On This Day: Why the World Hates Jesus Christ

   After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee. (John 7:1-9)

   There is a well-known Christian evangelist named Ray Comfort who begins his sharing of the good news by walking people through the 10 commandments. He sees that “since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20), people need to see themselves first measured by the law so they realize they are condemned sinners, and then to hear the good news of great joy that God has given us a Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord, who came into the world to save sinners.

   Today I noticed that, when Jesus was explaining to his brothers why he wasn’t ready to go to the “feast of booths” in Jerusalem, he distinguished between them and him by the fact that they were of no threat to the world’s worldliness because they were part of the religious world system of Israel, while he was a threat to the world system of Israel because he was testifying “about it that its works are evil.”

   One thing that really stood out was Jesus’ use of “the world” in relation to Israel. Israel’s spiritual standing before God was so lost that Jesus identified it as “the world”. The same world the Romans and Greeks lived in. It was the world system operating without God. That world would hate him because he was not of the world. He had a kingdom that was not of the world. Israel was not of his kingdom because it was of the world. And, at that time, so were Jesus’ earthly brothers.

   What Jesus was saying was that Israel’s worldly hatred toward him was based on him testifying that their works were evil. What they were doing as a nation was evil. There were some faithful ones in the mix (Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, Simeon, Anna, John the Baptist, etc), but the nation itself was of the world. And it hated being told that it was living in sin, particularly because they were such good religious people.

   As I pondered this in prayer, it then stood out how the reference to “the world” is used in John’s gospel. That famous verse, John 3:16, states it clearly, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” For a long time, I have noticed the contrast between God loving Israel (as seen throughout the Old Testament), and God loving the other nations. John 3:16 is Jesus words to Nicodemus, a leader in Israel, identifying that the message of love God had communicated to them was for “the world”, meaning, all nations. But it also means that Israel was part of that world as well and needed the same salvation as the despised Romans, Greeks, and Samaritans of the day.

   All of this together got me realizing that if the world loves the message, the messenger is likely NOT addressing that “its works are evil.” On the other hand, those who know the good news of great joy the best know that “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20) leads to,

   For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Romans 3:22-25)

   You see, even there it’s “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” as a necessary-to-believe truth that prepares hearts for “and are justified by his grace as a gift…” Jesus came into the world to save sinners, so he told them the truth about their sin (which is why the worldlings hated him), and told them the truth about the so great salvation he would secure through his death (which is why the poor-in-spirit sinners loved him).

   We all know that Jesus did not only go around testifying to the sinfulness of the world. He didn’t say that was the whole message, only that it was the part of the message that caused the world to hate him. But it was a necessary thing for people to know that only because God put Jesus “forward as a propitiation by his blood” to deal with the evil in us can we have a redemption that is “received by faith”.

   The reason “repent” and “believe” must always be kept together (even when one is used as a summary for the whole) is because repentance focuses on changing our minds about our evil deeds so that what we once loved we now hate, and faith focuses on changing our minds about the triune God so that the God we once hated we now attach to in childlike trust and love.

   I am ever so thankful that God has been quick and relentless to call me out on my evil deeds. By seeing that I was,

   dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3),

I could also see how,

   God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)

   Earlier in John’s gospel we read, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). Today we see how Jesus became hated by the world because he was calling them out on their evil works in order to open their hearts to the good news. Many continued loving the darkness, their very religious darkness, while others heard the good news that there was a kind of redemption from sin they had never experienced, and they came into Jesus’ kingdom to have it.

   So, what is your reaction to Jesus putting the spotlight on your evil works?

   And does your answer show you where you stand with him?

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: A New Year of Comings and Goings

   When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. (John 6:60-66)

   I’m one of those folks Paul spoke about who sees every day as the same. Today that means that New Year’s day of 2026 is just another day for me far more than it feels like the start of something new.

   However, because our culture does consider it a special day to bring closure to the past year and try to start fresh, I was curious what Scripture would disciple me today. And the one that did certainly has me on high alert!

