By Allen Jones
This past weekend my wife and I partook of one of our favorite activities…snuggling on the couch, eating a bag of potato chips, and watching some television.
We clicked on one of our favorite hospital dramas, and proceeded to watch the turmoil of a doctor’s life. The twists and turns of personal and professional life, and how those lines get blurred so very often.
We laughed, we cried, we gasped, we…got exhausted. Or at least I did.
Why the exhaustion?
Because, we saw people putting all their effort, all their strength…into worldly things. These characters lived or died, by the next surgery they landed, or by the next person they fell in love with. There was nothing bigger for them, the job or relationship was their EVERYTHING.
As an audience member, you get pulled into their everything as well. You cheer when they land that surgery, you cry when their love breaks their heart, and you laugh when they make a funny quip (a much needed respite from all the doctor drama).
I found myself thinking, how terrible to live life that way.
I LOVE working for Kinship Christian Radio, it’s my dream job, but it’s not my everything. My wife, is the love of my life, she fills me with so much joy everyday, and I am already so in love with our child that we are expecting this summer…but, they are not my everything.
The truth is, they can never be…because people and things were never meant to be our entire universe.
My wife cannot fulfill the deepest desire of my heart. I cannot satisfy the greatest longing in her spirit, because that is a place that is only meant for God.
Ever since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden, we have been trying to fill our gaping spirit with anything but a relationship with God.
Work, family, friends, things, hobbies…we bow at the altar of all of these things.
A recent pop song by the band Hozier, sings of worshiping a relationship (in a pretty blasphemous sense).
The singer discounts the church, and openly admits to worshiping this girl. Yet, the whole song has a dark, this isn’t going to end well feeling. As if the singer admits, I know this isn’t healthy, I know she can’t give me what I need…but I’m going to worship her anyway.
That’s where the real heartbreak comes in. How many of us, worship something other than God, and know that this is not going to end well, this is only going to drag me down in destruction…yet, worship anyway.
But then comes in Jesus.
John 4, tells the story of the woman at the well. A woman who had been married 5 times, and was now with a man who was not her husband. I think it’s safe to say, that she was worshiping worldly things. Seeking in a man (or men), what could only be found in God.
Jesus proceeds to tell her
“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.”
Everything in this life, is the physical well, like where Jesus met the Samaritan woman. We put in the time and effort, we come back day after day after day, yet we are still so thirsty, and eventually the well itself will dry up.
But when we turn our worship back to God and his son Jesus Christ, when we stop worshiping the physical well of jobs, friends family, etc, and partake of the living water of Jesus Christ, then our spirit is fulfilled.
Then and only then, do we find the deepest craving of our heart, and as Jesus says, it will not deplete (unlike everything else in this world) but continue to grow.
And Coincidentally (or maybe not so much) our careers, family life, relationships, often get even better than before! Because those things are no longer holding the weight that only God can truly handle.
And that is the weight, of being our EVERYTHING.
Colossians 1
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of[g] your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— 23 if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.