Read John 4:1-30. Just like the woman at the well, to truly be a Christ follower you must come to terms with your desperate need for God. The way of sobriety means that you truly understand your propensity to live a life of duplicity and sin, and if you don’t deal with your ‘stuff’ it will compromise God’s purpose for your life. The good news, however, is that God is a God of broken people who doesn’t just forgive but transforms!

• How often do you really think to yourself, “I really need God in my life?”
• Has your relationship with Christ been about forgiveness only or has it transformed your brokenness? Name some ways God has not only forgiven but transformed you.

Re-read John 4:10-15. Just as there is a powerful physical thirst for water, there is equally a powerful spiritual thirst for living water in which only God can fill. The problem comes when you try to fill that spiritual thirst with temporary things instead of Jesus Christ. Not only is it unsatisfying to build life around the temporary things of this world but it also leads to disheartening exhaustion and grief.

• Describe a recent time you were really thirsty? Have you ever felt that same thirst for true meaning in life? Explain.
• What are some lifeless things our culture tends to build their lives around? Have you ever built your life around any of these things?

Re-read John 4:16-18, Matthew 4:4 & I Timothy 4:16. Before the woman at the well could fully receive the living water Jesus offered, she had to come to grips with the truth about her compromising lifestyle. When God’s truth engages your life, you too will see the “shadow self” in you that continues to push you to do things you know are wrong and not of God. External religious rules will not keep you from sinning. Power only comes through the hard spiritual work of surrender and dependence upon God, one day at a time.

• How often do you let “the truth” engage your every day life?
• Do you acknowledge that you have a “shadow self?” How do you keep watch over it?
• How do you normally address compromise in your life: aggressively, passively, or with denial?

Re-read John 4:28-30. Finally, the way of sobriety with Jesus leads to trusting only in him and his ways. Ultimately, you only have an audience of one in which you must live and that audience is God. The method the woman at the well dealt with her ‘shadow self’ was to take her energy and work for God. She took her misdirected and misaligned relationship addictions and channeled it to purposeful actions of service and sacrifice, witnessing to her friends and neighbors about Jesus.

• Do you live life as if your audience is God? How can that help you live with integrity?
• Do you need to begin serving God with the energy you now give to fulfilling unsatisfying desires? What will you do?”
• What step do you need to take to fully live the life of sobriety and integrity?