John 4:27 

 And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”

 Many of us are familiar with this story of the woman at the well, but have you ever considered the fact that Jesus completely transformed this woman’s life and didn’t perform a miracle while doing so. He didn’t make the blind see, or raise the dead; all he did was talk to her. He offered her no manifestation of his power and yet what he gave her was so powerful her life was changed forever.

The bible declares that he spoke to her; he stood flat-footed, looked her in the face, and talked to her directly. He spoke to her the way a father might speak to his daughter; or the way a friend might talk to a friend. He spoke to her directly, simply, sometimes confrontationally- because when you love somebody sometimes you’ve got get in their face! And after one conversation with Jesus, this woman’s life was completely transformed.

He didn’t touch her, he wasn’t trying to sleep with her, and he wasn’t trying to get her to do anything for him. He wasn’t trying to get her to pay his cell phone bill or his rent (!) He just talked to her! He spoke to her with dignity and respect. He spoke into her spirit and her life. He spoke to her mistakes, and he spoke to her in such a way that after one conversation with him, everything about her was completely different!

And today we mourn for all of the women and all the girls that speak to men hoping that maybe one day the men in their lives will say something that will speak to their souls, but find only shallow conversations and loaded innuendos. Today we mourn for all of the women who do not know what it is to have someone speak to them with the inflections of eternity and talk to them in a language that their spirit can understand. We mourn for all the sisters, who, in a night of spiraling desperation handed their bodies over to men they barely knew hoping all the while that maybe after the deed was done, he would roll over and say something that would speak to the broken places in their souls. We mourn for every woman, who has ever had to deal with something or put up with somebody just to get a conversation; but this is the danger of what happens when men and women engage in the practice of being artificial.

It is too often the case that when men and women engage in conversation the result is something shallow, superficial, and we play games with each other hoping to get what we want without giving what we long for. Men use intimacy to get sex, and women use sex to get intimacy. And in the middle of the process, because both of us have different agendas, nobody gets what they want. How many people are ready to say today “I’m tired of playing the superficial games, with what’s your name and what’s your sign, I want something real and lasting.

Most of us have never had a real conversation. In real conversation you give and you get, you give and you teach. And most of us have never had a conversation, like this woman had with Jesus because real conversations involve intimacy and vulnerability. Real conversations mean you’ve got to take your mask off and let your hair down. Real conversation is not about what you did, it’s about why you did it. Real conversation is not about what you’ve got on, but rather what you’re becoming. And if you ever had a real conversation tears would stream down your face-bells of joy would break out in your soul because your soul would finally have a chance to speak.

In order to have a real conversation with somebody, the first thing you have to do is acknowledge the person to whom you are speaking. That may not sound very deep but you must realize that most people you talk to are not talking to you. Most of the people you try to have conversations with are really talking to the last person they talked to and not you; and you just happen to be the right person at the right time to remind them of somebody else.

It is amazing how many people talk to us and don’t acknowledge the fullness of who we are. Most people have an agenda and view you through the narrow lenses of past conversations and filter what they hear through what they’ve already heard. That’s why when people talk about you they speak about you in a relative sense, saying things like “She’s pretty, for a dark-skinned girl.” Or “She’s cute, for a big girl” or “She’s not bad, for a light-skinned girl”. And when they say this it means that they’re not looking at you on your own terms, they’re looking at you through the lenses of a comparison they’re making with something that they’ve already had. Most people don’t know how to stand there and deal with you in the fullness of whom you are and that’s why we miss each other in conversation.

Here you are trying to give all that you are to somebody else and here they are comparing you to what they had trying to fit you in to what they think they want!   Talk to me!!

 If they can’t handle who you are now then they don’t deserve what you’re about to become. If someone can’t stand in your face and speak to all of who you are then let them go because you deserve a conversation and not a game.

Most people can’t even see you and to them you are a figment of their imagination; something that they created out of the substance of their past. The danger of every relationship, marriage, or dating situation is that one day, when the illusion fades away and reality sets in, the person you created is gone. How will the relation survive when the person you connected with never existed in the first place?

This is why I “hate” first dates. I can’t stand first dates because we lie on first dates; and some of us haven’t stopped yet. We wear our best clothes, our best shoes, we go to eat at restaurants we don’t normally eat at and order foods we can’t pronounce. We laugh at jokes that aren’t really funny, and we don’t say what’s really on our minds. My advice to anyone about to go on a first date is this (in spite of the fact that you may not see a second date) be yourself! Wear what you want to wear, eat what you want to eat, and if they can’t deal with you- you don’t want them anyway! Don’t waste another minute of your life trying to feed somebody’s fantasy, or trying to fit into the box they made for you. We have to get to the place in our lives where we are able to tell people, “I’m not going to be what you want me to be- this is ME! And I am who I am because of the grace of the Living God!

The Bible says Jesus talked to her. The Greek word for ‘talk’ in this text is ‘laleo’ and it means to speak ones mind. He spoke his mind to her; he spoke his heart to her. He did not speak in superficial terms. He gave her a deposit of his mind. Can you imagine what it was like for this woman, who had been through hell and ostracized by everyone who knew her, to be sitting at the side of a well and have the Son of God give her some of his mind! He spoke his mind to her.

