October 14, 2025 • 24 mins
We're on episode two of our series in John 4, speaking about the Samaritan woman at the well. The world wanted to shame her, Jesus wanted to redeem her and He wants to do that for you too. So don't be ashamed of your past, it just builds a perfect testimony.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, you guys, welcome back to the Amani Talks podcast.
You're here with your host Amani on the podcast where
we discuss our Christian based topics and deepening our relationship
with the Lord. So we are continuing on in our
series about the Woman at the Well. We are in
John chapter four. I gave you guys the homework of
the scripture to read so that you can get proper
(00:21):
context about the three part mini series that we're going
to be doing about the Samaritan woman, Jesus speaking to
her at the well, and what we can learn from
that experience or that interaction. So hopefully you guys have
read that, you have read it for yourself, you have
studied it a little bit. So our first episode last
Tuesday was about kind of like that first chunk of scripture.
(00:42):
So last week we were reading John four, verses five
through twenty six, and we were talking about Jesus's interaction
with the Samaritan woman, just talking about their conversation. We
titled it bringing in the Outcast in We were talking
about who the Samaritan woman was, why she was an outcast.
We were talking about how the Lord was speaking to her,
how he was going against the societal norms, breaking religious
(01:06):
norms by even being a religious figure speaking to a woman.
And we were talking about how, you know, the Lord
it was the first feminist and all these things. And
I don't say feminists in a way that we see
feminism today that you know, I use that term very loosely.
All I mean was that he was pro woman before
being pro woman was a thing. We were talking about
(01:27):
how people see the Christian religion as very restrictive towards women,
but we see Jesus having relationships with women before it
was okay to do so in society and even in
the Jewish religion. So he was just going against all
these things that people saw as customary, people saw as
the regular practice of that day, And there are just
so many things that you can pull from it. Definitely
(01:48):
go back and listen to last week's episode. So now
we are going to get into what I have titled
for our second message as your testimony is what reaches People.
This really isn't a title. It's kind of it's kind
of long, but this is what I thought about when
I was thinking about this second episode. Your testimony is
what reaches people. It's not your shame it's your effectiveness.
And we're gonna be in verses twenty seven through thirty
(02:10):
and then thirty nine through forty two primarily, so if
you did your homework, you would have read this already.
But I definitely want to focus on who we are
as people. Our failures are just testimony builders, and in
our weakness, his strength is perfectly shown. So picking up
in John four twenty seven, we're going to start reading.
And at this point his disciples came, and they marveled
(02:32):
that he talked with a woman. Yet no one said,
what do you seek or why are you talking with her.
The woman then left her water pot, went her way
into the city and said to the men, come see
a man who told me all the things that I
ever did? Could this be the Christ? Then they went
out of the city and came to him, then skipping
down to verse thirty nine, picking it back up, and
(02:54):
many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him
Jesus because of the word of the woman who testified
he told me all that I ever did. So when
the Samaritans had come to him, they urged him to
stay with them, and he stayed there for two days
and many more believed because of his own word. Then
they said to the woman, now we believe not because
of what you said, for we ourselves have heard him
(03:16):
and we know that this indeed is the Christ, the
savior of the world. So I want to really focus
on the timeline of what's happening here, because when we
talk about testimony building, we already talked about who this
woman was, how she was an outcast, and why she
was an outcast. We talked about Jesus, you know, kind
of telling her, I know that you have had several
husbands before. The one that you're with right now is
(03:38):
not your husband. How would he have known that unless
he knows all things, you know. So we see her
having an encounter with the Lord. We see him going
out of his way to speak to her. He has
started a relationship with her, and then from that encounter
comes change and Versus twenty eight, it says the woman
then left her water pot, went her way into the
(04:00):
city and said to the men, come see a man
who told me all the things that I ever did.
Could this be the Christ? So from the encounter with Jesus,
a very personal, one on one encounter that she had
with the Lord himself, from that encounter comes change. We
see her leaving what she was doing. She left her
(04:20):
water pot, went into the city to tell other people
about him. So from that change we see a testimony.
She's saying, come see the man that told me about
all the things that I have ever done? Could this
be the Christ? And that natural progression of a one
on one encounter with the Lord that turns into you
changing your life, changing what you were doing, that then
(04:43):
leads into your testimony and you telling other people about
them or about him. That should be the natural progression
of every believer's life. If you say that you are
a saved Christian, but you cannot pinpoint and encounter with
the Lord, how that encounter led to you totally changing
what you were doing before, and how that change has
led to you telling other people about him, then you
(05:03):
would really have to question am I actually saved? Am
I actually living for the Lord? Because that's the natural
progression of it. And that's why I said in the
first episode about how I love this story because it
tells us everything that we need to know about who
Jesus is to us and what our lives should look like.
In response to an encounter with him. A true personal
(05:25):
encounter with him. And that's why when I said, people
talk about, you know, Christ, and they automatically go to religion.
