He Asked First
The word for Sunday, August 9, 2026 is He Asked First.
The anchor verses are John 4:7 and Matthew 1:24.
The Daily Word is the doorway.
Continue into The Hand Came First →
There is a well in Samaria, and a man sits down next to it because he cannot walk any further.
John tells us why. Jesus was wearied from the journey. That detail is in the Bible. The Son of GOD ran out of road for the day and sat down on a stone wall in the heat because HIS legs were done.
It was about noon. The worst hour to be outside.
A woman comes down to draw water, and the first thing out of HIS mouth is not a teaching.
Give me to drink.
Four words, and every one of them breaks something.
HE was a Jewish man. She was a Samaritan woman. Men did not speak to women they had not been introduced to. Jews and Samaritans did not share cups. She points all of that out to HIM in the very next verse. She is the one who names the wall between them. HE never mentions it.
And look at the shape of what HE said. It is a request.
HE did not open by offering her something. HE did not open by telling her what was wrong with her life. HE did not open by establishing who HE was so she would take HIM seriously.
HE asked her for a favor, because HE was thirsty and the well was deep and she was the one holding the rope.
The one who made the water was sitting next to it with nothing to draw with.
That is not a picture anybody would have invented. A god in a story shows up with power in HIS hands. This one showed up without a bucket.
Now watch what does not happen next.
HE does not bring up the five husbands. That comes later in the conversation, and when it comes, HE says it without cruelty and she is the one who keeps talking. HE does not demand an accounting before HE will accept a cup from her hand. There is no entrance requirement.
Then comes the part of this chapter that ought to be more famous than it is.
She says that when the Messiah comes, HE will explain everything.
And Jesus says, I that speak unto thee am he.
That is the first time in the Gospel of John that HE says it out loud and plainly. Not in the temple courts. Not to the council. Not to the people who had studied their whole lives to recognize HIM.
At a well. At noon. To one Samaritan woman with a water jar, and nobody else standing there.
And the order matters more than anything else in the chapter.
HE told her before she had done a single thing with the information. Before she ran back to the town. Before she believed it. Before she was anybody's example of anything. The telling came first, and everything she did afterward was a response to something that had already been handed to her.
Look at Joseph in the first chapter of Matthew, and the same order is there.
Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him.
Raised from sleep. The angel came to him while he was unconscious. He did not go looking. He did not pray it down. He did not qualify. He was asleep, which is the least a person can be doing, and GOD came anyway.
And Matthew tells us what he did when he woke up and tells us nothing at all about how he felt. No mention of confidence. No mention of peace. He got up and did it.
Somewhere along the way you may have picked up the idea that GOD deals with you afterward.
After the cleanup. After the apology has been made and accepted. After you finally get a grip on the thing you have not gotten a grip on in eleven years. That HE is willing to be near you once you are presentable, and until then you should keep your distance out of respect.
That is not the order in this chapter.
HE sat down first. HE was tired first. HE asked first. HE said who HE was to a woman whose life would not have qualified her for a conversation with a rabbi in her own village, and HE said it before she had changed one thing. The change came afterward. It came out of what HE told her, and not as the price of hearing it.
She left the water jar sitting there.
She had walked down to that well in the heat of the day for one reason, and she went home without the thing she came for, and told the town to come and see.
And when the town came, they told her they had now heard HIM for themselves.
HE was thirsty, and HE asked her for water.
That was the opening move.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
- 🙏 To the one waiting to be presentable before you say anything to GOD.
- 🙏 To the one nobody has asked for anything in a very long time.
- 🙏 To the one who was told your history disqualifies you from being spoken to.
- 🙏 To the one who came for one thing today and may go home without the jar.
Grace and Peace.