So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” They went out of the city and were coming to Him.

—John 4:28-30

Did you know that the very first evangelist wasn’t Jewish? Or a man? Right in the middle of a culture that prized being Jewish and male, Jesus chose to reveal His identity as the Messiah to a Samaritan woman, and she chose to spread the word.

Google tells me that evangelism is “the spreading of the Christian gospel by public preaching or personal witness.” If I’m being honest, it’s never been something I’ve gotten particularly excited about. Even the idea of evangelism on a daily basis has always felt intimidating to me. 

Most people don’t have time to stop their busy day to hear about my beliefs, and of those who might have time, many aren’t interested. At least, that’s the excuse I’ve always given myself. The task was too big, too overwhelming.

That’s part of the reason I find the story of the Samaritan woman at the well so convicting. She had so many more reasons to decide to keep her good news to herself—she was already the social outcast of a group of people looked down upon by others, she had likely lived a hard life, she was a woman, so she wasn’t even considered a credible witness by her culture. Those seem like some good reasons to keep to herself.

But that’s not what she does, and there are some pretty cool things we can learn from her reaction. 

1. She left her waterpot. She didn’t let all the chores she had to do get in the way of sharing the good news Jesus had given her. The water from the well could wait; the news of Living Water could not. That’s not to say that we should shirk all our responsibilities to go look for people to talk to in the parking lot at the grocery store, but we can make sure we stay alert and ready for when God blesses us with an opportunity.
2. She tells the men. It would have been so much more convenient to try talking to the women. They weren’t her biggest fan, but it would have broken way fewer social norms for her to try talking to the women with the goal of having them persuade their husbands to go check out the guy camping out by the well who says He is the Messiah. Instead, she went straight to the men, and despite the culture of the day, God blessed her with success. 
3. All she did was praise God. Like I said before, I’ve always considered evangelism to be something big and overwhelming that would require me to have special training from my church before it was safe to try it—a touch ironic for someone who is a part of the evangelical Christian community—but all this woman does when she discovers the good news of the gospel is praise God.
   
   I’m just telling on myself right and left today, so here comes another admission of my shortcomings as a follower of Christ—until I began working on this devotion, I had rarely thought about what it actually means to praise God. Whenever someone used that phrase, I had a vague idea of someone actually saying the phrase, “Praise God” or of the angels in heaven crying “Holy, holy, holy!”
   
   Certainly, that counts. That is a way to praise God, but now it seems to me to be like only one dimension of what praising God really is.
   
   I started thinking about what praise is apart from the context of praising God. I praise my husband by telling Him how much I appreciate him. I praise my students by recognizing when they do good work. I praise the people I care about by telling others about all the good things about them and all the good things they’ve done for me.
   
   We can do the same with God. We can publicly thank Him for His kindness and blessing in our lives. We can recognize when He cares for us and is good to us. And we can tell the people around us what we love about Him and what He is doing in our lives.
   
   It can be something as simple as telling someone you meet about how He has shown His love for us recently. That’s what the woman did—she told everyone she met about the wonderful gift the Messiah had given her. And as a result, verse 39 says that many from that city came to believe in Jesus.