When God Shows Up Unexpectedly || Victory Church [Book of John Roundtable #1]

I didn't want to get married. No, real talk. I say that because you're a family man. Yeah. And you were a low-key matchmaker for me and my husband. Oh, I admit to that. Okay, back to you. Unpacking scripture, studying scripture, which is one reason why I absolutely love, love, love that we are going through the book of John through the year is because we're spending time going through and learning so many things and realizing how much we don't know. Yeah. Even God's character, learning more about his character. And so I have loved that through the book of John and some of the other, you know, scripture study that we've gone through here. It's been super impactful. Yeah, for sure. I want to read you guys the scripture, okay? Okay, this is John 4, 13 to 15. So I want to read you the scripture and then have a question for us. So Jesus replied, So that's the scripture. So here's the question. This is the first time that Jesus reveals himself as the Messiah, but it's not what she expected. So how has Jesus shown up in your life in a way that was unexpected? I mean, it's funny because she wasn't the only one who was surprised by him being the Messiah. I mean, even I think the disciples were like, where's your sword? Where's your army? You know what I'm saying? But how has Jesus shown up in unexpected ways?

I mean, God, it's like a list. How much time do we have here? Yeah, yeah. That's a good thing. I don't know. I think, okay. I think one of the things that first popped into my mind randomly was I didn't want to get married. So when I was like in my mid-20s. No, real talk. I say that because you're a family man. Yeah. And you were a low-key matchmaker for me and my husband. Oh? Okay, back to you. Yeah, no. To shoot it straight, man, I had spent so much time, so many years in fornicating relationships, unfaithful relationships, trying to just bury, honestly, a lot of pain and anger from my mother passing. A lot of just being scared of getting intimately or emotionally close to a woman. And so I had never been faithful in any relationship that I had been in. But still, the thought of being able to be faithful just seemed so far from me to the point where I told God, I don't even want to get married. I don't even want to get married and risk cheating on my wife and then destroying her or destroying our kids. I was like, I don't want to. I was like, I'd rather not. And then I wasn't a virgin, so I was like, I can't even give my wife the gift of being a virgin, right? So I was just like, I'm not worth marrying. That was literally the lie that I believed. And then after just months of, I kind of was like, all right, I'm going to take six months. I don't want to date anybody, any women that are in my life that are not strictly platonic, cutting them off cold turkey, and I'm just going to date the Lord. That's when I told myself. I was like, the time that I was spending trying to get to know a young lady or something like that, I'm going to put that time in just trying to spend time with him. Whatever that looks like, reading the Bible, praying, worshiping at home, whatever it looked like.

And over that time, man, probably about a month or two into it, he just totally just like, almost like took the catalysis off of my eyes. And he showed me like, A, you are worth marrying. Like, you are worthy of marrying. Yes, you may not be able to give your wife your first time, you know, intimately, but you can give her something that you've never given anybody else. And I was like, what Lord? And he was like, the gift of waiting. It's like, you've never waited for anybody. And you will be able to give your wife that. And that shifted like my whole entire perspective, you know? And so that became my goal, like to be in a relationship. And it's crazy. My wife, Marla, shout out, baby. Like my wife, Marla, at the time, she was just like one of my best friends. Like when I said I went cold turkey on anybody that was strictly platonic, it was my sister that was left, one of my good friends from college named Tanya and Marla. And she was just like the homie. I didn't even see her like that. But over that six month period, he just, again, shifted my whole mindset, shifted my whole heart. And then my goal was like when I found myself falling in love with her, like I want to give her that gift of waiting, like of doing it right, doing it right. putting on a firm foundation. And I mean, I mean, we'll celebrate 18 years. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, so that was definitely a surprise, that way that God showed up that I would have totally, totally not expected. All right, so as we're thinking about the message this weekend, right, and we're thinking, we learn about the woman at the well and just the disappointment that she'd had in her life, right, and we learn about Jesus showing up and being there for her.

And I'm looking at this and one of the things that Pastor Johnson said in the message is, oftentimes, whatever that thing is for us, like fill in the blank for you personally, you take your jar and you go fill it up. And it's like, are you trying to get more money? Are you trying to have a title? Are you trying to, you know, combat loneliness? And you go to these wells to fill up these jars, but the well is empty. And so then you're not really satisfied. It's not meeting that deep need in your soul, right? So it's like, we're filling up these jars. And then at the end of John 4, 28, and Pastor Johnson spoke about this in the message, at the end, after she meets Jesus, okay, and he is offering her water to, like, you know, she's not gonna be thirsty anymore, right? So it's like Jesus is offering to, like, fill that deep need in her soul, right? And so when you think about this, she leaves the water jar behind. So, like, think about all the jars that we've went to fill at the wrong well. And then now we meet Jesus, and we don't have to go to those shallow wells anymore. Okay, so let's think about that. So when you put yourself in that story, has there been a time in your walk with Jesus where you left the water jar behind?

Well, I feel like for me, this is all the things I should be thinking through. This is all the things I should be feeling. This is all the things that I should, there's a lot of shoulds, I guess. So maybe my draw is just shoulds. And what I love about Jesus and the relationship I get to have with him is there's a lot of challenging that way of thinking of, well, this is who I specifically created you to be. So that jar of shoulds just cracks wide open, and it's just a reliving water of me learning myself, you know, day after day, week after week, year after year. And to know that he loves me through every change is just super awesome and mind-blowing. And it's just, I'm not worthy, and I'm grateful that he sees me as so. Yeah, I love that. I love that Jesus sees us for our potential and who we are and who he created us to be rather than sometimes how we see ourself. And depending on where we're at in life, whatever seasons we're in, sometimes we don't recognize our full potential, but Jesus does, and he's such a good friend, and he's so good to remind us of who we are. So I think back to even what you said earlier about just being close to Jesus, that the closer we are to him, like you putting your focus on him and your spotlight on him

and he just started highlighting things to you, specifically your wife, when we're focusing on Jesus, he's reminding us of who we are in him and calling us higher. And that's a gift right there, you know, just to see yourself the way he sees you. Yeah. Yeah. She's better than we see ourselves. Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord. Thankfully, his plans for us are good, right? He's got great plans for us. So yeah, that's cool. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thanks for the conversation today. Pastor Quinn. Thank you.