible.
And so call call your call your husband. And she told him truth.
She said, I don’t have a husband. He said, Watch this. You’re correct. You don’t.
But you have had 5, and you’re living with a man now who is not your husband.
But watch how he said that. He did not condemn her. He said, you’re right?
You don’t have one. but you’re living and want the one who is not your husband.
Notice how Jesus changed that conversation.
not by criticizing her, but by simply asking her a question.
And so what he’s doing, he’s leading her to realize where she is emotionally, where she is physically, where she is spiritually.
Now What she did is what a lot of people do today.
When you start talking to them about the lord, all of a sudden, they wanna change the subject.
So if you’ll notice what happens, when she said that, the woman said, sir, I perceive that you’re a prophet.
And then she said, our father’s worshiped in this mountain and you people say that, and let me just change his subject.
She wanna start talking about worship. Jesus didn’t wanna talk about that. He did it.
Give her a little explanation here and there. But he said, I wanna tell you about my water.
My water is he he said, my my water is living water.
And she said, He said here, whoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never thirst again.
But the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up in eternal life.
Springing up into eternal life, sir. Give me this water. Springing up. Listen. Not just water.
But spring it this water springs up into eternal life. And he had her attention, absolutely.
And as they began to talk and he said to her, as they began to talk, got got in spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.
And and so then he comes back. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming.
He who is called Christ. When that one comes, he will declare all things to me.
And then Jesus said to her, I’m the one you’re looking for. I am the Messiah.
Can you imagine what she must have thought?
First of all, she wanted to she approached this man to hate him because he was a Jew.
And in this conversation, because he accepted her, and loved her and waited for her to come to the right conclusion.
He said to her, I, who speak to you, am he, And about this time, the disciples come, and they come back, and they’re surprised because he’s talking to this woman.
and what you know rabbis, we said, would possibly be talking to 1, and especially her of all people that he wouldn’t be talking to her, But it’s interesting what the scripture says, that they they didn’t say to him, what are you doing talking to her?
Why do you why do you speak to this woman?
So in the process, the scripture says all of a sudden, she left her waterpot.
Now the bible is so perfect about the words that the writer used because it’s interesting here.
The scripture says, she left it. She was no longer interested in a water pot.
He had done something to her life all of a sudden like she had never felt before because why would she accept him so quickly?
She accepted him so quickly because when he approached her, he didn’t condemn her.
a Jew would have. He did not criticize her.
He saw something within her that made her see something within him.
For some strange reason, she felt accepted by him.
For some strange reason, she saw something in him that she’d never seen in the man before.
All of a sudden, she felt love for the first time from any man.
And so when his disciples came, she left that water pot and took off running.
And where did she go? She went to the one place that you wouldn’t expect her to go.
She went to the very people who despised her, rejected her, criticized her, shunned her, shut her out of their lives, and notice what the scripture says.
From this city, many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of a woman who testified.
He told me all things that I have done.
So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking him to stay with them, and so he stayed there 2 days.
many more believed because of his word.
And they were saying to the woman, it isn’t longer because of what you said, that we believe, but we’ve heard out for ourselves and know that this one is indeed the savior of the world.
When I think about this woman, she became the city evangelist I mean, she went from the lowest wrong to the highest.
She was the one who announced to them the Messiah. She’s the first one who knew of him.
And so when she went back, you said, well, you know, if they haven’t rejected her like you say they have, How could she be so accepted?
I’ll tell you why. Because they’d seen this woman who was full of hopelessness and despair and discouragement and just dismal in her spirit.
When she came to the city, That’s not what they saw.
She she was excited, and she was full of life.
And and she walked in like, she was the queen. Not like she was rejected. Why?
Because god had absolutely changed her life. Jesus had saved her.
When she said and realized that he was the Messiah, she accepted him as the Messiah And listen, she didn’t go home.
She did what she should have done.
She was so absolutely revolutionized in her life that the first thing she wanna do is to go tell everybody in town.
I mean, all those women who got upset about her All those men who had used her, everybody who had abused her in any way, what did she do?
She she wanted them to know this messiah that had absolutely changed her life.
And she could never be the same again.
Are you one of those persons who’s feeling hopeless?
Nobody cares, Nobody’s interested in you.
You’ve had all kind of experiences.
You’ve had all kind of things, and you’ve been with all kind of people.
but somehow there’s something missing in your life.
Well, the same thing that’s missing in your life is the same thing missing in her life.
until you are willing to receive Jesus Christ is your personal savior. Listen carefully.
you will keep on drinking from the same old wells of sex, alcohol, drugs, money, Only and only only we could go of things that people keep drinking of.
And here’s the problem. All of those things are like salt water.
When you are thirsty, you don’t wanna drink saltwater. Why? Because it makes you more thirsty.
This is why people get hooked on things as we’ve just mentioned in many different kind of things.
They think, well, if I get enough of this, I’ll be fine, though. You can’t get enough money enough sex.
You can’t get enough recognition from anybody.
You can’t get enough any of those things to take the place of what God created you for, and that’s to be one of his children.
Because you see, god created you for himself.
He created you for himself And he sent Jesus Christ into this world to pay your sin debt in full so that you could become the person god intended you to be.
so that he could take care of all of your sins. He could give you a sense of personhood.
He could give you a sense of feeling like somebody. He could give you a sense of future.
He could give you a sense of satisfaction and confidence and security. Only Jesus Christ can do that.
It doesn’t make any difference who you are, where you’ve been, and how down you may feel.
If you’re willing to say to the lord Jesus, Jesus, I’m asking you to forgive me of all my sin.
And I believe that you went to the cross, and when you shed your blood at Calvary, you paid my sin debt in full.
Thank you, Lord, that you can cleanse my life. and I’m trusting you to forgive me.
And I’m receiving as my personal savior. That’s just like being in a desert.
and somebody bringing you a whole bucket of ice water and saying help yourself.
you’ll never be the same again. And that’s my prayer for you.
And father how grateful we are, You do not condemn us.
You desire to save us.
You don’t forgive us a part of our sins, but all of them.
Not in part, but the whole as we sing.
We feel helpless, but, you know, you change all of that.
And we pray today in the name of Jesus, and every single person who hears this message who has never been saved, who finds themselves in all kind of circumstances and situations would trust you as their personal savior by simply asking you to forgive them of their sins.
and surrendering their life to you and making a missionary father to somebody out of their testimony.
In this, we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
If you’re one of those persons whoever you are and whoever you are, You can stop right where you are.
If you’re home by yourself, maybe in a one room apartment somewhere, or in some palatial palace.
You have it all, but the one thing your heart desires, one thing you’re hungry for.
If you’re willing to ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins, it doesn’t make any difference how deep down in the fucking mirror you are.
He pulled you out. You don’t have to beg. You don’t have to plead.
You don’t have to promise. You just ask him and believe he’ll do it.
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In touch with Doctor Charles Stanley is a presentation of In Touch Ministries.
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