Episode Transcript  

One

A Conversation with Christ

Our prayer is meant to be, above all, a conversation with Jesus. So let’s begin with a meditation on the longest back-and-forth conversation in the Gospel: the story of the Samaritan woman

Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” [The woman] said to him, “Sir,* you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.” The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking with you.” … The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?”

Lord, help us learn from this story how to converse with you in prayer

Two

The Challenge of Conversation

For a lot of people, conversation in general is intimidating. You have to find an area of mutual interest, and then you have to be willing to keep the conversation going while you also try to get the other person to talk. 

Those, are, actually, the three main ingredients of good conversation: 

an area of mutual interest 

where you’re able to talk

And the other person is able to talk

We see that in the conversation with Jesus and the Samaritan woman

They’re both interested in the same things, in this case, matters of God: the Messiah, the community of faith, and the right way to worship 

And so they both contribute to the conversation. The woman speaks, mostly by asking questions

And Jesus gives her unexpected responses.

This has to be our approach to meditation. Find something we and Jesus are both interested in – then ask Him questions, and try to receive His responses.

And you will end up with some good conversation in prayer.

Three

Asking Questions

The best way to get a conversation going is by asking a question

That’s how the Samaritan woman starts out with Jesus – and it changes her life

Actually, that’s the best way to get your mind going in almost any context – ask yourself a question where the answer isn’t obvious to you.

So when we begin meditating on the Word of God, one of the best ways to get our discursive reason (our thinking) going is by asking a question. That’s how you get the conversation started

Find something in the Scriptures that you don’t quite understand. You’re not sure what it means. 

And then consider it. Ask the Lord for help in grasping the truth of it.

And then see what insight comes.

Four

Insight – the Lord’s Answers

The Samaritan woman receives an unbelievable array of spiritual truth from the Lord 

It’d be great if we got that kind of scoop from Jesus Himself, wouldn’t it? 

And yet, the thing is, the more we practice daily meditation, the more we will hear from Christ in prayer.

We probably won’t hear Jesus’ voice audibly, but we will hear from Him in the form of insight

Insight is when one of two things happens:

Either we realize some truth that we didn’t realize before

Or we suddenly remember some truth we always knew, but didn’t appreciate its importance.

All truth comes from God. All insight has its source in Him. When we come up with questions about God and His Word, we’re beginning the conversation with Him. And when we receive an insight, he is speaking with us.

And that, right there, is the conversation with God known as discursive meditation.

Five

Resolution

The conversation with Christ in prayer isn’t where things stop.

After all, some of the truths Christ gave the Samaritan woman had to do with her sinful life-patterns – 

and some of the insights we’ll get in prayer will be about practical ways our lives need to change.

But however the conversation goes – however the meditation goes – it’s not complete until it has an impact in our life. 

The Samaritan woman left the well, left the conversation, and went to bring others to Jesus.

So now, at the end of this meditation, let’s make sure we resolve to follow this pattern of good conversation with the Lord every day:

Asking Him questions

Listening to His answers in the form of insights

And forming resolutions so that we can eliminate sin from our life and bring others to Jesus. 

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