That's how I automatically know you don't really have a
relationship with him. He came for a relationship, not a religion.
You know, we have a lot of religious folk. We
have a lot of church folk, we have a lot
of Easter, Christmas, Mother's Day, Sunday Morning folk. But I
(05:49):
believe that we don't have enough people that actually have
true relationship. It's one thing to be religious, it's a
whole other thing to say I have a relationship with
Jesus that has changed my life and that's why I
follow him. Those are two different things, y'all. And when
you have a true relationship that comes with you changing
your life and having a testimony that can change the
(06:11):
lives of others. Because of what this woman said, other
people went out to Jesus because of what she said.
It was literally her testimony that brought others to Jesus.
And that's just the power of your testimony. Because what
we were talking about in the first episode was talking
about how much of an outcast this woman was. And
I want to go back to the first chunk of
(06:32):
verses that we were talking about from the first episode
last week, and I really want to talk about how
Jesus called her sin out right. When you go to
verse four or chapter four and you start in verse
let's see sixteen. Let's read this again. Jesus said to her,
go call your husband and come here. The woman answered
(06:54):
and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her,
you have said, well, I have no husband, for you
have had five husbands, and the one whom you now
have is not your husband. And that you spoke truly.
The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you
are a prophet. Okay, Now, I've seen a lot of
videos on TikTok, specifically about people chuckling and laughing at
(07:15):
this moment because they're like, oh, Jesus got her. Oh
God has a sense of humor. Oh that's so funny
he checked her. When I hear people make light in
fun of this situation, that's how I know that you
really haven't read, Like you haven't read John chapter four,
you haven't really read the Bible in the context of
this story. Because Jesus was not trying to be funny.
(07:36):
He wasn't trying to rub the fact that she has
had several husbands in her face. He wasn't trying to
make fun of her. This was not a joke to him.
You see, the world sees your sin and they call
you by your sin. The world sees that you slept
around and they call you a hoe. The world sees
that you had an abortion and they call you a murderer.
The world sees that you were stealing stuff from the
store and call you a kleptomaniac. The Lord sees your sin,
(07:59):
he read recognizes what your sin is, But unlike the world,
Jesus never calls you by your sin. The world does that,
Jesus does not. So he was not joking around. It
wasn't like a zing for Jesus to say, yeah, you've
had several husbands. That's not the context here. The context
is him wanting you to recognize I know who you are.
(08:19):
He's not calling her by her sin. He's letting her
know I know exactly who you are, and I'm still
here talking to you and wanting a relationship with you. Anyway.
The world made her an outcast. Jesus brought her in.
We were talking about that in the last episode bring
the outcast in the world will turn you away because
of your sin. The Lord wants you to recognize I
(08:41):
know your sin, and I still love you, and I
still want to talk to you, and I'm gonna go
against everything that the world says just to be able
to come to you because you are still valuable. And
when I think about how deep this woman's sin, seeing
back in the day, five husbands and you want the
next one, and but marry y'all and y'all living together.
(09:02):
Like like I said, this woman, nobody wanted nothing to
do with her. They saw her as lower than, less
than because of her lifestyle. You see on earth. Even
though the Bible says a sin is a sin is
a sin basically, like you break one commandment, you're guilty
of breaking them all. The Word tells us that. But
the world kind of has a scale for sin. We
(09:25):
see some sin as bigger than others. If you lie
to your parents about stealing a piece of bubblegum from
the store when you're a little kid, that's not seen
as that big of a sin compared to somebody murdering
somebody in cold blood because y'all got into a fight
after the bar or something, you know what I mean,
Like we tend to measure sin. We say this sin
is greater than this sin. The Lord doesn't see it
(09:46):
that way. And the Word, which we know is the
words of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is telling
us every sin is equal, because even one sin separates
you from God. And I think sometimes that worldview of
sin being greater than other sin. And you see somebody
that has one of those greater sins when they are redeemed,
(10:09):
that just shows that much more power. It's kind of
like when someone has a boring testimony, you know, like
they grew up in church. Maybe their testimony is that
like I don't know, like maybe they doubted God in
their life some at one point or another. And you know,
but you know, when we hear those testimonies about, you know,
I was on drugs or I was a witch, you know,
(10:31):
or you know, I was sexually assaulted all my life
and I was living on the streets and then I
had to prostitute and then I got into you know,
like we hear these like these really like wild roller
coaster testimonies, and we see these people compared to people
that we feel like had a relatively boring or easy testimony.
We see those wild testimonies as a huge showcase of
(10:54):
the Lord's strength because we say, oh, my gosh, this
person went through so much. If the Lord still found
this person with everything that I just heard them said
that they went through, Oh the Lord can do anything.
The greater are weaknesses, the greater our sins. When He
redeems us, that showcases how great his strength is. And
(11:14):
I don't think it's a coincidence that the Lord used
this woman in this story for his word, because this
is a woman that people would look at and say
she has great sin. People will probably call her a hoe.