   I often encourage people to focus more on the daily journey with God than charting where we imagine we are in our travels with him. If our attention is on how we are getting to know God in the moment, we will have the joy of knowing him no matter whether or not we get any sense we have “made progress” in any other way.

   With that in mind, I had lots of “little child” wonderings about what it was like for Jesus to have a multitude of people walk away from him. In his deity, he had a level of attachment with the Father and the Spirit that we can’t even imagine. How much did that affect him in his humanity when people walked away from him? Was that unfailing attachment a comfort to him when his humanity experienced broken relationships of the most personal kind?

   I was reminded of a line from a wonderful old hymn that I have really come to… well, not like! In the song, “I Stand Amazed in the Presence” (Charles Hutchinson Gabriel, 1905), the writer expressed, “He had no tears for His own griefs, but sweat-drops of blood for mine.” Let’s just say that I really don’t think that is accurate!

   In my own heartaches and griefs, I am often drawn to the description of Jesus that “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). How easily my heart is drawn to such a man as this, the God-man, deity in bodily form, the Word who became flesh to live among us. He was despised like we are. He was rejected by men like we are. He had so many sorrows that it characterized him as “a man of” such things. He was acquainted with grief just like ourselves. I don’t see anything of him not having feelings about his own griefs in experiencing all such injustices, and that’s why he is so approachable when I experience such painful things myself.   

   We just passed the fourth Christmas season since I was “renounced” by the people who were closest to me in life. Today I see Jesus “renounced” by people he had fed with a miraculous multiplying of bread and fish. They had seriously considered that he might be their promised Messiah.

   But then the steppingstones to faith turned into the stumblingstones of unbelief. They simply couldn’t attach to a Messiah who was different than their religious expectations. He had to be their way, because there was no way they would think differently about him.

   So, what did they do? They went back to their self-dependent religion. Claiming God’s word as theirs, but not following what God said, or believing in the One of whom he wrote.

   If it means anything at all that we are entering a new year, then I would want this year to be a year of comings not goings. I want to be known by my daily coming to Jesus and growing in him. I want to see “the many” who go away to the wide road to destruction matched by “the few” who come to Jesus and live every day to know him better than ever before.

   And, if the comings and goings of this year add to the heartache and grief of being disowned by people I love, I will rest in the Man of Sorrows to hold me close to his heart, and teach me his love that would bear such things in such greater intensity than I could ever know, and then go and lay down his life for his friends.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: I Heard the LORD Call My Name

   Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? (John 6:28-30)

   Every day, as I spend time with my Father in his word and talk to him in prayer, there is a weaving together of his world and mine. He is not outside my world speaking in, but “God with us” in everything.

   Today, this ministered to me in another journey with God from one thought to another. Each discovery is an experience of knowing, and each truth known prepares for the next truth to be told.

   One of the most notable experiences of my present journey through John’s gospel is noticing themes that have not stood out before. And one of the most glaring is hearing Jesus teaching the same things to different groups in different words. It is like I am hearing a rhyming of thoughts emphasizing the realities of God for all people.

   For example, when Jesus talked with Nicodemus (John 3), he went straight to, “You must be born again”. No new birth, no kingdom of God experience.

   Then, in talking with the Samaritan woman (John 4), Jesus told her that if she had known who he was, she would have been asking him for living water, and that this living water would well-up within a person to eternal life.

   When Jesus got in trouble for healing an invalid on the Sabbath (John 5), he told the Religious Elite, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Being born again, drinking the living water, hearing and believing Jesus’ words, are rhyming thoughts emphasizing the need to trust in Jesus for eternal life.

   And today, I’m in the midst of Jesus’ dialogue with the multitude that had experienced him feeding them with a miraculous distribution of bread and fish. First he confronted them with the fact that he knew they were looking for him only because he had filled their stomachs and they wanted more of the same.

   But what stood out was that it was the same kind of response as Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. Nicodemus wondered how in the world he was to re-enter his mother’s womb so he could be born again. The Samaritan woman wondered how Jesus could give her this living water so she could stop coming to the well.

