We All Have a Shechem: The Place Where We Need to Meet Jesus ~ Leanna Magelli Ep.163

What if we've been looking at the Samaritan woman through the wrong lens all along?

In this powerful teaching, Bible teacher Leanna Magelli invites us to take a fresh look at one of the most familiar stories in Scripture, John 4, the Samaritan woman at the well. As Leanna digs into the geography, history, and context surrounding this passage, she uncovers surprising connections between the woman at the well and Dinah's story in Genesis.

She explores what happened in the land of Shechem, a place marked by abuse, violence, betrayal, and brokenness, and why Jesus intentionally chose to walk through Samaria and stop at that particular well.

She paints a picture of a woman carrying deep pain and loss, a woman Jesus pursued, saw, and entrusted with His message.

If you've ever struggled with shame, felt overlooked, carried wounds from your past, or wondered if God truly sees you, this episode is for you.

This episode is provided by our Sponsor, Southwest Investment Advisors - "As financial advisors, they spend their careers helping people plan for the future. While supporting organizations like ours that assist families and provide compassionate care. This aligns with their commitment to helping individuals and communities thrive."

You can connect with them at www.siatucson.com. Now let's get the hot take on the woman at the well... 

In This Episode We Discuss:

• Why Jesus "had to" go through Samaria

• The connection between John 4 and Genesis 33-34

• What happened in Shechem and why it matters

• A different perspective on the Samaritan woman's five husbands

• How Jesus approaches our deepest wounds

• Why God consistently values, protects, and elevates women throughout Scripture

• The difference between seeing yourself through the world's lens versus God's lens

• How Jesus redeems what has been done to us and what we have done

• Why suffering and joy often walk hand in hand

• What it means to allow God to reclaim your story

Key Scriptures

John 4:1-42
Genesis 33-34
Acts 1:8

A Final Encouragement

The Samaritan woman didn't have to explain her pain to Jesus. He already knew. He knew her story, her losses, her wounds, and He still chose her.

The same is true for us.

Jesus knows the things we've done, the things that have been done to us, and the places we still carry shame. Yet He continues to pursue us with love, offering healing, redemption, and living water.

Whatever your "Shechem" may be, the place marked by pain, loss, disappointment, betrayal, or brokenness, Jesus is willing to meet you there.

Because you are seen. You are known. You are loved.

And your story is not over.

Enjoy more of Leanna's Bible teachings as well as her Pastors at https://www.youtube.com/@FCC_TUCSON

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Here are two FREE Ebooks for you!
1. Shame Off You: 10 steps to shattering shame in your life, HERE.
2. ABC's: CLICK HERE for a FREE E-book to help you combat lies and replace them with God's truth.  For more encouragement, check out some of our offerings at www.reclaimedstory.com

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Transcript

Transcript is auto-generated.

The hot take would be forget everything you think about the Samaritan woman at the well. Let's start there. Just delete that out.

Speaker 2  00:19

What if we've been looking at the Samaritan woman through the wrong lens all along in this powerful teaching. Bible teacher Leanna Magelli invites us to take a fresh look at one of the most familiar stories in Scripture, John four, the Samaritan woman at the well. Now, as Leanna digs into the geography, history, and context surrounding this passage. She uncovers surprising connections between the woman at the well and Dinah's story in Genesis. She explores what happened in the land of Shechem, a place marked by abuse, violence, betrayal, and brokenness, and why Jesus intentionally chose to walk through Samaria and stop at that particular well, she paints a picture of a woman carrying deep pain and loss, a woman Jesus pursued, saw, and entrusted with his message. So, if you've ever struggled with shame, felt overlooked, carried wounds from your past, or wondered if God truly sees you. This episode is for you, and it is also provided by our sponsor, Southwest Investment Advisors. As financial advisors, they spend their careers helping people plan for the future while supporting organizations like ours that assist families and provide compassionate care. This aligns with their commitment to helping individuals and communities thrive. You buy a S I A tucson.com Now let's get the hot take on the woman at the well, today's guest isn't a best-selling author yet, or someone with a list of letters behind her name. What she is is a wife, a mom, a Bible study leader, and one of those women who simply loves God's word and loves helping others understand it. Sometimes those are the voices we need the most. Leanna has a gift for making scripture come alive and helping women see God's heart for them in ways they may have never noticed before. She is also a self-proclaimed Bible nerd. So, Leanna, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 1  02:38

Hello, Denisha. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2  02:41

I'm so happy that you're here. We've been planning this for quite some time now, and so I'm very glad to have you with us today. So, I would love for everybody to get to know you a little bit. You are a Tucson girl, right?

Speaker 1  02:53

I am. I'm a third generation native.

Speaker 2  02:57

Nice, nice. Yes. Tell us a little bit about your family.