She is somebody that people would talk about and not
want to be around and not want to associate with.
We see her as having great sin, and this is
(11:35):
the woman that he chose to speak to. This is
the woman that he chose to make a great testimony
out of. This is the woman that after she had
an accounter with the Lord, he changed her life. She
went and told other people, and the fact that these
people even listen to her based off of who she
was as an outcast, shows the power of God through
(11:56):
your testimony. So I really want to emphasize this, especially
to all my women listening because I think that this
is very specific to women. Of course with this being
a woman, but I think that this lesson specifically is
very woman centered because I don't think that there's really
much that a man can do that will totally get
(12:16):
him ostracized from society. Think about it. Think about the
worst things that a man could do that you would say,
oh my gosh, that is a horrible, evil human being.
When you think about those things, you probably think about
sexual assaults. You probably think about domestic violence, like a
woman beater. You think about maybe a serial murderer. But
(12:38):
think about the men, the male celebrities that are those things,
and there's still celebrities and they're still successful when you
think about a woman beater. Chris Brown, the breezy bo
just went through, swept through the entire country. I know
a lot of my followers went and saw that concert.
And I'm not judging. I'm just saying for a fact,
I know almost every black woman I know went to
(13:01):
a Chris Brown concert. And I look at that, and
once again, this is not judgment. These are just the facts.
We know that he has assaulted plenty of women in
the past, like it wasn't just Rihanna. We know this
for a fact, y'all can google it. And yet he
is still able and allowed to be a celebrity and
sell out concerts and everybody goes to it. This is
(13:21):
just one example the fact that Didd he still has supporters.
Y'all think that Diddy still doesn't have people on his side,
absolutely not did. He still has supporters even when we
saw him drag Cassie across a hotel. There was this
one serial killer in La I think, like in the
seventies or eighties. Oh, I saw documentary about him. He
(13:43):
was like a Hispanic guy. Look, Oh my gosh, she
always wants to be around. But anyway, I was watching
the documentary about him. He was proven to have killed
several people. He was a serial murderer in the seventies
and eighties. When he was in court getting sentenced, like
going through his trial, he had women writing him letters
(14:04):
saying how they wanted to be with him. So it
really seems like no matter what a man does, society
will still uphold that man through the patriarchy and through
really internalized misogyny with a lot of women too. Just
point blank period. Because I don't get how after a
man has proven to have hit a woman sexually assaulted
(14:26):
a women's trace song still got a lot of supporters
how women can still support that. I don't get it.
But for women it's different because for women, there's just
one label that has to get put on you, and
you are immediately ostracized from your community. No matter what
you do. This label will follow you around for your
entire life. And that's the whole label. And that's basically
(14:47):
what the label was on the woman at the well
with the several husbands. As soon as a whole label
gets put on a woman, it's a whole different ballgame.
I think about so many women in history, Monica lou
mind you. Bill Clinton was the married one. Bill Clinton
was the president. Bill Clinton was the one abusing his power.
(15:09):
He was the one in the position of power versus
what a twenty year old White House in turn. But
somehow she's the one that's the punchline of the joke.
Not the cheating married man that was the president of
the United States. No, the twenty year old I don't
even know if she was twenty tbly like nineteen twenty
twenty one at the time. The man that was more
(15:31):
than twice her age. Oh Bill Clinton, Oh that's just
what men do. Uh, But she got that whole label
for the rest of her life. I think about people like,
I don't know Corin Stephens, how she will never live
the superhead title down. You know, like as soon as
society like, society can put any label on a man
(15:52):
and he will be able to brush it off in
some way, shape or form. But when it comes to women,
it's always a very different story. And I think that
it was once again no coincidence that this was a
woman with that label that Jesus chose to go speak with,
have a relationship with, and change her life. And I
just want this to speak to all women, no matter
(16:16):
what you've done in the past sexually, that shameful things
that if we saw a movie of your life, you
wouldn't be able to watch it. I think a lot
of us have had those moments, okay, And the Lord
will never call you by the names that society will
call you by. The Lord never calls you by your sin.
(16:37):
The Lord will only recognize your sin in order for
that to be your testimony builder, Because like I said,
your testimony is powerful, and this what's going to bring
other people in. We talked about in the first episode
bring the outcast in. Now we're talking about bringing everybody
in through your testimony. Now, I'm not saying that you
have to divulge every detail of your testimony. I don't,
(16:58):
to be honest with you, on a large scale, I
don't believe in that. Now, if there are people in
your church or really close friends, your family that you
are that you feel led to really share your full
testimony with, even if it is on a larger scale,
and the Holy Spirit is really leading you to share
your full testimony, by all means, do it. But I'm
(17:18):
not saying that every single person has to give every
single detail of their life in order to make their
testimony powerful. I'm just saying that how the world sees
you today it does not matter, because how they see
you today and then how they see you post Jesus
is what's going to turn heads. That's what's gonna be like.
