The perceived opposition between being practical and being spiritual is a false understanding. In reality, to be spiritual is the most practical action one can take. Just as Jesus offered the woman at the well living water, He offers us the Holy Spirit, whose guidance and presence are our most essential and practical resources for navigating life.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:01] Often in our learning, we set up for our minds a pair of opposites. I don’t know whether you have been in a conversation where people have said, this is the right thing and this is the way to understand, and someone else will say, oh no, but I think you find the right thing by what works. You actually have at that moment people who are talking about a pair of opposites and they’ve picked on whether it works or whether there’s a theory. The understanding of that that is clear is really saying that there’s two ways to address a question, both having validity and one can be a practical way and the other can be a theoretical way. In Christian circles, sometimes though, that true set of opposites, both of which have got a place in our thinking, are sometimes interpreted as practical or spiritual.

[00:01:10] My aim this morning is to show you that that’s a false pair of opposites. In fact, my aim is to get through so we can see from the scriptures that to be spiritual is the most practical thing to be. And so they’re not a true pair of opposites. They do describe different approaches. Where I saw that illustrated for me being a young person brought up in Bible colleges at which my dad worked all my life, all my young life. But I used to see the students and I saw it often so illustrated. The difference between being practical and being theoretical sometimes misunderstood as being practical or spiritual. One was when there was a young, well not young, he was older than me, a student who graduated and was ready to take on a church, had a call to a church, first big call for him.

[00:02:18] And Buddy was single and people kept advising him it’s pretty difficult to be a pastor when you’re not married because you’re distracted is one reason. And because, well, lots of reasons, if you’ve got a wife she can also join in the ministry and address people who have issues that they don’t want to say to a man. And so he saw that he was going out into a church single so he rang up the most effective pastor in the city, this is another city, not Brisbane, and asked him and said, have you got any young women in your church who would be a good pastor’s wife? The man said yes. He happened to be the church I went to and I knew there were lots of girls there and he advised the name of a girl, he arranged to have them meet, they got engaged pretty quickly and married

[00:03:15] and he’s been a successful pastor in my estimation ever since. Now, he was the most practical of all the students I saw going about the business of getting married. You know, overseas, where I went to study at one seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, they don’t exist because there are some people who are Baptists and some of this and that, but mostly their constituency are churches that don’t have ordination. But they take a graduation from the four-year master’s degree, the THM at Dallas, as being what they consider graduating you into the ministry. And of the 2,000-odd students who are there, most of them were heading towards Christian ministry and getting the degree was their ordination, different from what we do. We have a big ceremony and all the churches come together and you get ordained.

[00:04:16] But over there, it’s when you get your master’s degree from Dallas, that’s the nearest thing they have. But the thing is, they didn’t want their students graduating as bachelors. And they had a reasonable number of students. Mostly they were young married couples, but mostly also there was quite a few who were single students. I happened to be one, and they used to put on parties. I’ve told some of you this before where we were commanded we had to go it wasn’t an option and the shock of my life was when I got there that there were all these women they didn’t, they invited local young people from their constituency churches but only the girls it was rather stacked out and so the single young men would walk around during the night and I watched and saw no one ever stopped and told me this is what it was for

[00:05:12] I found out the hard way so I’m standing on the sides and watching all the other students and they go to one girl and talk and seem to scribble something down when they finish you can go to another one they’re actually writing names and phone numbers and they’d go around and that was what they were meant to do Americans are very obedient to those sorts of schemes and I didn’t know about that and I talked to a few people but every time I walked off without writing anything down they had a funny look in their face But it was because they were being practical I discovered the Americans were very practical especially on that topic where I went to church in First Baptist Church Dallas, there were lots and lots of people and they seemed to want to seek me out, some of the ones in the choir and see me afterwards and say