Speaker 1  03:01

Deep roots. Here I am. Married to my husband, Marty, and we've been married 27 years. It'll be 28 in October. We have one son, and he just turned 26 on Wednesday. So fresh adult in the house, and we have a dog that hopefully won't make any noise while we do this.

Speaker 2  03:23

Oh, there you go. Well, you know, we love dogs, so that's all right. That's so awesome. Well, thank you for sharing your time and all the setting that you've been doing. What first made you fall in love with studying scripture?

Speaker 1  03:39

What third first made me fall in love with scripture was the fact that I really struggled with it when I was brand new to God's word, which would have been, let's see, July will be 28 years. It was just a few months before we got married that I started going to church as an adult and fell in love with Jesus, and when I first opened my Bible as a house, I 25 I thought I'm an intelligent woman, and I don't understand this, and I had a friend who gave me a wow CD, because that's how old I am, I'm 53 and I still have that CD, it's a two disc set. Do you remember WoW CDs?

Speaker 2  04:22

We're the best. Yes, I had the wow. Yes,

Speaker 1  04:25

it was the 1999 the green and the silver. And she said, just listen to these, nothing else, no country music, nothing else for the next 30 days. Listen to this music, and I did that. And when we reconvened, she said, now open your Bible and give it a go, and I started realizing, oh, these song lyrics are in here, weird, and because I understand that song, I can now understand a little bit of this. So that was the bridge that got me started, but then I had a mentor that came alongside me and introduced me. She's a sixth grade teacher, and so she was comfortable teaching in the kids' classrooms at church, and so I knew nothing, and would go in and help them cut their papers, or, you know, be the bouncer, sit down, you be quiet, and listen to the teacher, kind of thing, but I realized I'm absorbing and understanding at my level, because as a new Christian, that is the level I needed, was the kids love, and I now recommend anyone who's struggling, I recommend that they get the Jesus Storybook Bible and read it there, as well as then open your adult Bible and read the same story together. That was how I got into learning understanding scripture, but then my focus became I don't want anybody else to feel intimidated about coming to God and feeling like I don't understand Him. So once it clicked and I was able to let me back up just a hair and tell you that my college degree is in sign language interpreting, so my brain works in a way that I've been trained to understand this message, turn it into the one that needs to come out this way for people to understand in another language, so I kind of naturally started going, here's this big theological chunk. Let's break it down into something you can understand, you know. Talk to me like I'm five, kind of thing. And that just sort of became my niche of how I got into ladies' Bible study and how I teach.

Speaker 2  06:35

I did not know that about you. Surprised, I love that you know when, when I was in kids ministry, we had a volunteer who came in to actually do a one on one, like a respite care for one of our kids, and that was in the kindergarten class, and she actually came to the Lord in that class because it was taught at a level that was so easy for a brand new person curious about God to understand. So I did not know that about your story. I had no idea.

Speaker 1  07:08

The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones is my favorite, because she's really good at showing you in the Old Testament stories where Jesus is foretold. He shows up and connects the whole story as one story.

Speaker 2  07:24

Okay, that's

Speaker 1  07:25

why it's my favorite.

Speaker 2  07:26

I think I may need to do that, just because I bet there's tons of nuggets, tons of nuggets that I have not - I've yet to uncover personally. So that is fun.

Speaker 1  07:33

Yes,

Speaker 2  07:34

I love that. Well, I'm going to ask you to do some teaching. Okay. Well, um, I hear you have a hot take on the woman at the well. Would you share that with us?

Speaker 1  07:46

Yes. So part of my nerd story is in the morning when I'm getting dressed, doing the hair and the makeup and all the things, I listen to a podcast and I have my favorites, and I came across a podcast called Holy Curiosity that was a new hot take on the Samaritan woman at the well and the land that that story takes place on. So I listened to that episode, which led me to picking up a book. One of the guests on that podcast was Dr. Lynn Kohick, and she wrote a chapter in this book. She wrote chapter 12. This book, every chapter is written by somebody different, but Dr. Lynn Kohick wrote the chapter on the Samaritan woman at the well. It's chapter 12, vindicating the vixens. And then when I went to the Kerygma Summit, put on by Lisa Harper in Nashville, Tennessee. I got to hear Lynn Ko Hick speak live on this topic, and I was taking notes like a little fan girl should, and could not even believe it. And then when I got back to town, my pastor asked me to preach about this sermon, so I thought, What you want me to do, what I'm gonna fall right off that stage. I don't think I can do that. She convinced me I could do that, that I can do hard things, and that God made women to do really hard things. And so here we are, and now it's one of my very favorite things to talk about. I have learned so much about who God says women are through this story. So, the hot take would be, forget everything you think you know about the Samaritan woman at the well. Let's start there. Just delete that out, because the lens that she's been portrayed through makes her out to be a promiscuous woman who cannot be trusted, but if the vast majority of her town in the end of the story is claiming Jesus as their Lord and Savior, shouldn't we want to know more about who she really is, and is that lens skewed that we've been taught about her. I learned most of the information from the podcast, but then I did some deep diving on my own. So, let me walk you through that. So, where it starts in John chapter four is where we meet the Samaritan woman at the well, and in the beginning there John tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria to go from the southern part of Israel, Israel at the time, Judah, Judea at the bottom, then Samaria in the middle, Galilee at the top. So he was born in Bethlehem, near Jerusalem, which is down in the bottom. He grew up in Nazareth, at the top in Galilee. In between, there is Samaria, to the right of that, to the east of that is going to be the Sea of Galilee at the top, with the Jordan River coming down to meet the Dead Sea at the bottom, and because of the history between the Samaritan people and the Jews with the exile from the Assyrians taking the Israelites captive into Babylon and then mixing with them and coming back depopulate the area, the Jews were like, "No, no, we don't do halfway, we are the full thing, is what God said, and so they despised these people in the middle, so they would cross the Jordan River, go north when they've gone north enough to go past Samaria, and then cross back over to get into Galilee, but John tells us in chapter four here that Jesus had to go through Samaria, well, he didn't have to, he chose to, but why I think he had to go to this land for a very specific reason. The next thing we're told about this land is, I'm going to read from my notes here, it says, eventually he came to the Samaritan village of Sakar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired from the long walk beside the well about noon time.