They're gonna be like, what not the girl that have
(17:40):
five husbands? What not? The girl that was a bottle
girl for three years? What a lot of people will
look at your changing lifestyle, a drastic changing lifestyle, and
all they will see is the Lord's power in that
like it says in verse thirty nine, And many of
the Samaritans of that city believes in him because of
(18:00):
the word of the woman who testified. He told me
all that I ever did because of her words, because
of her testimony, they believed. Think of how many lives
you could change with your testimony, says I know that
for me with my testimony, because I was always so
open in public with my life. It's like my testimony
(18:20):
almost wrote itself. Like I've definitely sat down and given
a full video and a full explanation of my testimony.
But I think just because I lived out my bottle
girl years online and now I'm living out my life
living for Jesus online, people are naturally seeing that. So yes,
I sat down and I gave a testimony and in detail.
(18:41):
I think for the most part, I think like it
was like over a year ago now. So for me,
my testimony was already laid out for y'all, like I
never really hid anything. Y'all saw what I was four
years ago versus what I've been for the past like
two years, Like it's going on two years now, Like
in February it'll be two years that I rededicated my
(19:03):
life to the Lord. So in some sense, I was
kind of privileged that people really got to see the
natural progression. Like it's not like I'm coming to you
now and I get to tell you about what I
was doing before, but you weren't privy to it. Like
people saw me living this out in real time and
real life authentically, and for other people that may not
(19:24):
have a platform like I do, you still have that
privilege to go out and change lives with your testimony.
I mean, I'm telling you like I get dms, Like
I was at a speaking event last month and I
was telling them about, you know how the impact of
what I do now is so much greater than the
impact that I was making before, because I was telling them,
like when I was still working in night life and
(19:45):
still talking about just like Atlanta living, you know, YadA YadA,
I would get so many girls that would DM me
saying that they literally came to Atlanta because of me,
that they looked into working into night life and night
life because of me. They were like, oh, I went
and tried to get hired at this bar and this
club because of you, and you know, YadA YadA, And
(20:07):
I would always look at that like, Okay, I mean whatever,
you know, Like, I feel like I gave a good
amount of the pros and cons of working in night life.
But for the most part, I can't deny that I
made it look like an easy job that you can
make a lot of money at, because that's the truth,
you know. So a lot of people saw that example
and they would DM me. They would come up to
(20:27):
me in real life saying, girl, I'm only in Atlanta
because I saw your videos. And now the impact is
different because now I'm getting women dming me and coming
up to me saying, Amani, Like I watched your video
and you inspired me to go out and do this.
You inspired me to look for a home church. You
inspired me to serve in my church. You inspired me
to get back into church. I have women coming up
(20:49):
to me that's like me and you are like literally
on the same journey. Like I used to work in
night life too, and I see what you're doing now
and it's so inspirational. Like the impact just hits different.
People got to see my testimony in old time, and
the impact is there. You don't have to have a
platform to make your testimony matter and to make it
impactful and to turn people to Christ through your testimony.
(21:12):
All you have to do is just get out there
and tell it. Tell it to whoever will listen. Tell
it to your church, tell it to your friends, tell
it to your family. If you let the Lord change
your life and nobody knows about it, you're doing a
disservice to the body of Christ, who can come to
Christ through your testimony. This woman nobody wanted nothing to
(21:34):
do with her. You think that they were just listening
to her on an everyday basis. You think that when
she spoke people stopped and listened. No, her testimony was
the power. The power of God through her testimony is
what made people stop and listen and be like, oh huh.
It says that they believed in Him because of her words,
(21:56):
because of her testimony. Your testimony is powerful. Sis. No
matter what you were doing yesterday, today, today, your testimony
is powerful and you need to get out there and
share it. It is your duty to share it. It
is a part of your ministry, your every day. Every
(22:16):
Christian has a ministry. It's not just people that serve
in their church in some specific manner that have a ministry.
Every Christian has a ministry Matthew twenty eight nineteen. It's
all of our job to go out and make disciples,
not just our pastor, not just the youth leader, not
just the worship leader, every single Christian it is your
job to make disciples. How do you make disciples? How
(22:40):
do you turn people from their life to the life
that they should be living. Your life should be that example.
Your testimony should be that example. You should be able
to tell people Listen, I was doing exactly what you
were doing last year, five years ago, yesterday. Now I'm
doing this and you can too. And that's how you
when soul's over for Christ, that's the beginning. I know
(23:04):
they're not fighting behind me. Child, We're gonna end it there.
I don't know what the cats are up to. We
gonna end it there. I was at the end anyway.
So I just want to reiterate to you guys. You know,
like this episode is all about your testimony matters. It
is not your shame, it is not your condemnation. Your
testimony is your power, the power of God living through you.
(23:27):
So get out there, share it and do your part.
Do your part. Do not let anyone shame you for
your past your past is powerful because it shows the
Lord's strength when we're weak and when we can tell people,
you can see the difference, Like that's the power of
pons all baby, you know. So yeah, we're gonna end
(23:49):
it here. I will see you guys next week when
we close up this series of The Woman at the Well.