Not too long ago I was talking to my sister who shared with me that she is in a new relationship with a co-worker and for the most part things seemed to be going well. According to her, they are very compatible, they get along, it’s a good relationship, but she’s beginning to realize that he doesn’t let her in. He won’t let her into his heart and at a certain point in their conversations she finds that he just shuts down. (Does this sound familiar to anybody?) She said that there’s this big barrier between them and she wants to go to the next level, but they can’t seem to make progress. She wants him to let her in and he won’t let it happen, so she asked me, “What should I do?”

I asked my sister had she ever considered the possibility that he won’t let you in because he’s trying to get out? Has it ever crossed your mind that, maybe you keep trying to get into his world but part of the reason why he came to you was because he saw something in you that made him believe you had what it would take to lead him out?

Most women, when they can’t get a man to open up to them call their girlfriends to get advice; but since they have never spent a single day as a man and can’t keep one, another woman will never be able to tell you how to get a man to speak his mind. Please understand that as long as you keep trying to get in, and he is trying to get out, there will always be conflict in the relationship because you’re trying to defend something he’s trying to destroy. He wants out but you want in; and he’s trying to figure out why you keep trying to get into something he is trying to be delivered from?   And some of you may be wondering what is he trying to get out of?

Please understand that it’s hard to be a man. I know you think that we’re all dogs and we’re no good, and yes we’ve got our issues (I’m not going to lie) but please understand it’s hard to be a man. Men don’t know when to cry, or when not to cry, whether they should hug their boy or swallow what they feel because of what others might say about them. It’s hard to be a man! Women are socialized to talk but men are not socialized like that. When something is on a man’s mind he gets quiet; and the quieter he becomes the more it should tell you that something is going on in his life.

And when a man has something on his mind he looks for a way to escape what he feels because we are only socialized to show anger and lust, but when what we feel is beyond what we have been trained to express we look for a way to avoid it, because the pain of feeling it is only surpassed by the pain of not knowing how to express what we feel. And so we run to our toys. We run to the PS2 or X-box and play games because the game makes sense to us and any victory is better than the feelings of loss and confusion that won’t leave us alone. And most women who see us go through this conclude that we don’t love them because we won’t communicate. They fail to understand that something is wrong with us and the only way we know how to medicate ourselves is to hide behind the game; because when a man has a problem he can’t fix, he runs to his toys.

I asked my sister to consider the possibility that maybe this man has been through hell; maybe he’s survived high water and deep discouraging darkness. Maybe he’s been broken in places you know nothing about and would never understand. Maybe he’s been crushed and his childhood stolen from him. Maybe what’s in his heart (and in his mind) is the ruin and wreckage of a life he so desperately wants to end; and maybe he won’t let you in because keeping you out is the one way he can protect you from the thing that hurts him the most. Perhaps the fact that he won’t let you in is an indication of just how much he loves you, because not letting you in is his way of keeping you from being destroyed by the things that tear him apart.

So you try to get in and he pushes you out. You try to get in and he pushes you out. It’s because he’s trying to keep you away from the mess that’s killing who he is. He is hoping that you will be the one person in his life that won’t be corrupted by the hell he has had to go through. You may think he got with you because of your hips, your lips, and your complexion. But could it be that he got with you because you were the one that made him believe that he could be free?  You were the one that brought light into his life? He didn’t get with you so that he could let you in; he got with you so that you could lead him out?

The reason most women can’t reach their son, their father, their brother, their uncle, their boyfriend, or their husband has everything to do with the fact that you keep trying to get into something that God put you there to bring him out of? Maybe it is not your assignment to get in.

How do you bring them out? Whenever you talk to a man about who he is and where he’s been, you make yourself like every other women in his life. Most women think that men cheat on them because the sex was better, or the woman was prettier. That’s not the case in most situations. Most of the time a man will cheat on a woman because all you did was remind him of who he was–but she reminded him of what he could be. When you lose the capacity to tell a man what he can be, you make him susceptible to those who can. Men are fragile creatures with fragile egos, and a man is always going to be attracted to anyone or anything that will tell him what his soul longs to hear; and a man is always trying to build and make progress, and when he’s trapped in something that just reminds him of his mistakes and failures he is open to other things.

Now I know that sometimes you have to tell us about ourselves but keep it balanced. Sometimes you’ve got to tell it like it is and let him know he’s acting crazy, but you’ve got to always bring it back and remind him of what he can be. You ought to go to the men in your life and tell them “I see God in you. I see businesses in you. I see education in you. I see resources in you. I see better in you, and that’s why I got with you! I didn’t get with you because you throw it down in the bed room; I got with you because I see the hand of God moving in your life! You’re a giant killer, a dragon slayer, a miracle worker, and no weapon formed against you shall prosper”

Speak to what he can be and soon we will become it because the bible says that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Stop begging to get in and stand outside of where he is, and seduce him forward by simply being who you are - because that is why he loved you in the first place.   And they marveled that he talked to a woman!