Speaker 1  12:12

Okay, one of my favorite Bible teachers is Christy McClelland, and she says that there is theology in geography, we don't always get to know the where things take place, and so when you tell us so specifically, Sacar near the field, not any field, it's the field that Jacob gave to Joseph, and Jacob's family, well, is there four specific things about this land makes me go, oh, we need a shovel, we need to dig here and find out why you have told us so much about this land. Why is that important? So, what I did, that I.. the.. that's where my brain went, because nerd, and I love the details, and I love figuring out kind of like panning for gold. Did you ever pan for gold as a kid, where you get the little pan or sand rubies? Here in southern Arizona, we have little streams of sand rubies, and you get the little pan out and you shake it out, and you look for the shiny things. That's how my brain works. I'm looking for those shiny things in the scripture. So I went digging for why is this important, and it wasn't in the podcast, and it wasn't in the chapter of the book. So I opened up Bible gateway.com and popped into the search engine Sikar, and I thought, surely with all of this information about this land, it's going to tell me everywhere that this pops up in scripture, and this is the one and only place that is in scripture, this name Sakaar, and I thought, well, that can't be right, because Jacob homesteaded there, he built a family around this well, so that's how they in agricultural society, that's what they did, they had everything was around the water, right, the living water matters so much. We can't have life without the water. So, where is this? Well, if it's not called Sakaar in the Old Testament, what was it called? So, I went looking for Jacob's well, and I found it in Genesis chapter 33 at the very end of the chapter. Here's what it says in Genesis 33 about Jacob in his land. I'm just going to read you Genesis 33 verses 1830 It says, "Later, having traveled all the way from Padan Iran, Jacob arrived safely at the town of Shechem in the land of Canaan. There he set up camp outside the town, Jacob bought the plot of land where he camped from the family of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for 100 pieces of silver, and there he built an altar and named it El Elohi Israel, which means God, the God of Israel. So there you have it, that's where the well is, but the in my Bible, the heading right below it, because that's the end of the chapter of 33 the heading right below it says that after that came revenge against Shechem, revenge, so Shechem against the person Shechem, or is it against the town Shechem? And I'm saying Shechem, by the way, because Dr. Tim Mackey, who reads his Bible in actual Hebrew, says Shechem on the podcast, but if you listen to the podcast wrong, who leads that podcast, she's from Texas, so she says, "She come, you can say it any way you want, but I'm gonna go with the guy who reads his Bible in Hebrew.

Speaker 2  15:49

That sounds really like that sounds like Hebrew-ish. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1  15:53