Love you guys, I will see you later. Bye.
Hi, you guys, welcome back to the Amani Talks podcast.
You're here with your host Amani on the podcast where
we discuss our Christian based topics and deepening our relationship
with the Lord. So we are continuing on in our
series about the Woman at the Well. We are in
John chapter four. I gave you guys the homework of
the scripture to read so that you can get proper
(00:21):
context about the three part mini series that we're going
to be doing about the Samaritan woman, Jesus speaking to
her at the well, and what we can learn from
that experience or that interaction. So hopefully you guys have
read that, you have read it for yourself, you have
studied it a little bit. So our first episode last
Tuesday was about kind of like that first chunk of scripture.
(00:42):
So last week we were reading John four, verses five
through twenty six, and we were talking about Jesus's interaction
with the Samaritan woman, just talking about their conversation. We
titled it bringing in the Outcast in We were talking
about who the Samaritan woman was, why she was an outcast.
We were talking about how the Lord was speaking to her,
how he was going against the societal norms, breaking religious
(01:06):
norms by even being a religious figure speaking to a woman.
And we were talking about how, you know, the Lord
it was the first feminist and all these things. And
I don't say feminists in a way that we see
feminism today that you know, I use that term very loosely.
All I mean was that he was pro woman before
being pro woman was a thing. We were talking about
(01:27):
how people see the Christian religion as very restrictive towards women,
but we see Jesus having relationships with women before it
was okay to do so in society and even in
the Jewish religion. So he was just going against all
these things that people saw as customary, people saw as
the regular practice of that day, And there are just
so many things that you can pull from it. Definitely
(01:48):
go back and listen to last week's episode. So now
we are going to get into what I have titled
for our second message as your testimony is what reaches People.
This really isn't a title. It's kind of it's kind
of long, but this is what I thought about when
I was thinking about this second episode. Your testimony is
what reaches people. It's not your shame it's your effectiveness.
And we're gonna be in verses twenty seven through thirty
(02:10):
and then thirty nine through forty two primarily, so if
you did your homework, you would have read this already.
But I definitely want to focus on who we are
as people. Our failures are just testimony builders, and in
our weakness, his strength is perfectly shown. So picking up
in John four twenty seven, we're going to start reading.
And at this point his disciples came, and they marveled
(02:32):
that he talked with a woman. Yet no one said,
what do you seek or why are you talking with her.
The woman then left her water pot, went her way
into the city and said to the men, come see
a man who told me all the things that I
ever did? Could this be the Christ? Then they went
out of the city and came to him, then skipping
down to verse thirty nine, picking it back up, and
(02:54):
many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him
Jesus because of the word of the woman who testified
he told me all that I ever did. So when
the Samaritans had come to him, they urged him to
stay with them, and he stayed there for two days
and many more believed because of his own word. Then
they said to the woman, now we believe not because
of what you said, for we ourselves have heard him
(03:16):
and we know that this indeed is the Christ, the
savior of the world. So I want to really focus
on the timeline of what's happening here, because when we
talk about testimony building, we already talked about who this
woman was, how she was an outcast, and why she
was an outcast. We talked about Jesus, you know, kind
of telling her, I know that you have had several
husbands before. The one that you're with right now is
(03:38):
not your husband. How would he have known that unless
he knows all things, you know. So we see her
having an encounter with the Lord. We see him going
out of his way to speak to her. He has
started a relationship with her, and then from that encounter
comes change and Versus twenty eight, it says the woman
then left her water pot, went her way into the
(04:00):
city and said to the men, come see a man
who told me all the things that I ever did.
Could this be the Christ? So from the encounter with Jesus,
a very personal, one on one encounter that she had
with the Lord himself, from that encounter comes change. We
see her leaving what she was doing. She left her
(04:20):
water pot, went into the city to tell other people
about him. So from that change we see a testimony.
She's saying, come see the man that told me about
all the things that I have ever done? Could this
be the Christ? And that natural progression of a one
on one encounter with the Lord that turns into you
changing your life, changing what you were doing, that then
(04:43):
leads into your testimony and you telling other people about
them or about him. That should be the natural progression
of every believer's life. If you say that you are
a saved Christian, but you cannot pinpoint and encounter with
the Lord, how that encounter led to you totally changing
what you were doing before, and how that change has
led to you telling other people about him, then you
(05:03):
would really have to question am I actually saved? Am
I actually living for the Lord? Because that's the natural
progression of it. And that's why I said in the
first episode about how I love this story because it
tells us everything that we need to know about who
Jesus is to us and what our lives should look like.
In response to an encounter with him. A true personal
(05:25):
encounter with him. And that's why when I said, people
talk about, you know, Christ, and they automatically go to religion.
That's how I automatically know you don't really have a
relationship with him. He came for a relationship, not a religion.