   And when Jesus began telling the multitude how “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent”, and the people wanted to know what works they were to do “to be doing the works of God”, Jesus reiterated, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

   And when they continued presenting their queries, he told them “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” As with the new birth, and the living water, the bread from heaven was all about Jesus.

   However, when the people replied, “Sir, give us this bread always,” it was the same as the Samaritan woman asking for the earthly version of the living water.

   In other words, Jesus kept speaking to the people the truth of God and watching the crowd to see who heard him. He would so often say something like, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” All seven letters to the churches in Revelation end with the same appeal of, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

   We cannot escape the fact that faith comes from “hearing”, not from “seeing”. The people all wanted to see signs. Even the religious elite who were bothered that Jesus gave the sign of healing an invalid couldn’t accept it because (to them) it was a violation of the law to heal on the Sabbath and so they asked for more signs. The multitude who went out to see Jesus because of his signs, concluded he was the Messiah because of his signs, and wanted a relationship with him based on his signs. However, he was only using the signs to reveal his glory so people would hear his voice and follow his words!

   And that’s when God took me back to seven years of age. I was in the front yard in Sandspit BC. Something made me suddenly look up at the sky and know God was watching me, and that it was good. Except that I didn’t “see” anything. No signs. But what God clarified this morning was that my experience was not of me thinking about him. It wasn’t me asking for or responding to a sign. Rather it was me hearing him call my name. In that childhood moment, I was responding to his thoughts about me as he chose to make them known right then and there.

   My next memory was of “hearing” my mom teaching our Sunday School class in Sandspit about Jesus. At twelve years of age, it was “hearing” the gospel and believing. At fourteen years it was “hearing” a certain facet of the finished work of Christ that settled that Jesus’ “once for all” death gave me my “once for all” salvation. And from there, the hearing and believing has continued to grow.

   I love what I have been able to share with you this morning as a golden thread in the divine tapestry, connecting the new birth, the living water, and the bread from heaven as God’s provision of salvation in Jesus Christ.

   But the greater thing is a testimony that if we will have a daily time with God in his word and prayer, and listen to sermons, Bible studies, biblical podcasts, Bible-centered videos, and even the Scriptures while driving places, we who belong to Jesus will constantly hear his voice, know what he is saying, and discern how to join him in his work.

   And, in doing so, we will keep getting to know the Triune God better every day than we have ever known him before.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

A Poem of Hope When the Sorrows are Strong

    I just came across this poem I had written four years ago. As I reminisced my way through it, I realized that the feelings I was expressing then are just as familiar now. I thought I might as well share it online in the hope it would encourage someone else to walk in hope when the sorrows are most overwhelming.

The following introduction and the poem were written on August 6, 2021.

    “Over the years I have heard many people resist bringing their childhood traumas to God because they fear that if they ever started opening their hearts they would be stuck in a flood of overwhelming emotions for months or years. What I have witnessed is God bringing us into relationship with himself where he will prepare us for looking at things, bring them up when it is time, and quickly comfort us and give us peace about each thing we need to face. And today I just had to try writing a poem about it.”

 

A Poem of Hope When the Sorrows are Strong
 
In a moment of grief between laughter and tears
(the quiet that comes before morning appears),
An old wave of sorrow came over the rise,
And poured down the valley where the secret heart cries.
 
The sun would soon come with the duties of life,
Calling for realness in comforts and strife,
And the fresh wave of sorrow that threatened the soul,
Had only this moment to wield its control.
 
The shadows of night gave their nod to the grief,
While the Morning Star shone with its promised relief,
But the flooding of sorrow felt too much to bear
For the heart that was sure it would always be there.
 
While dragons breathed fire and demons screamed, “Fear!”
The soul in the darkness felt no friend was near.
And so, what was known of the all-present past,
Boasted to love, “I will surely outlast!”
 
But the first beam of sunshine to hit the far hills,
Welcomed the Father who does as he wills.
And the secret heart crying in shadows of night,
Had hope that its Savior would make all things right.
 