so I say Shechem. Don't let that throw you. If you've only ever heard Shechem, it's same place, that's what we're talking about. So Shechem, the heading says revenge in Shechem, and I thought, is it the guy or is it town? What's happening? So I read Genesis chapter 34 and it is a story that isn't told enough. I don't think it's a story of abuse of Jacob's daughter Dinah, we do know that Jacob had a lot of daughters, because there's a verse that says all his daughters, but this is the only one that we have her name, and I think it's because of this story. What happens to her, Shechem, the man rapes her in this area, and I think we, we misrepresent God, and how He feels about abuse if we take these stories out, and we don't talk about them, He leaves them in His word, it's all of chapter 34 and he does so to bring light to what is wrong, and to show what his story was meant to be. That makes sense, and so he exposes the abuse, leaving it in his scripture, in his word, for us to understand that this is not the message of the Bible, it's a included, but it's not God's message of what is okay to do to women, and Jesus knows this very well, because he was physically abused, not at this point with the Samaritan woman in the well, but what happened to him is forced upon him, his body at the cross that he endured, which is another story for another day, but he understands what it is to be abused, and I just want somebody who needs to hear that to hear that the patriarchal society at that time treated women as property, as something to be controlled, and that is still something we're working to correct in how God sees women today. Why Jacob didn't respond in a fatherly loving way to the rape of his daughter, I don't get to ask him that. I can only speculate as to why that is, because we know that he is capable of truly loving a woman in what he went through to marry Rachel. He had to work for seven years to get Rachel. He was deceived with Leah, and then worked another seven years to get Rachel. But Leah is Dinah's mom, and so does that factor in? I can only guess, but we know that he can have love for a woman because of what we've seen in how he treated Rachel. So, why isn't he responding well? I can speculate all the day long. What I can say is that we all make choices when we respond to situations, and some of those choices will have consequences. Bad choices will have victims attached in the story. There is pain and suffering in this world that is not something we get to escape. If we didn't have free will, we wouldn't have love, which is a much longer explanation, but if it free will can be used for good or bad, is the end result of that. But if we didn't have free will, we would be just be robots. There wouldn't be a loving relationship. You can't have the love without the option to walk away, and you can't tell someone you love me. Trust me, you love me. How's that gonna.. that's not gonna work.

Speaker 3  20:10

Very true.

Speaker 1  20:11

And God can't do that either. For there to be love, you have to choose Him. And, unfortunately, a whole lot of people choose to not love him and not obey him, and then we have suffering, so bad choices consequences, which have victims. It's a part of what we have going on in this story with Dinah in chapter 34 Suffering is always a catalyst to great joy, which sounds like a I'm sorry, rewind, what did you just say kind of statement? Like, how does that work? I had the privilege of going back to the Kerygma Summit, excuse me, in Nashville in May, and I heard Chaplain Eva Bleecker speak. That girl lives in Lamentations, like it's her favorite pair of jeans, which is so healing to me. As someone, the first time I heard her speak, it was while my mom was dying, and I was really living some heavy stuff with my brother, was a severe alcoholic at the time, he's now over 500 days alcohol free, but at the time life was a lot, and I was really suffering, but also, as you know, as a mom, you, you, there's joyful things too with your kids and your husband, your spouse, there's or your friends, or whatever's happening in life, there are good things too, and so joy and suffering hold hands, is what I learned from Eva. They hold hands in a way that unlocks a component to the character of God that we wouldn't know without it, which makes sense. It's like, why do I have to do that? I feel like I love him enough. I don't need the suffering to learn to love him more or to find more joy, but I feel like a lot of times our day to day we have an earthly focus that keeps us sort of stuck in the mundane, and it's the true joy, or to choose the true joy, and our having an identity through Christ is what helps us to have an anchor in something that holds when we anchor ourselves to the things and the people of this world. This world goes away. These people, they let us down. We let each other down. We don't always mean to, but if I were to ask you, Denisha, have you ever hurt somebody that you say you love? Absolutely, yes. And if we say, has anybody ever hurt you that said they loved you, that answers yes, right? 100% of the time I've never met anybody who can't say yes to both of those things, but we are the people that God said, "Here's the keys to the kingdom. I want you to be in community with each other and go find people who've never heard about me and tell them about me, so we learn to understand the suffering and the joy together. We learn to understand how God doesn't want that, but He chases us down, He rescues us from it, He redeems that portion of our story and reclaims it. Oh, look at that

