What You Are Looking for Can Only Be Found in Jesus
Happy new week my people! I hope you had a great weekend. I have come again to share with you what I have pondered for a short while. I am one who likes to watch a lot of stories/interviews on YouTube about people’s lives. I once watched an interview about a prostitute, who saw herself as a marriage therapist of some sort, because she helped “save” marriages, as she gave the married men an outlet to live out their fantasies.
Though she was once a married woman who had a thriving career and a son, her husband’s alcoholism led to the breakdown of their marriage, and somewhere down the line, she turned to prostitution. As the interview carried on, she still talked about how she hoped one day to be remarried, and the interviewer said to her, “you don’t need another man right now, the one who you need is Jesus Christ.”
The trans person, the gay man, the woman with multiple failed relationships, the man who goes to the club and pops bottles every weekend, the rebellious child, the sex addict, the alcoholic, the criminal, and the list can go on and on and on. If we closely examine these, we will quickly discover that most of these people turned to such lifestyles because something deeper was missing or as a response to something traumatic which happened to them. But there is a bright side to all of this - most have confessed that when they began to live the lifestyle that they hoped will bring them joy or fulfilment, it didn’t. They still felt empty on the inside.
I can draw a parallel with my own life. This happened when I was going from relationship to relationship, hoping that I’d find some kind of satisfaction, but each time left me more broken and emptier than the last. I thought that if I could just find someone to settle with, then all my problems would go away. I am glad God did not abandon me in my sinfulness and lack of knowing.
At the right time, he rescued me and gave me a fulfilment that nothing in this life can ever substitute for. For one who was always desperate for relationships in my 20s, I no longer fret about being single because I have found my fulfilment in the one who said to the Samaritan woman in John 4:10, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
She, like me, was also in search of something that she didn’t know. As revealed in her story found in the book of John, she had been through five marriages, and the last man she was with, wasn’t even her husband. Most times we begin this quest for relationships with good intentions, however, it quickly takes the place of God in our lives when we wrap our identities in what another human can offer us. When that fails, we feel heartbroken and betrayed, then look for the next thing that can fill that void which grows bigger and bigger with each failed relationship.
This doesn’t only happen in romantic relationships. There are those who chase after money because they must sha blow in this life. They also have made money their god because their affections are tied to this material thing that can never bring true fulfilment. Because of the love of money, all sorts of atrocities ensue. 1 Timothy 6:10 says, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
The prodigal son for one, modelled this. He was in a haste to begin living large, so much so that he couldn’t wait for his father to die a natural death, so he could receive his inheritance. I am not so sure of how inheritance works in Jewish tradition, at least in the modern world, it is when someone dies that their will comes into effect. So, as Jesus reveals in this story found in Luke 15, the prodigal son went to his father to demand his share of his wealth. The father gave it to him, and off he went.
He then squandered it on reckless living, and not so long after that, he came to the end of himself. Broke, without food, and destitute. That reckless lifestyle, though pleasing to the flesh for a second, the euphoric feeling (and even the resources) don’t last for eternity. That is why people keep looking for the next high, after the next high, after the next high, until they get to a point where they decide there is nothing left to live for because they have destroyed their lives.
Thankfully, the prodigal son realized his wrongs and went back to his father, who was willing to receive him. God in his graciousness often allows us to get to the end of ourselves to turn back to him. So, if you have hit rock bottom in search of all these – that person who you thought you’d marry, abused and cheated on you, someone duped you in your quest for money and you lost all your life’s savings and you feel as though there is nothing more to live for, you overdosed on alcohol and perhaps some drugs and almost lost your life, you married that person you loved against your better judgment and many people’s advices and that person turned out to be a monster, these are God’s loving signals to you, for you to return home to him, as the prodigal son did.
Don’t listen to the voice which says, “I have gone too far, or God will never accept me because of all the things I have done, as such there is no reason for me to keep living.” Those are lies from the enemy, and you have substituted his lies for truth for long, that it is now time for you to believe what is true. There is always room for you in your father’s house - should you choose to return; he wants you to return.
As Jesus revealed in his encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4, God is the one who can give us living water which will cause us not to thirst after things that do us no good and are displeasing to him. The enemy would have us believe that if we change our gender, if we identify as something other than what God created us to be, if we fall in love with the same sex as the solution for heartbreak, after the opposite sex has shown us pepper, or turning to alcohol or excessive partying or sex, or chasing after money will bring us all the joy we need. All these leave us more broken than we were, when we first turned to them for what only God can provide and has provided in Jesus.
It is not that I no longer desire to be married or one day have children; these are good desires, it is just that these things no longer define me. I now know who I am in Christ, and I am satisfied with that, even if none of what I desire ever happens.
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