John 4: Don't Stay in Town When Jesus Is at the Well

Introduction

Charlotte Curran, from Christian Fellowship Church in Belfast, preaches that Sunday on a single theme: living water. She opens her Bible to Isaiah 35, a prophecy written a very long time ago about what water does in the desert and in wild places: "The wilderness and the dry land will be glad."

Her conviction is simple: "All the desert needs is water." Not a grand strategy, not an effort drawn from yourself. If your life looks like cracked ground today, where nothing grows, you are in the right place for a spring of life to burst forth.

From Isaiah 35, she moves to Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4, then to the promise of rivers of living water in John 7. One call returns throughout the message: don't stay in town when Jesus is at the well.

Outline of the Message

1. Isaiah 35, a Word of Hope for Dry Lands

• In the middle of dry, barren land, a word of hope is spoken: strengthen the weak hands, steady the knees that give way, and tell those with troubled hearts to take courage and not be afraid. God will come and turn the desert into a garden.
• This is what the Lord has always done. From the very beginning of Scripture, he creates gardens in the middle of emptiness and chaos.
• The enemy works in the opposite direction. Where Jesus creates gardens, he tries to "de-create" them, to bring them back to desert.
• Some people feel "de-created" like that. They remember a season when their life was blooming, but today nothing grows, everything is cracked, and despair sets in. The preacher answers: make your knees firm, do not be afraid, the Lord is coming to save you.

2. The Lord Is Drawn to Deserts

• "The Lord is really drawn to dry places." That is where he does his best work, because that is where he is needed most.
• In the desert, everyone leaves. During a dry season, many friendships crack. But when everyone else walks out of the desert, Jesus walks in, "100 percent."
• Isaiah 35 announces a "super bloom." Charlotte Curran shows a photo from a 2023 New Yorker article: in California, after exceptional winter rains, stores of wildflower seeds buried under the dust bloom all at once. The desert becomes a field of flowers overnight.
• She leaves the image on the screen throughout the message: your dry, desolate places can look like that. Your desert does not call for a grand strategy or more energy. And "all the city of Belfast needs is water."

3. A Promise of a Well for This House

• Charlotte Curran keeps a five-year journal, started in 2020, in which she writes down each day what she senses the Lord is saying to her. Each page lets her reread what he was saying on the same day in previous years.
• This week, she woke up with a date in her mind. She opened her journal and reread the entry from 2023: she had sensed that the Lord was going to open a well in this house, a spring of living water where the thirsty would come, and where lives would be changed.
• She returns more and more to that promise and that prayer: "Lord, make a well spring up. We are in the desert."
• She does not come to church to fill a Sunday morning. If Christ has revealed himself to you and saved you by his power, you are called to more than attending a service.
• If your Christian walk has shrunk down to routine and Sunday attendance, so much the better, she says: that is a desert, and the Lord is going to come and meet you there.

4. Jesus, the Living Water Springing Up in the Desert

• The people waited a long time for the fulfillment of Isaiah 35: "Lord, you promised. When will this desolation end?"
• Then the New Testament opens. Not at the center of power in Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem, a few kilometers away, where a tiny baby is born. God's entrance onto the earth was so quiet that most people did not notice it. That baby is the spring of living water bursting forth in the desert.
• After his baptism in the Jordan, where does the Spirit send Jesus first? To the desert. Because the desert is what needs water. There he fights Satan, and then everything Isaiah 35 announced erupts in the Gospels: the lame leap, the deaf hear, the blind see.
• According to the preacher, the modern Church has forgotten one thing: Jesus interrupts ordinary days. The day he turns your life upside down, perhaps for the seventieth time, you will have brushed your teeth and made your coffee as usual, with no idea of what was about to happen.
• So do not sit down in front of the desolation. If your family is a desert, get on your knees and intercede for a spring to open and change the story you have received. Do the same for your street and your city. Read Isaiah 35 and say: "God, you promised."

5. Go Back to the Well

• In John 4, an ordinary woman, in the middle of a desolate life, goes on an ordinary day to an ordinary place: the well where she has gone a hundred times. We know this chapter is special. She does not.
• She goes out at the hottest, driest, dustiest time of the day, not knowing she is about to meet living water.
• Charlotte Curran sees in this your spiritual practices: reading Scripture, prayer, prayer meetings, worshiping together, day after day. There is nothing wrong with that. Going to the well was good for this woman and for her family. But something even better was available.
• "You have to go back to the well." Pick up the practice you have kept for years, but this time expecting to meet Jesus, to receive something new in the very place where you have always been.