Speaker 2  23:44

word. I love that word

Speaker 1  23:45

for his glory, for his purposes, so that we can know how loved we truly are. And that is why I think Jesus went to this well on this day to this land, because here's what else happened on that land. I have a little sheet of paper here. I'm going to read a couple of things that also happened in Shechem. Here's some highlights. Maybe we're going to find out why they changed the name. It's not great, because this is where Abraham, before he was Abraham, this is where he met with God. God sent him to this land and told him, this is where your home is going to be, you go there. God first appeared to him here on this land, and this is where God cut the blood covenant with Abraham for all people, for all time, in Genesis chapter 15. Yes, that is where the covenant came from. So it starts out great. It starts out with like God is doing a thing here, but you know, then people happened, and so quickly we start going in different ways. But first, this is as I told you at the beginning, this is where Jacob built as well and homesteaded with the family, so it starts out awesome, but then quickly turns not awesome, because if you know the code of many colors in the story of Joseph, the son of Jacob, you know that his brother sold him into slavery on this land, which happens just after Dinah was raped, so and then we go to selling a brother out and upon Joseph's death, he asked for his bones to be brought back here, so his bones were buried there. This is also because of the rape. Two of Dinah's brothers come in from being out with the flocks, they come in and find out what happened, and they take revenge. Here's where the revenge of Shechem comes in, they kill everyone in the town, the men. I'm sorry, they kill the men for themselves. You can read that story in Genesis 34 if you would really like to, but that's what happens. They trick them into being incapacitated. I'll let you read how that happens, and they slaughter them. So that's where that goes. Then Abimelech comes along, the son of Gideon, and he slaughters 70 of his half brothers in order to become the king of Shechem. Then Shechem becomes the capital city of the northern. When the Israel divides, northern kingdom, southern kingdom, it becomes the capital of the northern. Jerusalem, where the temple is, is still the capital in the south, Rehoboam, son of Solomon. You probably know that name, King Solomon. He's King David's son, is Solomon. His son Rehoboam becomes a terrible, terrible king, and he divides this kingdom, but he adds tons of burdens to the people. He makes their lives very harsh in Shechem, and then another 70 men are murdered and dumped in a cistern. You can find that story in Jeremiah 41 There's a whole lot of terrible that happens on this land, and I think Jesus has come here to redeem all of it, because that's who He is, that's what he's done for us, and that's what he's doing there on that day. So, let's get back to the well. Let's get back to Samaria and find out what is happening there in this conversation with the woman at the well. So, he, the first thing it tells us is that he's there at noon time. I want to point out that what we've heard about her is that she's there at noon because this terrible reputation. The noon reference is in the verse about Jesus, not about her, she's not even mentioned yet. It says he's at the well at noon, and this is a descriptor of why he's hot and tired from his long walk, because it's the middle of the day, and we have attributed that to her because of this skewed lens that she has been seen through. That skewed lens comes with the five husbands, so we'll get to that. So we need to get back to the woman at the well in Sakaar name change. Yeah, I don't blame them, not one bit. If all of that had happened in my town, I think I would change it too. We don't know when that change happens, we're not told.

Speaker 1  28:22

At least that I found in the biblical name of the name change happens. We just know that it does. So we're here at the well, Jesus is there, and along comes the Samaritan woman. Here's something I find interesting about this story, too. The chapter in about Dinah, we know her name, but she never speaks. She doesn't have a voice. And here in John chapter four, we don't know the name of the Samaritan woman at the well, but she has a lot to say. She has the longest recorded conversation, actually, with Jesus in the New Testament. So there's another "yay, you go, girl. It wasn't with Nicodemus, it wasn't with any other man, it was with a woman and a Samaritan woman that Jesus' longest recorded conversation happens in the New Testament. So, anytime something is to be first or the only in biblical narrative, we like to pay attention to what's happening around that, that makes it so important. What else can we learn from it? So, tuck that away in terms of what God thinks about women. She's special because we all are. So, they have this conversation, and she's not really getting what he's going for. He is trying to get her to talk about the spiritual things, and she's can only see what she can see. And as a Samaritan woman, what she would have had in terms of theology or biblical training, the Samaritans had what we call synchronism. It's when you take two things and you put them together, so the Jewish side have had the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. So she would have had those five, but then the Syrian part of her is idol worship and polytheism, lots of gods and idols, lots of idols. So, between the two, she's got kind of a handhold, has enough to know she wants to learn more, but isn't quite understanding what he's getting at. So, they have this back and forth conversation three times, he has something to say, she responds, and after the third one, it's sort of like a, she says, Where is this living water? I want what you have, right? She's finally opened up to, I need this, but she says, so I don't have to come here every day. So she's almost there, but not quite, but her heart is ready. So he asks her to go call her husband, and this is where the lens gets super skewed. She says, I don't have a husband, and he says, You're right, you've spoken truthfully, you've had five husbands, and the man you're with now, he's not your husband. Now, this is the lens that we've been told that she has got five divorce decrees hanging in a filing cabinet somewhere in her little Adobe home that would say you have failed over and over and over again in this covenantal place called marriage. Here's what we know historically that I learned in this chapter from Dr. Lynn Kohick. Ancient history does not have in antiquity anywhere five divorces from anyone in that time period, or in a really long period of time. That's almost common today to know somebody who's been divorced multiple times. That was nowhere near common then, for starters. Second piece is a woman could not apply for her own divorce, she could not execute a divorce on her own, only men could do that. So, let's think about this. So, if it's not five divorces, what are the options, right? And if only a man can do it, you know. I'm going to take a crack at that. That's not a thing either. So the bridge of life expectancy at that time was right around 40 years of age.

Speaker 2  32:34

Pause really fast. The internet

Speaker 1  32:36

connecting,

Speaker 2  32:37

yep, it cut out when you said, what are the options?

Speaker 1  32:41

Yeah,

Speaker 2  32:42

can you pick back up there of what are the options?

Speaker 1  32:45

Yeah, I saw it flash across my screen. I'm like, do I stop? Do I keep going? Yeah,

Speaker 2  32:49

cut out. So I was like, oh no, let's go back and catch that. We need to, yeah.