So, the brightening hues of the promised relief,
Broke the grip of the night that had flooded with grief.
And the child who had thought that the darkness would stay
Walked into the light of the Father’s new day.
 
“But what of the monsters that come in the night?”
The little child asked while enjoying the light.
“They are but a dream that is gone when you wake,
And I love to slay monsters for my own great name’s sake!”
 
“So walk in the light of this gracious new day,
And listen so well to the words that I say.
As they are the truth that will set your soul free,
For even in sorrow, you will still be with me!”
 
Poem © 2021 Monte Vigh (August 6, 2021)

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

 

On This Day: The Ultimate Higher is Jesus Himself

   But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
(John 4:23-26)

   For a very long time I have had a verse of Scripture overlaid over everything I do, and everything I desire for other people. It is Jesus’ words in his High Priestly prayer of John 17, “And this is eternal life, that they KNOW YOU, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

   Everything the Scriptures say about eternal life is ultimately about knowing the Triune God. Everything we do in the church is about people knowing God. Every leader of anything in the church should have a testimony of knowing God in a constantly growing and maturing kind of way.

   With that in mind, when I look at Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman, and I consider his aim of leading her to drink of the living water that would well up within her to eternal life, and then I feel the weight of his concluding words, “I am he”, I see how masterfully he led her to HIM. He was leading her to KNOW him.

   As I consider a lifetime of Highers-Deepers with Jesus, I see how he led me through “the valley of the shadow of death” on so many occasions to get me to the next experience of feeding in green pastures and lying down beside quiet waters. These experiences were all coordinated by God to lead me to know that “The LORD” who is “my shepherd” is “Yahweh” the Son. Meaning, Jesus is the shepherd David was talking about.

   This is why David was so personal about everything long before “the gospel” (good news) rang out at Jesus’ birth. Because the Lord Jesus Christ is my shepherd, “I shall not want”, or be lacking in anything I need. And then it is so clear:

   “HE makes me lie down in green pastures.”

   “HE leads me beside still waters.”

   “HE restores my soul.”

   “HE leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

   Therefore, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for YOU are with me; YOUR rod and YOUR staff, they comfort me.” Note the amazing change of focus from telling us about HIM, to speaking to HIM about how personally we can know him.

   “YOU prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”.

   “YOU anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

   “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD (Yahweh) forever.”

   What David testified in Psalm 23 a thousand years before Jesus came was a prophecy of the believer’s life. It would be about knowing God. Our life “in Christ” would be all about knowing God. The grand conclusion to Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman gives us an enduring picture of what it looks like to come to know God.

   I often talk to God about why he chose such a lonely road for me. He often reminds me that his ways and thoughts are so much Higher than mine that I need to trust his sovereign goodness and join him in whatever work he shows me each day. However, he also reminds me that his Holy Spirit has directed me into my place in the body of Christ so I can just be myself in Christ and trust him to build up others as he chooses. 

    Which makes me want to encourage you all the more to set your heart on knowing God. Agree with him about every Higher he shows you in his word no matter how painful or hopeless your life appears to be. Admit to him every Deeper thing you come to next and present it to him the way the Samaritan woman did. And remind yourself that the Samaritan woman was interacting with Jesus for real before she even knew who he was!

   As I write this, I keep having Paul’s words echoing in my mind, “that I may know HIM and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). Paul’s example is based on the universal gift of God to all who believe: eternal life. And that eternal life to all believers has a universal reality: to KNOW God.

   Our journey through the Higher-Deepers of the Samaritan woman, along with our own personal experiences of God’s gracious ministry to our souls, invite us to “hunger and thirst” for the “righteousness” of knowing God, because Jesus has already provided everything we need to fulfill the “they shall be satisfied” promise.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Time for New-hearted Worship

   Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)

   Many of us are familiar with the expression “worship in spirit and in truth”. My experience is that few want what Jesus was talking about.

   It helps to remember the three possible views of how church people relate to this. The Legalistic pendulum extreme on one side focuses on truth without spirit. The Charismaniac pendulum extreme on the other side focuses on spirit without truth.