[00:06:02] Jim I can tell you where you find the nurses quarters and you know why do I want to go and find a nurses quarters Well they had a reason who find the different girls available to ask out and the Americans have a different system and wowee, it’s so practical. But does that mean it’s not spiritual? It does mean that it’s believing and starting at the action end of finding out what to do. We have a verse in the scriptures that speak to the issue but the issue I’m talking on is not the value both of practical and theoretical. They’re the true opposites. But speak to the issue of practical versus spiritual. And I’ve got a number of verses. The first one from the Gospels, it’s in John and then later from the Book of Proverbs and because the Book of Proverbs is a book dedicated to teaching wisdom

[00:07:02] exactly what it is to be wise and you tell me as we go through some of these verses whether it’s being practical or whether it’s being spiritual or are we proving my thesis that today I hope you take on board that to be spiritual is the most practical thing to do. But this is from Jesus meeting the woman at the well. What about Jesus? Was he being practical in stopping at the well? Probably he wanted a drink. I guess we know from the conversation he wanted a drink but Jesus always seemed to have a purpose. He illustrated in helping people and speaking to people. I think that there was something of the Holy Spirit leading him in all of it. And the woman says to him in verse 9 the woman says to him he says no, he says to her give me a drink and she’s curious about why he’s asking for a drink.

[00:08:07] And Jesus answered her look at the verse on the screen Jesus answered her verse 10 if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you give me a drink you would have asked him and he would have given you living water now you understand that in Jesus’ talk living water was a metaphor for that flow of the spirit in popular culture living water back then could stand for running water because running water was known to be cleaner and life-giving running water was always a bit of a symbol of sustenance for life if you get stuck in the forest you have to find a stream sooner or later and drink so living water in the most common way meant running water, but as Jesus used it, he used it of the Holy Spirit. How do I know that? I won’t put the verse up, but there’s that verse in John 7

[00:09:19] where Jesus talks about he who believes in him shall have rivers of living water flowing from their innermost being. And it’s a spiritual, a promise of spiritual things. So Jesus is saying to the woman, in this business about getting a drink, it’s not really a practical question. If you knew who I was, you’d ask me and I will give you living water, the flow of the Spirit. And so Jesus is immediately speaking about his purpose. He’s one that is deeply involving the Holy Spirit of God and his help for you and his leadership of you is something that is spiritual. But that doesn’t make it non-practical. In fact, Jesus is saying to the woman, if you just knew who I was, the most practical thing is to ask me and I will give you to drink. And he’s referring, I think, a little bit to some of the reasons

[00:10:22] why she was there at an odd time to dodge the other women who were critical of her morality. And, well, moving on, this business about spiritual being not the opposite of practical, I could see in that young man who knew how to get married, he rang up the church where there were probably most girls and he rang up the pastor, this man, Alan Tinsley, was such a wonderful man at helping people, young men. And he became later a leader of the denomination because of just the giftedness he had at helping people. And he was very practical. He used to help me and I learned how to get interested in winning people to Christ because someone rang up from the country and I think it was a returned missionary who had decided to move up to the city and had a nephew who wasn’t yet converted

[00:11:25] but the lady was wanting something to happen spiritually and she rang the same pastor. He was sort of a man of action and thinking up things to do practically. And she said, this is the name of the young lad and he said, I know what to do. Then he rang me up and he said, this fellow is your age, Jim. This is his address. It’s just across the railway line from you. Then he said, go get him. And he had this way about him, that pastor, you don’t sit there with the idea, you get into action. I went to see the fellow, invited him to a rally and he became a Christian that night. God works through people taking practical steps and Jesus is one who seems to know that idea. If you knew the gift of God, some little practical knowledge as to what God gives and who I am, you’d be asking me and I’ll give you living water

[00:12:33] because Jesus is in the business to help you in all your needs but he’ll help you predominantly by pointing to you how you can know through him the movement, the ministry, the person of the Holy Spirit. Let’s go to a few verses in Proverbs because the book of Proverbs is often understood as a place where you find practical wisdom and having that idea in my head I began to chase down some verses from Proverbs just to sort of sweat out, just to bring out this question of spirituality really being connected to practicality. So we’ll go to Proverbs 15 and in Proverbs 15 verses 16 and 17 we’ll go through a number of Proverbs and you’ll see first of all the practicality of what the Proverbs are. They are not just about ideas to teach you and that you store in your head and go back to whatever is your normalcy of action.