Speaker 1  32:52

Okay, so what are the options if it's probably not five divorces? Okay, the average age of life expectancy at that time was about 40 years of age, so there's part of it, but the other portion of it is going to be that the men would often, you know, things were unstable, they would have to go out and hunt, they would have to go out and fight in war, those sorts of things, it's very common for that time period, for the man to not make it back home, whether he's protecting his flock from the lions or if he's out fighting in war. Whatever happens, it, the life expectancy was 40, for several reasons, one of them being those harsh conditions, and the other is, you know, they didn't have dental care and health care. They didn't have a minute clinic on the corner to go get health care. They didn't have those kinds of things. They didn't have hygiene. They had dirt floors and dirt homes, and they didn't understand those kinds of things. They didn't have preservation. They didn't have a refrigerator to keep things cold, those kinds of things. So their life expectancy was a lot lower than what you think about today. We tend to think about it in how we live, and we forget circumstances and conditions were very different for them at that. What else could be the options? Tragedy is a high one on the list. It could be, was she infertile? Well, if she were infertile, first of all, that's not necessarily a reason for divorce, we see several other couples throughout biblical narrative that struggle with infertility. That wasn't necessarily a reason, but if it were true in that society that prized having sons to continue the family line, if she's not having sons, why is the next guy going to marry her? We are not told if she has children. We don't actually know if that's a piece of the pie or not. Could be, maybe was it a lever right marriage? That was when God placed that further back in the testament to protect women. I want somebody to hear that it was done so that because they would be left without a way to support themselves. What would happen is, if the husband died, then his brother had to marry her to provide for her. It was a thing that was done at the time, in that time to provide for women. God made sure that his girls were cared for. So, could it have been lever right marriages? It wasn't as much of a thing at this time period as it had been. Maybe not a great candidate, but maybe was she a concubine or a second wife, potentially. I think the reason she may have been living with this man now that isn't her husband, two things: one, with all of the marriages, she may not have had a dowry left, that was the contract that got them married, the payment that happened, she may not have had money left for a wedding, so in their society at the time, it was perfectly acceptable to be living with someone to show that you're committed. That wasn't considered taboo or a sin at that point. It signaled to their society that they were together and in a committed space, so all of these options, a lot of them are terrible, not great, not God's best design for marriage or for her, but how she got there, most likely, most of it was tragedy, most likely most of it was men dying, something terrible happening. Someone leaving, they could get a divorce. Men could file for a divorce or go through that, prosecute, execute a divorce for any reason at all. If she, the only divorce that would have been shameful to her is if any of them had divorced her for adultery. Had that happened, there wouldn't have been an ex-guy in line. There wouldn't have been another marriage.

Speaker 1  37:09

So, when Jesus says, 'Go call your husband, it's very possible that what he's saying is in our society we still use this system. It's a patriarchal society. They didn't have names. Women were known by their male protector, and we still use this. When I was born, my parents named me Leanna McKinley to denote that my dad, Rich McKinley, was my male protector. And then when I married my husband, my last name I changed it to Majelly to denote that my new male protector is my husband, Marty Majelly. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2  37:51

Never thought about that before.

Speaker 1  37:53

We're still using this system. So, what Jesus is likely saying is your male protector is how we know who you are. Go get him. Where is he? Who's protecting you? Who's watching out for you? Who's taking care of what you need? And Jesus is there, and so in that moment it's probably still a painful topic, because if all five of them have passed away, that's super painful, that's horrific. So, when she's ready, say, I want this living water, he brings up the most painful thing she has, not to be painful or shameful or drive guilt, he's bringing it up to heal it, to redeem it, to rescue her from that place, to heal that spot, to put a balm on it that just gave me chills and makes me want to cry. We all have that place that Jesus needs to come in and heal. We all have a Shechem, and in that moment he put a little bomb on there to say, I see you. You have been marginalized in this society. You have been set aside in this society, and that is not God's plan for you. I'm here to change that. So then he tells her, for the very first time anywhere in Scripture, I am the Messiah. He tells it to a woman, a Samaritan woman, an outsider, somebody who isn't supposed to be the first, but that's who he, and that is such a huge handhold for all of us ladies to know that that's what God thinks of us, for us to understand that we have been commissioned just like her to go and tell everyone who Jesus is, because that's what he did. He tells her who he is, and she drops her water jar. Whole reason she's there, and runs to town to tell all the men and the women who Jesus is. And she says something interesting. She says he told me everything I ever did, and I think that's another spot where people skew that lens. She's this sinful person. Okay, a that's all of us. We all have a mine is a walk-in closet size full of skeletons and baggage, right? Rolling baggage, I roll them out on occasion, play with them, put them back. No, we're going to check those babies into baggage claim and never pick them up again, right? Lock the door to that walk-in closet, throw away the key, because he is here to reclaim all of that and take all of that. So she says he told me everything I ever did, because that's what happens when we meet Jesus for real when we open our hearts to Him, and we surrender all of it, all a ll, surrender all of it to Him. He sees all of it and still says, I choose you. I love you. You're the one I lay my down, my life down for. You're the one I want to represent me and tell everyone else what you found here. So, go, go, and do that. So, she does. She heads out and tells all of the men and all of the women who Jesus is, and several of them immediately believe, which gives us another clue to this skewed lens. If she had such a bad reputation, would they really believe her? Don't think so. I think they would have been like, I'm not believing anything you say. If she really had that terrible reputation that we've been led to believe she has, and even if she did, she's coming in hot, saying everything, everything I've ever done, he's told me, but you've got to go see him, you have got to hear what he has for you. It's going to change everything. So they do. They ask him to stay around a couple more days, and so many more people listen to what he has to say and become believers because of this woman. This ties into in Exodus chapter one verse eight. Let me find that in my notes, right quick for you. That verse says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere, in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So it starts in Jerusalem, the city down south in area of Judea, and it goes through Samaria, through Samaria to the ends of the earth.