   Between the two is the Plumbline experience of worship that always keeps the two together. The “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth”.

   The Samaritan woman was coming from a background where the worship was physical rather than spiritual. It was all earthly history, earthly heritage, earthly location, earthly prejudices between the Jews and Samaritans.

   It was also false instead of true because the Samaritans had a corrupted version of what God had given in the Scriptures and so their ideas about God and worship were on the wrong track.

   However, even though Jesus clarified that “salvation is from the Jews”, he didn’t mean that the way the Jews were worshiping in Jerusalem was acceptable to God. He meant that the salvation God was now offering the world through his Son came through the Jews. The foundation for knowing God was not in Samaria, it was in Israel. And Jesus was the one who was giving the good news of great joy that a Savior was given to man by which all people could repent and experience the born-again life.

   Jesus made this clear with Nicodemus who needed to be “born again” just as much as the woman at the well needed to drink Jesus’ “living water”. The two expressions are facets of the same diamond. No one is inherently saved. No one is inherently good enough for God. Everyone needs to be born again by drinking the living water of salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord.

   Since I am sharing this as part of the Higher-Deeper way Jesus was relating to the Samaritan woman, I expect that anyone who opens their hearts to how Jesus taught her will also see their own Higher-Deepers in effect. All of us are called to look Higher in worship than we ever have before. Not to something different that no one has ever thought of, but what is in Jesus’ words, that our worship must be both spirit and truth. And we must look Deeper inside ourselves to bring everything within us to worship God spiritually and truthfully no matter what we see coming up from our secret hearts.

   It is twenty-five years ago that God was leading me into home church ministry without me seeing the destination. He had spoken in his word of some Higher things that were in the works, but I had the same obtuseness of the disciples that simply couldn’t see where he was going with the Deeper things that were unfolding.  

   However, only months later I could see this most amazing gift of a group of people discovering that we did not need to confine our worship of God to church buildings, single locations, structured rules and regulations, denominational distinctives, or anything else that was physical.

   Rather, we were on our way to learning a new dimension of worshiping in spirit and in truth. We could gather in anyone’s home, any time that was good for our people, seeking what was best in encouraging our spiritual attachment to God in fellowship with a love of the truth of his word.

   No, worshiping in spirit and in truth is not confined to home church ministry since that would just be continuing the Jewish/Samaritan feud about where to worship.

   Yes, anyone who has been born again into the new life of the Spirit can worship in spirit and in truth anytime they worship, anywhere they gather with fellow believers in their version of church, and with anyone who is a spirit and truth worshiper of God.

   So, why do I think that many church folk know this Scripture, but few want to live it?

   Answer: because I am now old enough to have decades of experience in many different churches that has shown me what Larry Crabb prophesied to me in his book, Inside Out, 35ish years ago: church people are more committed to self-protection than to knowing and doing the will of God.

   Using the Highers-Deepers of the Samaritan woman as a measure, I have now learned that people will initially feel an amazement and wonder that they are getting to know God in Higher ways and beginning to learn how to relate to him from their Deeper state of being.

   However (and this is close enough to unanimous to treat it as such), the consistent pattern has been that one day, God leads someone from the amazing Higher they just shared about with excitement, to a Deeper that opens a door through their self-protection to things they had hidden from everyone (God included), and suddenly they can’t trust God for the next Higher. And yes, I have seen this as much in home churches as in institutional churches.

   I share this as a Higher-Deeper of its own. The Higher is God’s calling to worship him in spirit and in truth because he seeks us out with a desire to have us, and he has given us the new covenant in Jesus’ blood which gives us new hearts by which to worship him in the “new way of the Spirit”, as Paul called it.

   The Deeper is whatever we see inside ourselves that isn’t there yet. Hidden sins? Childhood trauma? Unresolved guilt, shame, and fear? Feeling worthless and seeing no hope of that every changing? Experiences shrouded in darkness that do not want to come into the light?

