Feeling Empty? Hole in your Heart?
We live in an age where there is endless noise around us, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are constantly being hassled by our smart phones, addictively checking our social media posts, and leaving on the television just to continue the “background noise.” It is rare that we actually experience a moment of true silence and reflection (especially when you have kids). In fact we often don’t want this. We need to keep the noise going so we don’t feel the emptiness inside of us. If we stop and reflect, we’re only going to feel like something is missing, and we don’t like that. Not at all. I suspect those on their deathbeds experience only silence and reflection and this is when they often recognize that they have wasted so much of their lives on things that did not matter.
When I would recognize this hole, I would want to fill it.
Like many, I suppose, I would put on some background noise, distract myself by binge watching some television show online, and do anything I could to avoid the fact that there was a gaping hole inside of me. I believe many people turn to alcohol, drugs, excessive eating, pornography, unhealthy relationships, or any other activity that will give a “high” or distraction in order to temporarily ignore the hole. I am guilty of many of these as well. However, as we know, all of these actions inevitably end up with consequences we regret. Deep down we know something is missing, but we do not know how to find it or fill it and, well, it hurts.
It really hurts.
Others, I believe, take an opposite approach. They ignore the hole entirely, devote themselves to an attitude of strict obedience to a religion or ideology (including atheism or self-worship), and do everything they can to convince themselves that the hole is not there. While hiding their own insecurities, they look down on and even mock others who are not following their chosen prescription for life. They convince themselves that they have the truth, and that anyone who does not agree with them is a fool. This is not any more helpful, and often is even worse than the earlier approach. However, they can fool themselves for only so long.
There are endless commercials, commentaries, organizations, and people out there willing to entice you to try their “solution” to the hole. After a while you realize that it is all garbage. That purchase will rust, decay, and break. The twelve-step program probably will not change your life.
In fact, none of it works. The hole is still there.
Studying the Bible, it is easy to see that history is filled with people in the exact same situation. They have insecurities, they have weaknesses, and they are broken. They have a gaping hole in their lives and nothing they do permanently fills it. However, they, like us, are not alone. God addresses them, encourages them, encourages us, to come and let Him fill this hole. “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? … Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live.” Isaiah 55:2-3 (NIV).
In John 4, Christ spoke with a Samaritan woman, approaching the well near where he sat. This woman, the experts agree, was an outcast. She was coming to the well during the time of day when no one else would be there. She was coming in the heat of the day with the scorching desert sun overhead, when anyone with half a brain would be hiding out in the shade. She was purposefully trying to avoid people. She was a social pariah whose immorality was likely well known in the community. She was broken; she was the exposed version of all of us.
Christ spoke to her, which shocked her. Not only was she a social outcast, but she was a woman and a Samaritan, someone a Jewish male would not normally engage in conversation with. He asked her for a drink. She replied in shock that a Jew would even ask such a thing. He responded, “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.” John 4:10 (NIV).
What did he mean by living water? He clarifies in verse 13, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 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.” Id. at v. 13.
Soul satisfaction. Eternal satisfaction.
That is what he is talking about; completeness – the fulfillment that ALL of us are longing for and cannot satisfy. A thirst that is finally quenched; a hole that is finally filled.
He confirms this point in the next few verses where she is exposed as a woman who has had five husbands and now was living with a man to whom she was not married, a big societal and religious no-no. Like all of us, she had a need. She needed to be needed. She needed to be loved. She had a hole in her heart and, like all of us, she kept trying to fill it; in this case, with husband after husband, relationship after relationship, never being satisfied, always thirsting. For the first time in her life, from coming to Christ, she would be filled.
She immediately then ran to tell all of her friends about him.
So, what am I getting at here? What is the purpose of all of this? Simple. You cannot fill the hole. There is literally nothing you can purchase, no group you can join, no action you can take that will ever, ever fill that hole. Perhaps you dove headfirst into a sinful life, trying to satisfy the undefinable longing. Perhaps you’ve spent a good portion of your life trying to drown out the call of the hole, trying to quench the unquenchable thirst … but you recognize it is still there. Or, perhaps you have spent your entire life walking in exactness and obedience to everything you’ve ever been taught, following an empty religion on a giant hamster wheel. You have kept all the rules. You feel if anyone should feel complete, it should be you; you deserve it; yet you still feel empty.
The point of this article is to tell you that is that there is one, and only one, who can fill it for you and is willing to do so if you just ask Him. Regardless of your spiritual state, your emotional baggage, your complicated history, he will fill that hole or quench that thirst like nothing else can satisfy. Only coming to God through Christ will make you complete. And do not think for a second you have to “get your act together” before you can come to Him. That is a terrible mentality. He wants you as you are. He wants me as I am: broken and very aware of my brokenness. Christ did not hang out and eat with the pharisees; he hung out and ate with those who knew they were wicked. He did not tell the Samaritan woman that she had to clean up her life before he would give her the living water; he told her that all she needed to do was ask.
Just ask.
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