Mar 15, 2020               Discipleship                                  

Last week at the Prairie Association Committee on Ministry meeting, some of our members had a discussion about coaching. It seems the Illinois Conference got a large grant to become a coaching conference, and they were discussing how helpful of how unhelpful this was to them. Now I haven’t really heard much about this until last week, but as they talked about their coaches, I began to understand that what they were talking about were life coaches.

A life coach, in case you didn’t know, doesn’t come up with ideas for our lives, but instead asks us what ideas we have for living, and then helps us to implement them in our lives. This means coaching us to clear up the clutter of our lives that keeps us from achieving our goals, overcome the obstacles we or others put in our way, and encourages us to find ways to reach our goals.

Now I remembered this conversation, as I was reading the commentaries on our gospel lesson this morning. It seems Samaritan woman at the well, was in need of a life coach. She had been married 5 times, and it just hadn’t worked out for her. In fact, Jesus even says that the man she is married to now, isn’t really a husband to her. In a way it seems that she keeps trying to find happiness, but somehow it just isn’t working out for her, things keep getting messed up, and somehow fall apart.

And so this morning, Jesus offers her living water, a way for her to find peace and happiness in her life, through faith in Jesus Christ. Now I think that Jesus is a whole lot more than a life coach, but for those who believe in him, he can function in that way. Jesus teaches us to face the challenges of our lives, to suffer life’s hardships and bear the burdens of one another ways that lead us to overcome our divisions/problems, and find peace in our lives. But more than that, Jesus opens our eyes to God’s will and way for us, to the love and blessings that God daily rains down upon us, and helps us to become the people God made us to be. For in that, there is true peace and happiness for our lives. And that is the Good News of Jesus Christ.