Live / Satisfied
In this mandated silence and stillness, there is an ache in my heart that can no longer be ignored. It’s an ache for something that I once thought was found among man made traditions, programs, services, and groups. But in these quiet moments, when all the people pleasing, serving, doctrinal discussions, important meetings, stage performances, when all of it is stripped away and there is space to address this ache I realize I have been looking in the wrong places for satisfaction.
God has written a beautiful story of redemption and it begins in Genesis where we see humans first look outside of a relationship with him to satisfy our ache. They chose to believe that something instead of walking with God would satisfy them. Like these first people, I too have looked to things, good things even, outside of God to fill the ache in my soul. In the church world, it is easy to equate good things with the best thing which is walking with Jesus, surrendering to the Holy Spirit, and submitting to the Father. The good things like; talking about God, serving God, learning about God, being with people who say they love God, worshipping God through song, none of these are being in a love relationship with God. They are the things that surround a relationship with God, but if we are doing any of these things without spending time walking with, surrendering to, obeying God in a daily personal relationship, then we are missing the one thing that can satisfy us completely.
You and I were created to be in a continuous, daily love relationship with the God of Heaven and Earth. He is the intimate Author of our stories, Redeemer of broken things, Light in the darkness, the Way, Truth and Life. And nothing is a substitute for time alone with him. Nothing.
In fact, anything that isn’t walking in step with our Lord and Savior Jesus is a lesser thing. The lesser things of religion, community, success, money, education, affirmation, admiration and recognition. Can we experience these things while we walk in step with Jesus? Yes! But when we go to any of these things to fill our ache then our heart becomes a bottomless hole where we pour all of these lesser things in and they flow out leaving us empty, aching, again. The result is that we find ourselves living a life chasing satisfaction and we cover it up our ache by doing more, reaching for more, being more, more of the same things that won’t plug up the hole. The hole that only can be filled by one thing, a daily walk and moment by moment surrender to Jesus.
All of those lesser things are not bad things, they are good things! But out of order, they will harm you instead of help you. They have their place in life, but they have to stay in their place. They have to fall into line, not only in our routine but in our hearts. Since we are so like the first humans, prone to look outside of God, to look to ourselves for satisfaction, we have to take inventory of where our hearts are looking to satisfy our longing.
God has done his part, he created a way for us to be saved from ourselves, from the destruction living life on our own brings. Looking continuously to the empty wells to satisfy our deep thirst when Jesus is the Living Water. He set us free from having to walk apart from him, and from the consequences of our choosing to walk apart from him. This is the gospel! The good news. It is found always and only in Jesus. Anything good in life is good because it is from him. When we lose this perspective everything is cloudy, confusing, and we are dissatisfied, exhausted and anxious. Not putting God in his rightful place of only and everything in our life is sin. Because sin is turning away from God, if you aren’t turning toward him, you are turning away.
In my life I have looked to many empty wells for satisfaction. In my self righteousness, and even well meaningness, I have labeled them as “good” wells. There have been ministry wells, relationship wells, justice wells, knowledge wells, recognition wells, success wells, bank account wells. My guess is that your wells look like mine because we are more alike than we are different. We share the same human parents, looking to the same human things to fill that hole meant for God.
I have realized that I need a new way, a new way which is actually the old way, the original way. I am tired of looking to all the man made solutions for my God sized longing. Currently we are in a season where all of the lesser things have been taken away, but the one thing, the only thing that satisfies our every longing that we know have ample time for. The plus side of shelter in place is an abundance of time to walk with our Savior.
The truth still stands that as Followers of Jesus we are not meant to walk this road alone. And where as we cannot look to each other to fill the ache inside of us, we are called to unity, and to not neglect meeting together but to encourage one another (Hebrews 10:25). So what does this look like for now and for the future? The good news is that just like we can still do the one thing that satisfies our longing, walking with God every day, we can also still be about the things that should mark our meeting together. If we look at the verses in Hebrews 10 before verse 25 starting at verse 19, we see that because of Jesus, we can draw near to God, hold tight to and confess the hope found in Jesus and stir up one another to love and good works. This is what we encourage each other in.
Do the most important thing, every day, which is draw near to God.
Don’t forget why you can draw near to God (Jesus), and that we live not for this world, but for eternity, this is our hope - hold tight and confess it.
Move forward toward love and good works, out of the overflow of the first two we show God’s love to others by how we act.
Meeting at the same time, same place and with the same people every week is not a prerequisite to living this out. Living this out is less about the people we are called to live it with and more about following God, wherever and with whomever he leads us.
Traditions, ministry, programs, buildings, vision, ideas, passions, gifts, abilities, successes, finances, community all of these things are a-moral things. They are neither good or bad in and of themselves. They are tools that can be used to encourage people to further draw near to God, hold tight to and confess the hope we have and move in love and good works. But that’s just it, they are tools, to be commandeered by God. They are not the thing, they could be used to point people to the thing.
If stripping away all of the things that we habitually go to instead of God to satisfy our ache is what we need, than where we are as Followers of Jesus is exactly where we need to be for this time and place. The question is, will you and I repent and turn back to our first love? Will we draw near to Creator God, hold tight and confess the hope we have in Jesus, continually move toward love and good works, and encourage others to do the same?
If you have an ache that has risen to the surface, join me. Let’s re-order our hearts, look to God, the satisfier of our souls and be about the encouraging work of pointing people to him that he calls us to do.