6. Don't Stay in Town When Jesus Is at the Well

• Jesus, tired from the journey, sits down at the edge of the well around noon and asks the Samaritan woman for a drink. The text adds in parentheses: "For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food."
• The preacher has read this chapter countless times, thinking that Jesus had arranged a moment alone with this woman. She is no longer so sure: the text does not say that Jesus sent them, only that they left. There was an invitation to join in this moment, but they were elsewhere, distracted by normal needs.
• When they return, they offer him something to eat. Jesus answers that he has food they do not know about: doing the will of his Father. Then he tells them the harvest is already ripe, as people are coming out of the town because of this woman's testimony. "You are missing it."
• She calls the Christians of her city to give up an apathetic way of following Jesus, where 99 percent of the time goes to ordinary affairs and Jesus gets an hour and a half on Sunday and a quick prayer in the morning. "That will not be enough. You were made for the well."
• "If your life seems asleep, it is because you are too far from the water." The water is available, but your thoughts have gone off to town: finances, children, relationships, projects.
• Living at the well is not a physical place, it is a posture of the heart, possible day and night. At work, when everything seems desolate, is your first reaction to fix everything yourself, or to say: "Holy Spirit, bring living water into this desolate place"? When a message knocks you flat, do you look for a comeback, or do you invite living water into that conversation?
• She admits it: "Far too often, I am in town buying food, when my place has always been at the well." The disciples knew Jesus was there, and yet they were elsewhere.
• She believes the promised spring will burst forth in this physical place, but also in the body of the Church: small wells opening in each person, and joining together on Sunday like rivers into a current that even demonic forces cannot stop.

7. Rivers of Living Water for Desolate Places

• In John 7:37-39, on the great day of the feast, Jesus cries out that anyone who is thirsty should come to him and drink. Then he says that from whoever believes in him, rivers of living water will flow. He was speaking about the Spirit. This is your inheritance.
• You are not only invited to drink. Jesus places a well within you. Where people do not know where Jesus is, you represent him, and the Spirit at work in you can make desolate places bloom.
• Do you live in your house only because you chose it? Do you hold your job only because you applied for it? Or has the Lord, in his sovereign grace, placed you in a place that needs water, one you are trying to leave because it is a desert?
• Jesus, when he is sent, does not look for comfort, he goes to the desert. The idol of comfort makes us smaller, and the enemy tries to keep you contained in a small, comfortable space because you are dangerous to him the moment you step out of it. "You cannot follow Jesus and idolize your comfort at the same time." Comfort shrinks you, while Jesus wants to extend your boundaries to the ends of the earth.
• The preacher asks the congregation to stand according to the distance between home, work, and church: one mile, two, three, up to those who fly for work. Why has the Lord placed you near the well? Why is he sending you elsewhere, if not because that place needs the living water that has sprung up in East Belfast?
• She shares a conviction she received this week. She loves walking with Jesus, but usually she drives to walk somewhere scenic. The Lord told her: "I do not want you to walk somewhere else this week, Charlotte. I want you to walk here, where you are planted." She asked herself: "If I do not pray for my street, who am I leaving that responsibility to?"
• She encourages you to pray while walking down your street, every week, even for ten or fifteen minutes, asking the Lord for a heart for the place where you live.
• The choice is in front of you: go back "to town," to everyday life, forgetting this moment, or say: "Make a well spring up in me." She invites everyone to hold out their hands and ask the Holy Spirit to fill them, and tells anyone who has never given their life to Jesus that they can do so right now.

Key Takeaways

• The Lord is drawn to deserts. When everyone leaves your desert, Jesus walks in.
• Your dry place does not need a grand strategy: it needs living water.
• Return to your usual spiritual practices, this time expecting to meet Jesus.
• Living at the well is a posture of the heart: inviting the Spirit into every desolate place, at work as at home.
• Jesus places rivers of living water within you. Where he has planted you, you can intercede and see desolate places come back to life.

Personal Application

1. Which area of your life looks like cracked ground today: your faith, your family, your work, your street?
2. Which spiritual practice have you kept for a long time out of habit, and how can you return to it expecting to meet Jesus?
3. What most often sends you "to town" and pulls you away from the well: finances, children, relationships, projects?
4. The next time a situation or a message knocks you flat, what simple prayer could you pray before responding?
5. Could you take ten or fifteen minutes this week to pray while walking down your street?

Verses Cited

• Isaiah 35
• John 4:6-8
• John 4:31-39
• John 7:37-39
• Matthew 4:1

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "don't stay in town when Jesus is at the well" mean?

In John 4, the disciples have gone into town to buy food while Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well. They are doing nothing wrong, but they miss what is happening. For Charlotte Curran, this is a picture of a faith absorbed by ordinary needs, where Jesus gets only an hour and a half on Sunday. Living at the well is a posture of the heart: looking for living water wherever you are.

Why does Isaiah 35 speak of a desert that blooms?

Isaiah 35 announces that waters will burst forth in the desert, that the blind will see and the lame will leap like deer. Charlotte Curran sees in it the promise of a sudden bloom, like the spectacular blooms of the California desert after heavy rains. For her, this prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus, the living water who came into the desert. Your desert does not need a strategy, it needs water.

What do the rivers of living water in John 7 mean?

In John 7:37-39, Jesus invites anyone who is thirsty to come and drink, then promises that rivers of living water will flow from the one who believes in him. He was speaking about the Spirit. Charlotte Curran stresses that Jesus does not merely quench your thirst: he places a well within you. Where you live and work, you can bring living water and see dry places come back to life.