Speaker 1  43:11

We wouldn't be here in Tucson, Arizona today without this. If he hadn't healed that land and restored the stories, restored what happened there. The gospel wouldn't have made it to the ends of the earth without it. He had to go through Samaria. He had to meet with this woman at the well, redeem all the shame and guilt that has happened on this land, in order for us to know that he will do that, has done that, is doing that for us in our Shechem. None of us are defined by what we've done or what's been done to us. This is the story of the Samaritan woman as well. This is the redeeming peace we carry around those memories until we learn to let them go, but when Jesus died this sacrificial, horrible death on a cross, he allowed it to be done in such a shameful public way, so that the shame we carry gets taken through the cross. He didn't have to die shamefully, he just had to die and be resurrected. Does that make sense? But he did have to die shamefully in order for us to be able to hand over our shame to someone who gets it, to someone who's been abused, to someone who's been left marginalized, yelled at, run out of town, all the things he's had, all the things he's been called a liar, anything you've been called, he's been called all of those things, he's done it, and he has put that balm on it for us. Anything you refuse to feel cannot be healed.

Speaker 2  45:09

Amen. It

Speaker 1  45:10

has to be surrendered. It has to be given to Him. And we, you're going to understand that the suffering and the joy hold hands, and when you see that, you're going to see the character of God for His girls. He loves us so, so much. He wants us to know that He will walk through the terribleness of anywhere to get to us every time, every time the

Speaker 2  45:47

story of the Samaritan woman is such an encouragement, I think, to each of us, you know that he, that he does know we don't even have, she didn't say five husbands, here's my circumstances, and you know, whether whatever, whatever reasons for that, there is, she didn't even have to explain that, he already knew, and that's such encouragement for us to know, he already knows the things we've experienced, the things, like you said, what's been done to us, or what we've done, he already knows all of those things, and yet he will go to find us.

Speaker 1  46:25

And the point is, don't let that be the lens you see yourself through. Don't let that be the lens anyone else puts on you. Use his lens.

Speaker 2  46:36

Yes,

Speaker 1  46:36

is the only accurate view.

Speaker 4  46:39

Yeah, we have to see it through the cross.

Speaker 1  46:43

Yep, I call it Jesus Goggles, because that's funny to me. Put on your Jesus goggles, see yourself the way God sees you. Do you know? I just learned this in podcasts while I was out walking last week. Do you know that the only thing you cannot ever see is your own face? You only see a reflection of your face, you see yourself in a reflection, but only God sees your face the way He sees it. Other people see your face, we see what we think, but you don't actually get to like take your eyeballs out and look, you know, it's we don't get to see our own face and what we look like, we see a reflection, so use the reflection of God of who He says you are as your view for yourself.

Speaker 2  47:33

Amen. That's something we've said to women so many times. I wish you could see yourself the way God sees

Speaker 1  47:40

you. Yeah,

Speaker 2  47:40

through the work of the cross, through the beautiful daughter that He has created, because that is so different than how we often see ourselves.

Speaker 1  47:51

Yes, yes, for a really long time at the well has been taught as promiscuous and bad character, and I think it's wrong lens for her, but I think it has been a lens that has been pointed at so many other women, and it's not fair, it's not right, it's not who God says we are,

Speaker 2  48:20

and to reclaim the land too, as you talked about that will impact generations. Yes, and that the same thing with us, right? When we allow Jesus, you know, I love the word reclaimed, but it means rescue and

Speaker 5  48:35

restore,

Speaker 2  48:35

and that's exactly rescues and restores us. So to reclaim that land,

Speaker 1  48:43

yes,

Speaker 2  48:43

generations will then walk in the blessing of that versus all the horrible things that had happened before. Same thing in our lives, when we allow Jesus in our life, it changes generations to come.

Speaker 1  48:58

Proven.

Speaker 2  49:00

Yeah, right.