You know, we have a lot of religious folk. We
have a lot of church folk, we have a lot
of Easter, Christmas, Mother's Day, Sunday Morning folk. But I
(05:49):
believe that we don't have enough people that actually have
true relationship. It's one thing to be religious, it's a
whole other thing to say I have a relationship with
Jesus that has changed my life and that's why I
follow him. Those are two different things, y'all. And when
you have a true relationship that comes with you changing
your life and having a testimony that can change the
(06:11):
lives of others. Because of what this woman said, other
people went out to Jesus because of what she said.
It was literally her testimony that brought others to Jesus.
And that's just the power of your testimony. Because what
we were talking about in the first episode was talking
about how much of an outcast this woman was. And
I want to go back to the first chunk of
(06:32):
verses that we were talking about from the first episode
last week, and I really want to talk about how
Jesus called her sin out right. When you go to
verse four or chapter four and you start in verse
let's see sixteen. Let's read this again. Jesus said to her,
go call your husband and come here. The woman answered
(06:54):
and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her,
you have said, well, I have no husband, for you
have had five husbands, and the one whom you now
have is not your husband. And that you spoke truly.
The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you
are a prophet. Okay, Now, I've seen a lot of
videos on TikTok, specifically about people chuckling and laughing at
(07:15):
this moment because they're like, oh, Jesus got her. Oh
God has a sense of humor. Oh that's so funny
he checked her. When I hear people make light in
fun of this situation, that's how I know that you
really haven't read, Like you haven't read John chapter four,
you haven't really read the Bible in the context of
this story. Because Jesus was not trying to be funny.
(07:36):
He wasn't trying to rub the fact that she has
had several husbands in her face. He wasn't trying to
make fun of her. This was not a joke to him.
You see, the world sees your sin and they call
you by your sin. The world sees that you slept
around and they call you a hoe. The world sees
that you had an abortion and they call you a murderer.
The world sees that you were stealing stuff from the
store and call you a kleptomaniac. The Lord sees your sin,
(07:59):
he read recognizes what your sin is, But unlike the world,
Jesus never calls you by your sin. The world does that,
Jesus does not. So he was not joking around. It
wasn't like a zing for Jesus to say, yeah, you've
had several husbands. That's not the context here. The context
is him wanting you to recognize I know who you are.
(08:19):
He's not calling her by her sin. He's letting her
know I know exactly who you are, and I'm still
here talking to you and wanting a relationship with you. Anyway.
The world made her an outcast. Jesus brought her in.
We were talking about that in the last episode bring
the outcast in the world will turn you away because
of your sin. The Lord wants you to recognize I
(08:41):
know your sin, and I still love you, and I
still want to talk to you, and I'm gonna go
against everything that the world says just to be able
to come to you because you are still valuable. And
when I think about how deep this woman's sin, seeing
back in the day, five husbands and you want the
next one, and but marry y'all and y'all living together.
(09:02):
Like like I said, this woman, nobody wanted nothing to
do with her. They saw her as lower than, less
than because of her lifestyle. You see on earth. Even
though the Bible says a sin is a sin is
a sin basically, like you break one commandment, you're guilty
of breaking them all. The Word tells us that. But
the world kind of has a scale for sin. We
(09:25):
see some sin as bigger than others. If you lie
to your parents about stealing a piece of bubblegum from
the store when you're a little kid, that's not seen
as that big of a sin compared to somebody murdering
somebody in cold blood because y'all got into a fight
after the bar or something, you know what I mean,
Like we tend to measure sin. We say this sin
is greater than this sin. The Lord doesn't see it
(09:46):
that way. And the Word, which we know is the
words of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is telling
us every sin is equal, because even one sin separates
you from God. And I think sometimes that worldview of
sin being greater than other sin. And you see somebody
that has one of those greater sins when they are redeemed,
(10:09):
that just shows that much more power. It's kind of
like when someone has a boring testimony, you know, like
they grew up in church. Maybe their testimony is that
like I don't know, like maybe they doubted God in
their life some at one point or another. And you know,
but you know, when we hear those testimonies about, you know,
I was on drugs or I was a witch, you know,
(10:31):
or you know, I was sexually assaulted all my life
and I was living on the streets and then I
had to prostitute and then I got into you know,
like we hear these like these really like wild roller
coaster testimonies, and we see these people compared to people
that we feel like had a relatively boring or easy testimony.
We see those wild testimonies as a huge showcase of
(10:54):
the Lord's strength because we say, oh, my gosh, this
person went through so much. If the Lord still found
this person with everything that I just heard them said
that they went through, Oh the Lord can do anything.
The greater are weaknesses, the greater our sins. When He
redeems us, that showcases how great his strength is. And
(11:14):
I don't think it's a coincidence that the Lord used
this woman in this story for his word, because this
is a woman that people would look at and say
she has great sin. People will probably call her a hoe.
She is somebody that people would talk about and not
want to be around and not want to associate with.
