Intro to "At the well"

This morning I finished the first draft of a piece of which the message has been on my heart for many years. It was great to get the chance to finish this draft over the last week. Here's the first part:

Prologue - Yusuke
I met with Yusuke just a few times, I knew him for only a few months. But one of the times I got the chance to sit down with him and study the Bible together has become a resounding and defining memory of my time in Tokyo, and I believe I gained some insight into this young man’s and a nation’s future.

My wife and I lived in Tokyo for two years. We moved there from Kyoto where we had worked with a Japanese Christian Church to work with a pioneering, bilingual church, started by Australians. We had the chance to meet many great young people and make many friends. And we had the privilege of sharing with many of our new friends about the love and acceptance that Jesus has for them.

Yusuke is one such young man whom I call a friend. He started to come to the church and for a time was part of a group of guys who would meet together on Wednesday nights in Starbucks in Takadanobaba. In the few weeks I knew Yusuke before he joined us I had already observed his shyness but also a desperate social neediness that would draw others towards him but then would soon push them away.

He was looking for help but would quickly and angrily cut the helper off before they could let him down. Yusuke had suffered terrible rejection from his father and his family before moving far from his hometown in the north of Japan to the big, anonymous city.

One particular Wednesday evening, Yusuke and I sat together and I realised that I would have a chance to bring up this issue of rejection and to share with him Jesus’ loving acceptance of him. We looked together at a passage from Chapter 4 of the Gospel of John. In this story we see how a lonely woman’s life is changed when she meets Jesus. She comes to a well and receives eternal, living, healing water from God’s own Son.

It was at this time talking with Yusuke that I realised the depth of pain that he felt because of rejection. This wound shaped his life – the way he thought and they way he would act. His life was now full of shame and confusion. Every plan he had, every relationship would be destroyed by this disease in his heart.

For a time Yusuke came near the well. He came near to the source living water which could heal his wounds and sustain him eternally. Jesus is there. Jesus is offering acceptance, wholeness, a life to spend with Him, a future filled with love and significance.

That night God showed me things that I will never forget. The woman at the well was not only made whole by the acceptance of Jesus, but she also came from this place of rejection to becoming a great influence, a leader among her people. The truth of His Word became alive to me as He showed me what He could do with a young person and what He could do with a nation to change the world. I became overwhelmed with hope when God spoke to me through this passage about His loving heart towards Japan and His intention to use this nation to bless others.

This is a story about a woman who met Jesus and it’s also a story about a young broken man. This is a story about me and about you. It’s a story about what Jesus can do in broken person and even a nation. It’s about the hope and the healing that Jesus wants to bring to you and the world even through you.