Speaker 1  49:01

Proven, it's been proven. That is so true.

Speaker 2  49:05

This is such a good, such a good teaching. Thank you for diving in. All of the connections that you have made, I have never heard talked like connected to, and it's all because of Lacey, because

Speaker 1  49:19

I heard a podcast, and I'm a nerd for shiny details.

Speaker 2  49:23

I love it. Keep chasing those details, keep chasing those details.

Speaker 1  49:28

Thank you.

Speaker 2  49:28

As our time wraps up, what someone were listening and just their heart is feeling pulled, they're listening and going, I want, I want to know that I know the Lord, I don't, but I tap into that, that that is true for me. What would you say to them if you were sitting knee to knee?

Speaker 1  49:50

I actually have a friend who I communicate with on the regular who's really struggling to believe that for herself, so it's conversation I have with her so often, and she recently asked me, How do you know that so well, and I'm struggling with it, and so we've gone round and round with this, and Why is that? Why is that for me? I will say that I reached a point where I had enough information to believe that what God said is true, that for me, came through apologetics, lurking into what we do have to prove that God, Jesus, and the Bible are real, that the Bible is the infallible word of God, and that it can be so. For me, that was the handhold that really went, okay, I've learned enough about the reliability. What is being said here? When I was growing up, my father was in law enforcement. He was a police officer here in town, and so it was sort of in the back of my mind, like there needs to be facts, there needs to be evidence in order for me to win this case. I have to have enough evidence to support this, and so that was where I went digging into, like, okay. Well, there's got to be enough evidence to put this, and I'm there. Are plenty of resources, tons and tons, classes you can take. For me, that was the handhold that made me go, I know that, I know that, I know, I've seen enough to know. And if that is true, I don't have to doubt it. I'm never going back, because I have been present for 100% of all of my sins and 100% of all of my wins. I was there for all of it. Heard that on a podcast too, Annie F Downs. I understood that no matter what he's for me, he looked into what does God say about women, and how does God protect women throughout his scripture, and still today that was where really what was the lock, lock it, throw away the key, I'm done, he's mine, I'm his, that's for me. Yeah,

Speaker 2  52:07

thank you for sharing that. That's beautiful.

Speaker 5  52:09

Yeah,

Speaker 2  52:10

okay, so I think we need to have some more conversations about things that you have gotten your shovel out and dug into, and I love what I love, what you said in one of your sermons, but you said, 'Put on the floaties, we're going into deep water. I love that again, Leanna, and dive into some more deep water with us. We'll bring the floaties.

Speaker 1  52:31

I would love to. I did not die doing this, so I would love to try it again.

Speaker 2  52:37

Did you think you were gonna die being on the podcast?

Speaker 1  52:40

No, but it was, I was so nerve wracked, and thought, oh my gosh, what have I done? Why did I say yes? Why did she ask? What in the world? But then I remember I told God, three to BB mouthpiece, I am a megaphone mouth, I am a talker, I am a digger, and a nerd, and I thought, all right, I want to use it for you. So, if however that looks, I just want to help people to understand God more clearly, and specifically help women to understand Him for them. And if this is what that takes, I'll be done.

Speaker 2  53:17

Somebody needs to hear that today. Somebody needs to hear that. I don't know. I said yes. One day I will be a mouthpiece for you. And then I've been here, I think almost a year, something like that, nine months. It

Speaker 1  53:30

was October,

Speaker 2  53:31

yeah. So, so not quite a year, but give me a year and I'll keep bugging you. But yes, I think that, that, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It was definitely

Speaker 1  53:41

scary. It was definitely scary. I, because I listened to a lot of podcasts, it never occurred to me to be on this end. Yes, so I definitely had to say God designed me to do hard things. I can be scared and still do what He asked. If He says this is the way to get the word out, then yes, Lord, I am your servant. I try to think, man, he said when the angel Gabriel came to her as a teenager and said, we want you to be pregnant at a wedlock with the Lord's child, and what you want, what, and she said, I am the Lord's servant, whatever you need, and so I thought, well, she can do that. I can be on a podcast. Nobody asked me to be pregnant. I'm so glad you did. I'm so glad for

Speaker 2  54:30

your yes, and I know that this is going to really bless and stretch our ladies. So, thank you so much, girl. Well, thank you for joining us today, Leeta. And yeah, I look forward to more of these. Put on your floaty conversations.

Speaker 1  54:45

We'll go to let's do it.

Speaker 3  54:46

Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2  54:50

Thanks for listening. I pray you found hope in today's conversation, and maybe even feel a little less alone in your story. Stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram at Reclaimed Story. Want to learn more about living a reclaimed life, and how you can be a part of our growing community of Reclaimers? Check out our website at www dot reclaimed story.com And if you enjoy these inspirational podcasts, be sure to subscribe, rate, and review. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Unknown Speaker  55:20

Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai