Hard Conversations: We Accept The Already & Not Yet

Many of us have unfinished projects, unchecked to-do lists, and incomplete tasks. If not, ask your parents, spouse, or co-workers, and they will remind you about something that they are waiting for you to finish. Sometimes, we get really bothered by the number of things we have left unfinished. There are things we still need to think through, decisions we need to weigh out, repairs that need repairing, and decisions that need to be decided.

Some projects, lists, and tasks are easier to leave unfinished than others. There are times we don’t mind shelving something to focus on some play in our lives. At other times, when something is unifinshed it consumes our minds and energy. Though sometimes, the unfinished things that weigh on us the most are not projects or tasks. Sometimes the unfinished things that weigh on us the most are people in our lives, people with unfinished stories, or it is the hard conversations that we have with people that never seem to find resolve, unity, or agreement.

For the past few weeks, I have been exploring the scriptures in this blog series about how to have hard conversations better. This is an important conversation because we face hard ones each day. It is important to know how to converse well in God-honoring ways when someone thinks, acts, votes, parents, or believes differently from us. Through this series on having Hard Conversations, we have been discussing the affirmations we need to make before we react, respond, or reply.

Hard Conversations Series

This Hard Conversations blog series is about staying present with one another when life, faith, and relationships get complicated. Instead of withdrawing or reacting in moments of disagreement and difficulty, we’re exploring how God calls and equips us to remain united in love — even when we disagree.
We especially need a good way to posture ourselves in the unfinished conversations. Or in the hard conversations that never come to a conclusion, an agreement, or unity.

So far, we have said that before we react, respond, or reply, we need to remember:

In this blog post, we are going to look at our last affirmation: “We choose to accept that we live in the already and not yet.”

Here and Now but also Not Yet

I will say more about this as we go on. However, this is the point: sometimes resolution comes slowly or not at all, and we have to choose to live in that tension. Our lives are defined by the tension that God has called us and declared us his, yet we are not fully home in heaven.

There are some people in our lives whose story God is still writing, and we are ready to see that chapter finished in their lives, for their sake. There are sometimes heated conversations we have with those across the aisle that never quite resolve. We have children whom we may not be able to convince to see things the way we do. There are friends who have drifted from what we believe is faithful and true. And there are moments when we walk away from a conversation thinking, “That did not go the way I hoped.”

Hard conversations can stay with us. I think they weigh on us more than the unattended repair or task list because we are often emotionally, physically, spiritually, and theologically invested in hard conversations. These conversations take up space, rent-free, in our minds and hearts because there is no clear resolution.

We want agreement.

We want things tied up neatly with a bow.

However, you know the truth. The tension of not yet living in every aspect of our lives.

The Hard Conversation in John 4

In John 4:4-26, Jesus steps into a conversation that had divided people for generations. It is a hard conversation Jesus finds himself in with a woman at the well.

We are told that Jesus had to go through Samaria on his way from Judea to Galilee. This was not ideal. Some Jews would go out of their way to avoid Samaria. Others would use the shortcut on the way back from pilgrimages to Jerusalem, but they understood that Samaria was the town you didn’t go through, even if you had your windows up, your doors locked, and your guard dog in the backseat. Even more, they believed there was a kind of sticky and contagious sinfulness that might linger in the area. They saw them as sell-outs, half-breeds, because they had intermarried with outsiders after the Assyrian conquest of the northern Kingdom.

Over the years, both groups came to despise each other and each other’s places and practices of worship. In the eyes of the Jerusalem Jews, the Samaritans were not “true Jews.” Notice what happens when you have already decided who someone is. The ability to have hard conversations with them disappears. Your differences become the lines drawn in the sand for war.

This is our culture today. Our differences too often become the markers of who is right and wrong, who is in and who is out. The sides are chosen, and we have already demonized and defined the other side.

Jesus does not just pass near Samaria. He takes the risk one step further. He enters a town inside Samaria called Sychar. This was a historic place, but it was also deep inside what many Jews would have considered a no-go zone. Sychar was associated with the land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. The well Jacob had built there still remained. It was a kind of artifact of faith, a reminder of the story of God and His people. By the time Jesus gets here, the sun is overhead, he has been traveling for something like six hours, and he is ready to relax and sleep. Most women would not come to the well this time of day, but her guilt and shame and life kept her coming, even in the heat of the day, when the heat provided a kind of protection, the protection of isolation from others.

Jesus repeatedly steps into the intersections of life. Most of us avoid uncomfortable places where hard conversations might happen. Jesus and the early church lived very differently. In the Western world, we have often learned to build Christian bubbles with Christian music, Christian businesses, Christian stores, Christian clothing, Christian schools, and Christian neighborhoods. We can become insulated and exclusive. As a result, we rarely step into the lives of people who think, vote, act, believe, parent, or worship differently from us. When we do encounter them, we often become either offensive or defensive.
Stories like this remind us to step into the intersections of life. I keep ten values in my office that I read each day to remind myself who I am and what God is calling me to do. One of them is “living theology at the intersections of life.” That is much of what I do at Water Street Mission. Many days, I find myself shoulder to shoulder with people who think, act, and believe very differently from me. This is what Jesus is doing here.

As Jesus sits at the well, a woman comes to draw water. Not just any woman, but a Samaritan woman. Two things would have immediately stood out in that moment: a man speaking alone with a woman in an unprotected setting, and a Jewish man speaking with a Samaritan woman.

What Jesus does next is even more surprising. He asks her to serve him by giving him a drink of water. Scholar Craig Keener points out that during this era, such an act could be seen provocatively, as if he were flirting with her. So, the behavior is certainly unusual. Jesus is creating conversation.

When Jesus sends out the twelve and later the seventy-two, he instructs them to extend peace to the homes they enter. If that peace is accepted, the sign of it will often be hospitality, a meal placed before them, which they are told not to refuse. When someone leans toward you in hospitality, when they serve you, it creates a different kind of conversation. Truth can be shared in ways that are difficult during a defensive argument.

I also think Jesus is doing something else. He steps into the awkwardness of the moment and creates a conversation at the intersection of life. Good evangelists often do this. They say something that catches attention, invites a reaction, and opens the door to deeper questions about life and truth. Jesus does exactly that here.

She is shocked. She immediately points out the tension in the moment. She reminds Jesus where he is, who he is, and who she is, and how inappropriate this interaction would normally be.
Jesus responds in a way that keeps the conversation moving forward. He speaks in a kind of code, saying, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water” (John 4:10, NIV).

Jesus himself is the gift of God she does not yet recognize. Paul later uses similar language to describe both Jesus and the life we receive through him. For example, Paul writes, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23, NIV). Jesus puts himself on display here for all of us.

Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus again describes himself using the image of living water. At the Festival of Tabernacles, he says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37–38, NIV). John then adds an explanation: “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (John 7:39, NIV).

Here in John 4, Jesus is already hinting at that reality.

Notice something important. This woman is not foolish. She is thoughtful and aware. We sometimes assume women were not learned in Judaism, but even here in Samaria, we see a woman who knows her people’s story. She engages Jesus in a serious theological conversation and even begins to make a “greater than” argument about their traditions. A woman is debating theology with Jesus, and neither of them backs down from the conversation.

Jesus continues to press deeper, explaining more about the living water he offers. Whoever drinks from it, he says, will never thirst again.

The woman is drawn to this image. The idea of never thirsting again sounds wonderful. If that were true, she would never have to keep returning to this well to draw water day after day.

The Shift in the Conversation

Then Jesus shifts the conversation in a surprising direction. He says, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

One way to read this is simply cultural. In that world, serious conversations were often directed to the male head of the household. But there may be something deeper happening here. Jesus is leading her toward truth. To receive the living water he offers requires honesty. It requires confession. Renewal always brings us face-to-face with God and our true selves.

Her response is careful and guarded. “I have no husband.”

That statement matters. In that culture, it was extremely difficult for a woman to survive on her own. Women had very few rights. They typically could not own land, and their public voice was limited. A woman without a husband would often find herself in a vulnerable position.

Some readers assume this means she was immoral, others that she did what she had to do to survive. Both are possible. Whatever the full story behind her past, Jesus brings it into the light not to shame her, but to lead her toward repentance and new life.

Jesus reveals what only God could know about her life. If you have ever been around someone with the gift of prophecy, you know how the Spirit of God can sometimes reveal something to someone for the good of the kingdom in a moment. Jesus shows that though he is fully human, though he is in the flesh, teaching us the way and showing us how to find life abundantly with God, he is also truly divine and otherworldly. God in the flesh.

He brings her complicated family history into the open. She is suddenly face-to-face with the most painful part of her story. In that moment of honesty and surrender, she recognizes something special about him. She begins to wonder if he might be a prophet.

She then shifts the conversation to theology. It is striking how aware and intuitive this woman is. She asks Jesus to settle the biggest debate between her people and the Jews.

This is actually a healthy way to approach Jesus. Not to pull him into our debates to prove our side right, but to ask where we might be wrong and where the truth really lies.

It Is Bigger Than The Debate

Jesus responds by pointing beyond the debate and tells her that something greater than this argument is coming. The truth she is searching for is deeper than where.
Jesus says, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks” (John 4:23, NIV). These worshipers will be people shaped by God’s Spirit. The living waters will rise up in the surrendered and confessed, and bind them to the ways and will of God through the Spirit.

The woman seems to miss what Jesus is saying or wants to resign from the conversation and says, “I know that the Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

She knows that even if the truth can’t be figured out in the present, when the Messiah comes, he will explain all these things. What faith she has.

Jesus knows this and responds, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he” (John 4:26). I am truth.
I love how Jesus handles this hard conversation. Jesus intentionally places himself in a situation where the hard conversation can happen.

Jesus’ Posture Is Everything

When the tension emerges, Jesus does not argue with her. Instead, he stays present and speaks with care. At the same time, he does not avoid the truth. He gently points out that the Samaritans are worshiping something they do not fully understand, while also affirming that salvation comes through the Jews. He speaks the truth. In the hard conversation, Jesus continues to model what it means to draw people to him as the central aspect of truth. He is the salvation. Jesus is the one who can explain and make sense of all these things. Jesus is the one who can change hearts.

I want us to focus on the tension in the first line of Jesus statement. He speaks in a prophetic way, naming the tension between the here-and-now and the yet-to-come. Jesus says “a time is coming” and “has now come.” As I said earlier, our lives are defined by the tension that God has called us and declared us his, yet we are not fully home in heaven.

In hard conversations and in the injustice of life, sometimes we ask: When will things be made right? When will worship be full-throated, in Spirit and in truth? When will the world finally be as it should be? When will truth fully be understood? When will the wrong be convinced of what is right? The answer we see from Jesus is “both-and.” Things will be made fully right in the future, on the day when God makes all things new. But that work has also begun now through the ministry of Jesus and continues through the surrendered lives of the people of God. As people encounter Jesus, things change; they come face-to-face with God and themselves.

Two Ways We Respond

Sometimes, especially in moments of despair and hard conversations, we cling only to the first half of that tension: “A time is coming.” We might say, “Let’s just wait. One day, Jesus will return and fix everything.” That is a sense of resignation. I think that might be what the woman is doing in this story. When we do this, we can be tempted to give up hope for unity, peace, or justice. We stop trying to find agreement, unity, and truth.

At other times, especially in moments of frustration or triumph, we cling only to the second half: “has now come.” We expect everything to be resolved immediately. We fight and debate. We believe now is all that matters, that God has put us in control, and that we need to fight to save others and grab the bull by the horns. Often, we push harder, argue louder, or grow angry that things are not as they should be.

But maturity in hard conversations lives in the middle of both truths.

There is a day coming when God will bring a new creation, perfect unity, peace, justice, forgiveness, and wholeness. And yet that day has already begun to break into the world through the kingdom of Jesus. We hope to experience truth now, but we know we will then.

This story carries many important themes. It reveals that Jesus is the Messiah. We find confession and surrender modeled. It shows the dignity and value Jesus gives to women. It includes one of the most significant theological conversations recorded between Jesus and another person. It models evangelism and shows how Jesus draws people to himself through others’ repentance.

Four Takeaways

But for our purposes today, this story also teaches us something about how to approach hard conversations. Here are four things it reminds us of.

We should step into hard conversations. Jesus does not avoid Samaria. He walks straight into it. He sits at a well where he knows a difficult conversation will happen. The woman differs from him in culture, theology, and social standing, yet Jesus remains present. If we want to live like Jesus, we cannot hide from the intersections of life. Sometimes faithfulness means being willing to sit at the well and have the conversation.
We depend on the Spirit in hard conversations. Jesus speaks about worshiping the Father in Spirit and in truth. Ultimately, it is the Spirit who brings people face-to-face with God and with themselves. Jesus exposes the truth about her life, but he also offers living water. In hard conversations, we cannot force transformation. Our role is to speak truth with care and trust the Spirit to do the deeper work.
We hold on to hope in hard conversations. The woman says, “When the Messiah comes, he will explain everything to us.” She believes that one day the truth will be made clear. Jesus responds by revealing that he is the Messiah. Kingdom people live with that same hope. Even when conversations feel unresolved, we trust that God is still at work. The story is not finished yet.
We keep the focus on helping people see Jesus. Jesus does not win the argument about worship locations. Instead, he leads the conversation toward himself. The goal of the conversation is not victory but revelation. In hard conversations, our concern is not to prove we are right but to help others see who Jesus is and what he has done.

No, we do not simply give up, nor do we just fight harder.

If you know the rest of the story, the woman runs back into town and tells everyone about Jesus. Her life becomes a testimony. She tells people that Jesus knew everything she had ever done. Only Jesus can bring that kind of transformation.

Closing Thoughts

There are people in our lives whose stories God is still writing. There are conversations with those across the aisle that never fully resolve.

The truth is, we cannot force resolution. But we can choose how we live in the tension. We choose to accept that we live in the already and the not yet. God is already at work now, and one day he will bring all things fully into the light. That is choosing a way of trust and hope.

This Hard Conversations series is also a series at River Corner Church on Sunday mornings. We are a simple community of Jesus followers. You can see this conversation as it was preached here:

I’m Jeff McLain, and I write the Lead a Quiet Life blog on Patheos, exploring Christian spiritual formation and the call of 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12 to lead a quiet life in a noisy world. If this post resonated, share it, leave a comment, or connect with the Lead a Quiet Life page on Facebook. You can also learn more about me at jeffmclain.com.