We see her as having great sin, and this is
(11:35):
the woman that he chose to speak to. This is
the woman that he chose to make a great testimony
out of. This is the woman that after she had
an accounter with the Lord, he changed her life. She
went and told other people, and the fact that these
people even listen to her based off of who she
was as an outcast, shows the power of God through
(11:56):
your testimony. So I really want to emphasize this, especially
to all my women listening because I think that this
is very specific to women. Of course with this being
a woman, but I think that this lesson specifically is
very woman centered because I don't think that there's really
much that a man can do that will totally get
(12:16):
him ostracized from society. Think about it. Think about the
worst things that a man could do that you would say,
oh my gosh, that is a horrible, evil human being.
When you think about those things, you probably think about
sexual assaults. You probably think about domestic violence, like a
woman beater. You think about maybe a serial murderer. But
(12:38):
think about the men, the male celebrities that are those things,
and there's still celebrities and they're still successful when you
think about a woman beater. Chris Brown, the breezy bo
just went through, swept through the entire country. I know
a lot of my followers went and saw that concert.
And I'm not judging. I'm just saying for a fact,
I know almost every black woman I know went to
(13:01):
a Chris Brown concert. And I look at that, and
once again, this is not judgment. These are just the facts.
We know that he has assaulted plenty of women in
the past, like it wasn't just Rihanna. We know this
for a fact, y'all can google it. And yet he
is still able and allowed to be a celebrity and
sell out concerts and everybody goes to it. This is
(13:21):
just one example the fact that Didd he still has supporters.
Y'all think that Diddy still doesn't have people on his side,
absolutely not did. He still has supporters even when we
saw him drag Cassie across a hotel. There was this
one serial killer in La I think, like in the
seventies or eighties. Oh, I saw documentary about him. He
(13:43):
was like a Hispanic guy. Look, Oh my gosh, she
always wants to be around. But anyway, I was watching
the documentary about him. He was proven to have killed
several people. He was a serial murderer in the seventies
and eighties. When he was in court getting sentenced, like
going through his trial, he had women writing him letters
(14:04):
saying how they wanted to be with him. So it
really seems like no matter what a man does, society
will still uphold that man through the patriarchy and through
really internalized misogyny with a lot of women too. Just
point blank period. Because I don't get how after a
man has proven to have hit a woman sexually assaulted
(14:26):
a women's trace song still got a lot of supporters
how women can still support that. I don't get it.
But for women it's different because for women, there's just
one label that has to get put on you, and
you are immediately ostracized from your community. No matter what
you do. This label will follow you around for your
entire life. And that's the whole label. And that's basically
(14:47):
what the label was on the woman at the well
with the several husbands. As soon as a whole label
gets put on a woman, it's a whole different ballgame.
I think about so many women in history, Monica lou
mind you. Bill Clinton was the married one. Bill Clinton
was the president. Bill Clinton was the one abusing his power.
(15:09):
He was the one in the position of power versus
what a twenty year old White House in turn. But
somehow she's the one that's the punchline of the joke.
Not the cheating married man that was the president of
the United States. No, the twenty year old I don't
even know if she was twenty tbly like nineteen twenty
twenty one at the time. The man that was more
(15:31):
than twice her age. Oh Bill Clinton, Oh that's just
what men do. Uh, But she got that whole label
for the rest of her life. I think about people like,
I don't know Corin Stephens, how she will never live
the superhead title down. You know, like as soon as
society like, society can put any label on a man
(15:52):
and he will be able to brush it off in
some way, shape or form. But when it comes to women,
it's always a very different story. And I think that
it was once again no coincidence that this was a
woman with that label that Jesus chose to go speak with,
have a relationship with, and change her life. And I
just want this to speak to all women, no matter
(16:16):
what you've done in the past sexually, that shameful things
that if we saw a movie of your life, you
wouldn't be able to watch it. I think a lot
of us have had those moments, okay, And the Lord
will never call you by the names that society will
call you by. The Lord never calls you by your sin.
(16:37):
The Lord will only recognize your sin in order for
that to be your testimony builder, Because like I said,
your testimony is powerful, and this what's going to bring
other people in. We talked about in the first episode
bring the outcast in. Now we're talking about bringing everybody
in through your testimony. Now, I'm not saying that you
have to divulge every detail of your testimony. I don't,
(16:58):
to be honest with you, on a large scale, I
don't believe in that. Now, if there are people in
your church or really close friends, your family that you
are that you feel led to really share your full
testimony with, even if it is on a larger scale,
and the Holy Spirit is really leading you to share
your full testimony, by all means, do it. But I'm
(17:18):
not saying that every single person has to give every
single detail of their life in order to make their
testimony powerful. I'm just saying that how the world sees
you today it does not matter, because how they see
you today and then how they see you post Jesus
is what's going to turn heads. That's what's gonna be like.
They're gonna be like, what not the girl that have
(17:40):
five husbands? What not? The girl that was a bottle
girl for three years? What a lot of people will
look at your changing lifestyle, a drastic changing lifestyle, and
all they will see is the Lord's power in that
like it says in verse thirty nine, And many of
the Samaritans of that city believes in him because of
(18:00):
the word of the woman who testified. He told me
all that I ever did because of her words, because
of her testimony, they believed. Think of how many lives
you could change with your testimony, says I know that
for me with my testimony, because I was always so
open in public with my life. It's like my testimony
(18:20):
almost wrote itself. Like I've definitely sat down and given
a full video and a full explanation of my testimony.
But I think just because I lived out my bottle
girl years online and now I'm living out my life
living for Jesus online, people are naturally seeing that. So yes,
I sat down and I gave a testimony and in detail.
(18:41):
I think for the most part, I think like it
was like over a year ago now. So for me,
my testimony was already laid out for y'all, like I
never really hid anything. Y'all saw what I was four
years ago versus what I've been for the past like
two years, Like it's going on two years now, Like
in February it'll be two years that I rededicated my
(19:03):
life to the Lord. So in some sense, I was
kind of privileged that people really got to see the
natural progression. Like it's not like I'm coming to you
now and I get to tell you about what I
was doing before, but you weren't privy to it. Like
people saw me living this out in real time and
real life authentically, and for other people that may not
(19:24):
have a platform like I do, you still have that
privilege to go out and change lives with your testimony.
I mean, I'm telling you like I get dms, Like
I was at a speaking event last month and I
was telling them about, you know how the impact of
what I do now is so much greater than the
impact that I was making before, because I was telling them,
like when I was still working in night life and
(19:45):
still talking about just like Atlanta living, you know, YadA YadA,
I would get so many girls that would DM me
saying that they literally came to Atlanta because of me,
that they looked into working into night life and night
life because of me. They were like, oh, I went
and tried to get hired at this bar and this
club because of you, and you know, YadA YadA, And
(20:07):
I would always look at that like, Okay, I mean whatever,
you know, Like, I feel like I gave a good
amount of the pros and cons of working in night life.
But for the most part, I can't deny that I
made it look like an easy job that you can
make a lot of money at, because that's the truth,
you know. So a lot of people saw that example
and they would DM me. They would come up to
(20:27):
me in real life saying, girl, I'm only in Atlanta
because I saw your videos. And now the impact is
different because now I'm getting women dming me and coming
up to me saying, Amani, Like I watched your video
and you inspired me to go out and do this.
You inspired me to look for a home church. You
inspired me to serve in my church. You inspired me
to get back into church. I have women coming up
(20:49):
to me that's like me and you are like literally
on the same journey. Like I used to work in
night life too, and I see what you're doing now
and it's so inspirational. Like the impact just hits different.
People got to see my testimony in old time, and
the impact is there. You don't have to have a
platform to make your testimony matter and to make it
impactful and to turn people to Christ through your testimony.
(21:12):
All you have to do is just get out there
and tell it. Tell it to whoever will listen. Tell
it to your church, tell it to your friends, tell
it to your family. If you let the Lord change
your life and nobody knows about it, you're doing a
disservice to the body of Christ, who can come to
Christ through your testimony. This woman nobody wanted nothing to
(21:34):
do with her. You think that they were just listening
to her on an everyday basis. You think that when
she spoke people stopped and listened. No, her testimony was
the power. The power of God through her testimony is
what made people stop and listen and be like, oh huh.
It says that they believed in Him because of her words,
(21:56):
because of her testimony. Your testimony is powerful. Sis. No
matter what you were doing yesterday, today, today, your testimony
is powerful and you need to get out there and
share it. It is your duty to share it. It
is a part of your ministry, your every day. Every
(22:16):
Christian has a ministry. It's not just people that serve
in their church in some specific manner that have a ministry.
Every Christian has a ministry Matthew twenty eight nineteen. It's
all of our job to go out and make disciples,
not just our pastor, not just the youth leader, not
just the worship leader, every single Christian it is your
job to make disciples. How do you make disciples? How
(22:40):
do you turn people from their life to the life
that they should be living. Your life should be that example.
Your testimony should be that example. You should be able
to tell people Listen, I was doing exactly what you
were doing last year, five years ago, yesterday. Now I'm
doing this and you can too. And that's how you
when soul's over for Christ, that's the beginning. I know
(23:04):
they're not fighting behind me. Child, We're gonna end it there.
I don't know what the cats are up to. We
gonna end it there. I was at the end anyway.
So I just want to reiterate to you guys. You know,
like this episode is all about your testimony matters. It
is not your shame, it is not your condemnation. Your
testimony is your power, the power of God living through you.
(23:27):
So get out there, share it and do your part.
Do your part. Do not let anyone shame you for
your past your past is powerful because it shows the
Lord's strength when we're weak and when we can tell people,
you can see the difference, Like that's the power of
pons all baby, you know. So yeah, we're gonna end
(23:49):
it here. I will see you guys next week when
we close up this series of The Woman at the Well.
Love you guys, I will see you later. Bye.
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