“Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. He told me all that I ever did.”
– John 4:39
John 4:39 is an amazing verse. What an amazing picture of the power of a testimony to Jesus. This woman, this Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at the well, has a conversation with him, discovers that this is not just any normal man, this is the Messiah, the Christ who promises her satisfaction, a spring of water in her soul welling up to eternal life who calls her to worship and spirit and truth she encounters Jesus.
That’s all that she did. She encountered Jesus and immediately she went back into the town. She starts telling everybody about who she has met and says why don’t you come out and listen to this man, see this man. This Samaritan woman who had all these different husbands, the man she was living with now was not her husband, and she becomes a witness, just like that, like instantly in her city and many Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus because of her testimony.
John 4:39 Reminds Us We Are Equipped to Share the Gospel
An encounter with Jesus is all that is needed to be equipped to testify to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It makes me think about when a friend of mine once told me, he was working overseas for the spread of the gospel in a really hard location where it’s not easy to become a follower of Jesus, to lead others to follow Jesus and he told me that their practice was whenever they led someone to faith in Jesus, they would immediately encourage that person, sit down with that person, and say, “Okay, let’s make a list of all the people you know who don’t know Jesus,” which is basically everybody in their family, friends, everywhere.
They list all these people and then they said, “Let’s now circle the five or ten people on this list who are least likely to kill you if you share the gospel with them.” I remember hearing that and thinking, “Wow, that’s initial discipleship. Let’s identify people who are least likely to harm you if you share the gospel with them and let’s start there.” Immediately, my friend told me they would start to work on sharing the gospel with those five to ten people.
John 4:39 Reminds Us that Knowing Jesus Is All We Need
I can’t help but to think about that story when I read this story in John 4:39 and think this is the Christian life. Once you encounter Christ, that’s all it takes for you to have a testimony to tell to other people to look to Christ, see who Jesus is, see what Jesus has done. You don’t have to go to seminary, you don’t have to have a certain amount of training, you don’t to have a certain amount of Bible knowledge, you don’t have to have anything but an encounter with Jesus to be equipped to be able to share Jesus with others, to give testimony to Jesus so if you are a new believer or you’ve been a believer for 50, 60, 70 years, you are equipped to give testimony today to somebody about Jesus.
I want to encourage you to do it and I want to pray for you as you do, especially if you live in a place in the world like I’m guessing most of us do, where we don’t have to worry about being harmed or killed for sharing the gospel.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray that God Would Use Us
So God we pray, that you would use us today, use my life today, use the life of every single person who’s listening to this today, to give testimony to Jesus, to share about Jesus with somebody else. We praise you that we have encountered you, Jesus. We praise you that we have seen who you are. You are the Christ, the Messiah, the savior, the Lord. You are the one who has died on the cross for our sins. All glory be to your name. You have forgiven us of all of our sin against God. All glory be to your name. You are the one who satisfies our souls, like a spring of water welling up for all of eternity. So please we pray, use us today to introduce somebody else to you.
We pray for boldness today, the boldness of the Samaritan woman, to introduce somebody else to you, to give testimony to somebody we work with, somebody we live with or around, somebody we meet randomly but not randomly because you’ve orchestrated that meeting today. Please use today to give testimony to Jesus. God I just pray that as a result of this little short podcast episode/prayer, that many people would believe in Jesus because of our testimony today.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray For Pakistan
God, we pray for that. We pray that that would happen. We pray that that would happen here and now. God, we pray that that would happen in places around the world where it is hard to share the gospel, where it is dangerous to share the gospel. God we pray. We’ve been praying for people groups in Pakistan. We pray for the Mughal people in Pakistan. 1.3 million of them who have little to no knowledge of Jesus. No Mughals peoples who are following Jesus.
God we pray for testimony to spread to them. We pray for workers to spread to them and we pray that when somebody comes to Christ among the Mughal people in Pakistan, God we pray you would give them boldness to give testimony to Jesus to others and we pray that many Mughal would believe in Jesus because of their testimony. God, we pray that you would continue to do today what you are doing in John 4 and you’ve done for the last 2,000 years. Use simply testimonies empowered by your spirit to lead people to believe in Jesus. Use us in that way today we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