[00:13:35] No, they are statements as to how you can act differently in a way that is understood as wise. It’s better, better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it. So many people across the ages have discovered, some have written about it, it’s the source of many a novel of great treasure but trouble with it. Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it. Better is a dinner of herbs. Now, some people these days think that’s a wonderful dinner and I’m trying to learn to believe that. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened oxen and hatred with it. There are pretty sharp sort of piece of wisdom there. Let’s go and you won’t necessarily see my thesis in every one of these proverbs

[00:14:44] but across the drift of them, I think, I hope you will. Let’s go to the next one which is in Proverbs. Chapter, is it 13, verse 20? Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. You’ve got to bring to this the proverb definition of wisdom, by the way. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs says. Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. You know, one of the most foolish things I see in churches, since my ministry has been one travelling around as an itinerant from place to place, I had a type of evangelism called an extended crusade that would go for four months and we went for one church for four months and had a mixture of teaching and evangelism. And I want to tell you, it’s somewhat of a shocking thing to tour Christian churches and keep meeting what I think are a lot of foolish people.

[00:15:49] Not a lot, but a fair number of. Not foolish because they’re at church. I think that’s a smart thing to do. But foolish because there are some spiritual principles that people don’t seem to wise up to. One of them is with parents. Where you set your kids to spend their time will reap you a reward, whether it be good or bad. And it is so much a more valuable thing. I praise the Lord, I shouldn’t brag, but my parents were pretty, pretty cluey. When we had to shift churches, which we had to do periodically because Dad’s ministry took him around Australia to different states. And even in one state, we’d be shifting to where we’d be located and he would want us to go to a close church. And so it was when he was principal of one college and then shifted to another, which was in that street,

[00:16:55] same street as the church I just told you about, where that theological student asked the pastor. We shifted houses and it meant that we got taken away from the youth group that we’d had in the previous church. But through connections, my dad had and he was good friends with that pastor. When we arrived there the very Sunday morning, there was one of the youth group, in fact, one of the leaders of the youth group who was there to meet us on the steps and introduced myself and my brother, my older brother, to a pair of brothers who were the same ages as us two. The one my age was here last Sunday morning. And from 60 years back, He’s still my friend. But he and I and my brother and his equivalent big brother, we had immediate friends arranged. And it matters a lot to young people.

[00:17:56] It’s very difficult if your parents drag you off to a church and they hardly wait around and don’t have anybody they know and you don’t get to know people too quickly and the pressure’s on you to be studying so hard at school. And there’s no value understood in the youth group. I praise God for the foresight of that mixture of my dad and that church. From the very first day in that church, I didn’t feel annoyed at being yanked away from my friends at the other one. I had fresh friends and joined in and had a good experience in that place. In fact, I think my parents, I would give them praise that they never got on my back. They used to tell me I needed to learn how to study, which was true. They weren’t negligent in wanting me to do a bit of study. I didn’t.

[00:18:57] But they were wanting me to put my time into going to church. We went twice on Sunday. There was a youth group that I’d already been introduced to by, as I just told you. They knew it was more important, my spiritual growth, than it was to make me become the big champion in school. I was talking about exams. Now, I know it’s important that you’ve got to get through your exams, but there’s a balance needed somewhere. And if we have a balance that doesn’t understand spiritually, you don’t really need it. It’s more practical. Let’s get through with a good education. I want to tell you that you’ve got a couple of things that are not true opposites. Let’s keep going to the next one, and they’re just proverbs. Whoever walks with the wise, no, a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

[00:20:10] The tongue of the wise commends knowledge. Now, you might have thought from my last comment about the last proverb that I was playing down knowledge. I wasn’t. I was prioritizing spiritual knowledge. And I praise God for my parents who not only did just what I’ve been telling you, but they got me learning scriptures. And they understood, you know. In fact, they weren’t worrying about the periodical table too much. At school, they worried about that I would know the scriptures. And there’s something in the power of the scriptures. You know, if you’ve got the definition of wise, we’re just looking at proverbs that talk about being wise. The book of Proverbs says the beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Wise is not just cluey about information,

[00:21:12] information, but rather the wisdom of seeing the priority of knowing God leads you to the wisdom that you’ll understand the knowledge that’s the accurate knowledge about reality in Christ. Knowing Christ is more important. And so that’s the type of knowledge. Now, that’s not separate from knowing other knowledges. And getting on good and becoming goodly socialized and everything is not as big a priority in God’s mind as you’re becoming wise to what is a spiritual walk. The tongue of the wise commends knowledge. So that sort of spiritual wisdom will get you to prize knowing things. And a part of the learning that we do in church gives a person a way to appreciate what it is to grow in knowledge. The mouths of fools pour out folly. And when you listen to people who are right away from God,

[00:22:19] when you listen to people who have never found God, they don’t know what true wisdom is. And a lot of what they spend their time on is foolishness. But you know the definition of folly in the Proverbs verses is that sort of behavior that ruins things, is that sort of behavior that will take you away from God. That’s what folly is. The mouths of fools pour out folly. And what I see in the many churches, I want to tell you this, is a lot of people who want a little bit of religion because they want a little bit to even get converted and know Christ. But they pour in all their time to things that don’t add up to being spiritual. And that’s because I think it’s the wrong definition to say you’re practical or spiritual. I think the most practical thing you can do is to lead someone to the living water.

[00:23:21] You do it with animals. You lead them to where the water is. You provide a trough of it if you can. If not, you show them how to get to the stream. But we human beings are made with a Holy Spirit need because we have a spirit. There is a spirit in man, the Bible says. And when that is brought to us, when we’re brought to it, like the woman at the well, Jesus said, if you knew who it was that was speaking to you, you would ask of him and he would give you living water. Do you know that actually happens in churches, in people who are maturing as young people growing up. It happens when people come into churches without having known too much. There is something going on in the church that’s more than just the culture, more than just the fact that you found groups of people. It’s more than social.

[00:24:24] There is someone who is the key to understanding about a church. In our communion services, we try and illustrate it with the bread and the wine and the calling at the Lord’s table. talking about a being where we have fellowship with him it’s because there is this unrecognised by many folk truth about what church is it is the presence of Christ Jesus said we’re two or more I gather together in my name there am I in the midst and what makes this morning so important is the presence of Christ and there is in our coming here something that’s beneath the seams of your visible eyes it is something that is in the spiritual reality of what is happening right now that Jesus is here he said two or more gather together in my name we open this meeting this in prayer we’ve opened in his name and Jesus is here

[00:25:25] do you understand it’s Jesus who’s here that makes this gathering worth being at I’m glad my parents dragged me in many cases to church twice on Sunday I don’t want to make this a legalism but I think it’s just plain practically very smart to take your young ones into the presence of Jesus it’s also smart of the church people the people who know the Lord to do what they can did you notice how in the introduction the little comment was made and the people who go to the prayer meeting at least some of them I wasn’t there this morning but the prayer meeting people their names were given because they come and pray but you know what I think that the purpose of that mention is not only to get more of you to the prayer meeting is to get you to realise that there is a spiritual dynamic that that prayer causes.

[00:26:34] And there’s nothing more thrilling. I know as a person who used to get asked to come and still do other places sometimes but get asked to come to speak that when there’s been people praying there’s something that happens. I do a different sort of task. When people have prayed there’s something that just happens. So in my young days when there was a little revivalistic movement amongst young people here in Brisbane. I had a team of 27. We’d go along, someone would ring up and ask me to come and preach. We’d hold 27 or whatever it was on each occasion, different numbers up and down. But we’d go along. Only three or four of us would take part in the actual behind the microphone. The rest would find a room to pray. I said, boy, when you’re preaching and there’s 15 or so people saying, God, send your Holy Spirit.

[00:27:27] Things used to happen. I could tell you a whole host of little stories that don’t really matter the details, but some things happened that was just God. It’s one of the most thrilling things to be at a service where there has been believing prayer. That’s when revivals come. People get and pray. Sometimes they pray for years and then suddenly God hears the prayers and his presence weighs upon the meeting and people outside of Christ come to know him because they’re strangely convicted of their sin. Do you know in some of the revivals in the Western world, in Northern Hemisphere mainly, there have been times when people riding in horses into a new district suddenly come under conviction of sin and have to seek out the churches to find what to do about it and get converted because the presence of the Holy Spirit

[00:28:20] in answer to prayer makes the very religious happening something so powerful. The reason why we have some power in this church is because of those people who pray, not only the ones that go to the meeting, but there are people who hold up this need to have God’s Spirit work in our church in prayer and God in his answer does things. You feel it when you come to the service. Jesus’ words, where two or more are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst and it’s Jesus. If you knew who it was that speaking to you, you’d ask of him and he would give you living water. That was the Lord’s promise to the woman at the well. That’s what he says to us. You know, people who become spiritually attuned often make many responses. When I went to Wheaton grad school, I also went to Wheaton College Church

[00:29:25] where Billy Graham was a previous young man and they told me lots of stories of him. When they have a preacher give the appeal, he’d go forward almost every time. Not because he needed to get converted, he knew jolly well he was, but because he wanted more of Christ. I only wish I could make it clear that being spiritual is the most practical thing you can do. I’ve actually got a list of verses from Proverbs. I started out thinking there would be three or four. I found some books where some mentioned such verses, but the more I look, the more I’ve found. I’ve got too many for this morning, so tonight the message is going to continue in this theme because I’ve got so many Proverbs verses to bring out. But we’ll go to the next one on our list. And this is very interesting.

[00:30:28] Notice how practical are these advices. I wanted you to see the two things about Proverbs, wisdom verses, is just how practical they are and how it’s about being spiritual. Look at this one. This is very practical. Prepare your work outside. This is talking to a society that’s mostly farming, mostly work outsiders in the farm. Prepare your work outside. Get everything ready for yourself in the fields. And after that, build your house. Boy, does that aim very piercingly to where you do your priorities. Prepare your work outside. Get everything ready for yourself in the fields. And after that, build your house. Now, actually, I met in that Wheaton grad school as an Italian guy who’d gone there on purpose. He was a bit older than me. He was in his 30s.

[00:31:32] I was at an age where, well, young men, you’re in your 20s. And he was in his 30s. But he got talking to me about how he worked out about his life. He says, I’ve got a period of time when I’ll get too old and won’t be able to do a thing. But he divided it up into three sections. And one was he’s going to give himself to learning, probably to 40s or whatever, to get the maximum education. The second section was when he’s going to give that availability to God. And the third section was, you know, when he’d get old and die. I think I’ve remembered it right. But there he was in his 30s. I looked at 30s as old. But he was going to continue until he had something to offer through his education. It’s amazing, you know, I met another fellow similar in Dallas Seminary when I went there.

[00:32:34] And he was from one of the Scandinavian companies. And we were, I took a special course that gave you a chance to do what you wanted to do. And it was a private study course sort of thing. But my one was to prepare and have practiced a whole lot of messages to be able to take a crusade. I mean, I had already been doing that in Australia. But I wanted to get a set of messages that I could learn and have them help me. They had some fantastic teachers about preaching. One class made you learn a whole sermon off by heart. And the whole sermon. The first step, they had you do a children’s talk. Well, off by heart, which might be 10 minutes. And then you had to do a whole sermon that you knew so well you could do it off by heart. I was a bit staggered at the fact that it’s not so hard to do.

[00:33:30] It takes a lot of time, a couple of months of rehearsing it and all the rest. The children’s talk, I still have and I use it at little occasional times. And something that you learn off by heart. And the language is very successfully designed. And anyway, I was doing my 10 to 12, I can’t remember how many sermons. And this other guy, Swedish guy, he became friendly with me. We were in the same building. He was from his homeland on his own. And he was preparing. So when he goes back, he’d be able to go and preach at different places. He was doing exactly the same thing. It’s an amazing thing when you say to God, I want to serve you, but I don’t want to just slump along and give you my spare time, oh Lord. I want you to make sure I’m still happy with everything else I need, Lord.

