Is He a Hot Tamale?

I played the dating game to meet my husband. I placed a single's ad and that is how I met him. But, I met one hot tamale before him. It's a person that likes to play the field. Typically, when you have a nice looking man online, there are 75 women hitting on him at the same time. It was a lot different back then because it was a printed ad so there were no pictures, but my future husband liked my ad above all women in the magazine. Age plays a big role, because many men want a woman ten years younger when women typically outlive men by ten years so that is why there are a lot of widows in the 60-90's year range. By the time a man reaches 50, usually "you hope" they have met their life partner.  I know when I went to my brother's 40th high school reunion who is older than I am, he said that by his age men had settled down.

In that single's ad, I met a man for dinner who was trying to make a girlfriend jealous. I met my spouse after the 25th person. There was the movie, "Look Who Is Talking" and it was about how this woman who was trying to find a father for Mikey. I had some similar dating experiences as she did as far as sitting down at the cafeteria at my job and a guy complaining about the food. I know the food was bad at Methodist Hospital, but I could not handle his negative attitude. I just saw that movie and it reminded of the part where she visioned him criticizing her son for not matching his socks correctly. I had four children at home and I did not want a person who constantly criticized. He sounded very positive on the phone, but he was a different person when I met him.

I don't find single groups much different as far as it's like having ten women put their fishing line down at the same time at a single's group for a hot tamale. I "prefer" the quiet streams when I go fishing so I like online dating.  My husband was a hot tamale, he was a shy hot tamale.

I look at dating like networking. I met someone at an outdoor concert recently and he lives in Greenwood, but he played volleyball in Fishers. My friend needed a volleyball player for a competitive league in Greenwood so I gave him my friend's number. I networked the two of them together. The magazine just happened to be the network that I met my husband. There are several different networks which can be meetup.com, socials, online dating, friends, etc.  It's being the right place at the right time. I just happened to put my fishing line in that magazine and it caught my husband's eye. The magazine went bankrupt the next month so I got my ad in "just in the niche of time." My spouse and I talked about that because of the different type churches we went to (I went to Chapel Rock and he went to Westside Presbyterian) there was really no other way our paths would have crossed except through that ad.

When Abraham's servant went to get a bride for Isaac, he met Isaac's wife at a well. Jesus knew when he met the Samaritan woman at the well that she would be there, because she was avoiding all the other women. Most women would come to the middle of town in the cooler part of day, but she chose to go at the noon hour. It was a "divine encounter." When you have a divine encounter/appointment with a person, you will know it.

Many times I have found there is a counterfeit that comes along before the real McCoy (the real thing or the genuine article). It is to trip you up. It may be a hot tamale. It is like those counterfeit $20.00 bills look real.

"Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “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.” Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

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. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
John 4:1-26