   We can bring ALL THOSE THINGS to God the Father in spirit (a genuinely spiritual way) and in truth (letting what is true about us cling to what is true about God). And meeting God in our Deepers that do not yet know him for real will continue leading us into the Highers of knowing God for real in spirit and truth kinds of ways.

   If any of this doesn’t sound quite right to you because of thoughts that are coming out of nowhere, please do not read things in to this that I’m not saying as if I’m the one saying them. And please do not take my word for it! Join Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the Higher-Deeper journey of John chapter 4, and make sure you are relating to God in your spirit (new heart), while seeking to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth of God from his word and his Spirit.

   And, if you don’t have anyone in a church to talk about whatever is coming up for you, make sure you keep talking to God your Father about it without fail, and let me know if I can contribute anything from my place in the body of Christ.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: The Higher-Deeper of Heaven and Earth

   Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” (John 4:10-12)

   As I continue through John 4 (Jesus’ visit with the Samaritan woman), I am sharing how Jesus led her to look at something Higher than she had ever had to think about, followed by something Deeper inside her that she had to admit before the next Higher. I can’t recall when I first noticed this pattern (my first writing about it appears to be January of 2008), but I have not been able to unsee it!

   The first Higher-Deeper for “the woman at the well” was that Jesus blew her mind by giving her a first-time experience of a Jewish man treating her with respect, followed by her deep feelings of how the animosity from the Jews had shaped her understanding of herself in their eyes. From Jesus’ first words, “Give me a drink,” something was radically different. You can read more about this in my previous post.

   The next Higher is expressed in Jesus’ words, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” This lifts the woman’s thoughts into something that could only be revealed from heaven, that there was a gift of God, and there was something distinct about Jesus. These realities together were of such a profound goodness and grace that, if she had only known these things when she saw Jesus at the well, Jesus wouldn’t have even had time to ask her for water, because she would have been pleading with him for the living water that only he can give.

   This sense of, “If you knew…” hit me very personally. It took me back through the spiritual markers of my life where I came to know God better than ever. Each time that happened, it was Jesus giving me something I hadn’t known. And it led me through Highers and Deepers I did not even recognize as a pattern for many years.

   I believe there is a universal sense in which we can come to God’s word every day and expect a Higher of the heavenly variety. God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, so every time with God, every sermon in church, every teaching video online, will have something in it that lifts our thoughts higher than we have ever considered. And as we expect this to happen for us, we will get a sense of what it felt like for the Samaritan woman the first time it happened for her.

   The Deeper part of this is the way it led the woman into her heart where she had to verbalize a simple reality: all she knew about a gift from God was “our father Jacob” who “gave us the well…” That may have been a unique Deeper for her, but it is also a universal Deeper for us as we realize that, at the same time as God opens our minds to some new truth from heaven (as revealed in Scripture), it will confront the limitations of our earthly experience. Perhaps the limits of our church’s denominational distinctives, or the limits of our parent’s experience (or non-experience) of God, or even just the fact that every day we are only so far along on our journey and today’s lesson from heaven will show us the limit of where we left off the day before.

   While there is so much more to say about this (including how this continues to rhyme with what Jesus taught Nicodemus, and how it shows the Beatitudinal Valley Jesus was leading the woman on at the same time), the focus for today is to consider how the Holy Spirit will reveal Highers to us in the word that feel like we are being told kingdom-of-heaven things we hadn’t known before, and this will expose the Deepers of whatever earthly limitations we have put on our walk with God up to this time.

   My encouragement is to meet God in both. If his word says something Higher we simply haven’t seen before, welcome it right away and feel the childlike wonder of a heart, soul, mind, and brain, being graced with the gift of knowing something that is on our Father’s mind.

   At the same time, if the “if you knew…” truth exposes a Deeper awareness of how earthly our thinking is about ourselves, and God, and the kingdom of heaven, and the “good news of great joy”, and walking in the Spirit, praise God for the “blessed are the poor in spirit” gift of grace and tell him what you’re thinking. Whatever thoughts come to mind, tell “our Father in heaven” in prayer, and continue meditating on his word as he works these things out in our lives in the most real and personal of ways.

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)