[00:34:23] But instead you say, God, how can I make myself useful? How can I spend time preparing? That’s actually the motive. Why, which you go to a train. I did it with degrees overseas. And I did it also going to our college. And that’s what that young man did who eventually went and asked the pastor to help him to get married quick, which happened. But they gave themselves a period of time, I’ll put off the normal things you do. In that young man’s case, he’s older than me, but he was a young man. It was normally getting married by searching around till you find the right one. He put that off in order to prepare his work. Then after that, he built his house. That’s what he did. It was a spirituality of his decision-making that when I first heard the story,

[00:35:18] because living in the college and being Principal’s son, you got to hear all the stories through the other students. But when I heard the story, I thought he was a very practical person. He was very good at doing practical things, that bloke. But it actually was a spiritual thing that this verse is built on, prepare your work outside. Well, maybe as a farmer that would be in the field. Get everything ready for yourself in the field. And after that, build your house. And sometimes if you know the Lord has got a calling for you, you might put off a lot of natural things. God will step in at the right moment and help you do them. Don’t worry about getting left behind. You know, building the house is a pretty expensive thing to get done these days. But God’s got enough money.

[00:36:10] Isn’t there a Bible verse that says he owns the cattle on a thousand hills and the wealth in every mine? So what if the economy goes up? I mean, by going up, so what if the prices all go up? And you’re left behind because you were too busy at Bible college when the houses were cheaper. Too bad. Just trust God because he owns the cattle on a thousand hills and the wealth in every mine. And he can turn the tap for whatever water it is that you need. And I want to tell you, the tap that you will want mostly to want to have is the spiritual tap. It comes by Jesus and his presence and Jesus and his wisdom and Jesus and his leading. The fellowship that there is in the things that you do because of Jesus are worth a thousand times more than the fellowship you might get just because you join an orchestra

[00:37:20] or just because you’re in the playing list. I’m not knocking those things. I love to hear of young people who’ve got themselves playing a sport. I found great joy playing a sport when I was at school. And I think there’s a wonderful thing but it’s not anything to be compared to the fellowship you have on a beach mission when you get dead tired from six o’clock in the morning to late at night. But you’re doing it in something in this kingdom of God. And you’re knowing the surgency of the Holy Spirit in those activities and you come home so glad you went. Well, these are the verses and how they speak. We’ll see if we’ve got time for one more. I’ve got so many of these verses. Where there is no guidance a people falls. Now this is talking about like a nation talking a lot, maybe a church talking about a family line.

[00:38:33] Where there is no guidance of people falls. Because the truth of our spiritual condition is that one, we are pretty destitute without God. And we’re living in a society that is getting worse and worse. You go back 50, maybe, my parents’ era. All the people of society basically sought to be good living. In fact, if there was a murder in Perth, it would be so unusual, it would be talked about for a long time. Where there is no guidance, a people falls. And that’s happening, unfortunately, to Western civilisations. But in an abundance of counsellors, there’s safety when you don’t assume you know best, but you go and ask a number of different people. one of the best ways to find the will of God is to seek out several, not just one particular line of thought, but several spiritual people and ask their opinion. If there’s an issue,

[00:39:44] you’re not sure, you’ve got it right, see if you can find a Christian brother or sister who both knows the area of which you want to talk about. but someone who has the Holy Spirit. In the abundance of counsellors, there is safety. And particularly when you understand the word counsellors, not just to be opinionated other persons, but people who are walking with God. And one of the best things that happens to someone is that they are helped by others who are wise in Christ and can have someone to bounce around what they’re thinking with people who are wise in Christ. Do you have any friends who are wise in Christ? Have you got a grandfather or have you got a person that might be able to help you in spiritual things and make a habit? I thank the Lord for my parents that I had all these students who were largely wanting to be spiritual.

[00:40:59] They weren’t all successfully doing it straight away but some of them were people who, if I had a non-Christian friend look me up at my house, I used to take them down to see a fellow called Kevin who was a very good personal worker, evangelist type, and I make up an excuse. I’ll introduce you to this crazy New Zealander. He was from New Zealand. I take my friend down to meet Kevin. One occasion I took a friend down who was not yet converted. I wasn’t getting anywhere with him. I’d been witnessing to him. So I took him down to see Kevin and Kevin says, have a prayer time. He used to do that all the time. I used to go to his room and he’d have prayer times with me but with this bloke, he says, I know what’s wrong with you. And he pulled out his Bible and had a Bible verse that hit something on the head that had to do with that fellow. And he went away and his

[00:41:59] life was changed. To have someone that you can go to who’s got some spiritual depth, in the abundance of counsellors, there is safety. Where there is no guidance, a people falls. And so what I’m saying to us that the most practical thing you can do is to tune in to the spiritual people who will be one of those counsellors. In the case of the woman at the well, how lucky was she that Jesus met her when she knew nobody, when she was running away from a social problem, the commentator’s guess. That’s why she went to draw water in the middle of the day when the practice normally was that you went in the early morning or the late afternoon. But she went when there were no other women to tease her, to get her water. But she met Jesus. And he said that beautiful verse, put it up again, number one in John 4, verse 10. Jesus,

[00:43:09] she wants to know why he’s talking to her. He’s a Jew and she’s a Samaritan. And Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that’s saying to you, give me a drink, Jesus’ way to get her talking, you would have asked of him and he would have given you living water. I believe that the most sensible, the most brilliant, the most wonderfully wise thing that any person here this morning could do was to suddenly recognise a place to get to Jesus and ask him, ask him and ask him, go on asking him to give you of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. If you knew who it was that was speaking to you, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. I don’t mind saying that I pretty well am assured by what happens in meetings that there is, there are some of you here who right now Jesus has been speaking to you. It’s not

[00:44:32] necessarily that certain, you didn’t necessarily hear a voice. Sometimes in churches people do hear voices, like the young man who came forward and in the counselling room he told me someone behind me says young man go forward. I thought it was a bunch of old ladies who were sitting behind him and I went and asked them and because they were sort of cheeky soul winners but they hadn’t. God spoke to him, that bloke, with a voice from like behind you, sitting behind him. Usually it’s something that happens in your heart. I don’t know whether you know it. I know it in meetings I go to. Ever since I came to Christ which was featured by the fact that it was there that Jesus was there calling me. Ever since then I go to meetings and I know he’s there. I know he’s calling and he’s wanting you to do something about it. There is a very valid place, occasions of

[00:45:49] giving a call. It’s not probably good in a church if we wore you out, always giving public appeals. But every now and then it does give opportunity for people to get themselves, to switch on to the spiritual, whatever it be that God, Christ, is dealing with them about decision making or whether it’s about seeking to go deeper or whether it is because they’ve never ever satisfied that need for assurance that they belong to him. But this morning I’m going to give a call because I do believe that he’s saying something like this to someone here. If you knew the gift of God and who it is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. We’ll do what sometimes we do in our church that I’ll step down now and we’ll have our final music and while it’s going, I guess this podium little part here will be now free. If Jesus

[00:47:11] is speaking to you, leave where you’ll be in the singing time, come down here and just kneel and tell him, say to him, I want living water. Tell him if there’s any other details that you want to verbalise just to him, do it. Then go back to your seats. Do you understand the call? It’s not coming at council necessarily, you can always ask someone for that if you wanted later. But it’s a call that you admit that you’ve woken up to the fact that Jesus is talking to you. And he’s saying to you if you knew who was talking to you, you’d ask him and he would give you living water. So while you’re here on your knees, tell Jesus you’re needing that living water. When you’re sure you’ve express that to him, just under your breath or however you like but while you’re on your knees down here. Then go back to your seat and continue singing. Let that be between you

[00:48:24] and Jesus. He’s saying something to you then answer him and ask him to give you living water. Heavenly Father I praise you for the way that you deal with us and I praise you for the powerfulness of the work of the Holy Spirit. I praise you for the absolute effectiveness of the spirituality of the living water and I pray that Lord there might be one or some who will give you that request just like the woman of the world did that day we pray in Jesus name. Amen.