Mission Impossible

Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.”

John 4:17–18 RSV

In affluent America thousands of us Christians have become too comfortable. We are too much at ease in this world. We have ceased to challenge the world in which we move; and if God wanted to do a great work in our time, we would probably be bypassed.

In John 4:9 we read “the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” The disciples might have thought that the Samaritans were totally outside the Kingdom of God. Perhaps they thought these “outsiders” were unreachable and untouchable by the Message.

How many Christians have given up trying to win their neighbors, their business associates, or their school friends to Jesus Christ? They think they are totally uninterested.

Perhaps that friend or neighbor is watching you very carefully to determine whether you back up your belief with your life.

Some of us have already made up our minds that God has no intention of reaching this person—they are too hard; they are not interested; they are so materially minded; they are so filled with sin, lust, and pride that they are unreachable.

Thus when the woman of Sychar, who had had six “husbands,” was converted to Christ, the disciples were not used.

Many people in history who have been used of God were great sinners and seemed unreachable. John Newton, who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace,” was a slave dealer in Africa and one of the worst sinners who ever lived. Who could ever have believed that he would one day be a clergyman in the Anglican church and become one of the greatest hymn writers of all time!

Even Paul the apostle was Saul the persecutor. Many times God takes the absolutely impossible person and transforms him by His own grace and mercy and providence to become a mighty servant of God. Don’t give up on anyone. There is no person beyond the grace of God.

Our Father and our God, make my life a reflection of You so that my neighbors and friends will have no doubt about Your existence, Your power, Your love, Your mercy. Help me to see the lost as You see them. Give me courage to touch them with Your saving grace, I ask in the name of Christ. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).