One thing can be said of believers and unbelievers alike, and it is that we are all on a quest. Within each of us, God has woven an unexplainable urge to pursue the thing we believe will make us happiest. It’s true for every living individual. Even when we’re not old enough to walk and ask for what we want, we convey it with cries and noises to those who care for us. We were created to have needs and to seek God for the satisfaction of them. As we mature and understand life more, the unexplainable urge is greater. We want more riches, greater health, and fulfilling relationships. The longing leaves a void, and we are driven to distraction to try and fill it. We are especially dug in with the belief that the right person can span the width and breadth of what’s missing. The problem is that even after meeting the right person and acquiring all the things we think we want; the longing isn’t quenched.
What ails us can’t be resolved by physical intimacy and romantic or sentimental emotions. We think that these will do the trick because others tell us they will. Society tries to convince us that acquiring relationships and material things are the closest to happiness we can attain. We buy into this and later find that nothing touches that place where we have longed all our lives. So, in some respects it is true that we are burdened with our longings for love and happiness, and it is terribly unfair to place this burden on anyone else, because they are unable to fill the gap.
Many of us are lonely beyond what we could ever have imagined. We don’t feel validation in the depth of our souls, and no matter the person we’ve sought to give us this validation, disappointment has always been the result. So many of us feel a stone’s throw away from the flatness King Solomon felt as he searched relentlessly for the purpose of life. The longing becomes a dry ache, and underneath the movement of our everyday routines is the sadness of “No matter what I do, I will never have what I really want.” Nothing seems to be that achievement, that fulfillment, that gulp of ooey gooey something that blankets every nook and cranny of our beings and sends us in perpetual delight.
This doesn’t sound like the abundant life that Jesus Christ made available. It sounds like the condition of the human soul because of the unbelievable void that Adam’s sin left. Romans 5:12(NLT) says, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.” We call this void in our souls a whole lot of other things, but in truth it’s the memory of losing our connection to God. It’s the absence of the bounty that God intended all His children to have. For good measure, we should call it what it is, and every time that we feel the void, we should remember that we’ve been rescued from it by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Because of Adam’s sin, we were born into a sinful world with sin in our members. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 7:23(NLT), “But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.” The sin in us feeds the void, and in order to satisfy it, some of us have been seeking everywhere but the Lord. You can be confident that nothing can satisfy you like Jesus Christ. Paul said in Romans 7:24-25(NLT), “24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.”
We must always remember that our privilege and duty is to cling to the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. We will not live forever in our current form. We will not acquire all that we seek to obtain, and we will not see all our dreams come true. Should the Lord tarry, life in the current state of our humanness is finite, and there are reminders of this all around us. But praise God, Jesus Christ has given us a totally different vision and taken us to a whole other dimension in life. 1Corinthians 15:22(KJV) tells us, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Our hope in Christ is all we have, and it is more than enough for this life and eternity. Romans 5:5(NLT) says, “And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”
What we need to understand is that there is a deep and abiding longing in us, and it must be filled with our hope in Christ. There’s an inheritance that we’re destined to attain, and the fullness of it has not yet been made known. Indeed, we’re on a journey, trying to get to a place of unspeakable joy, peace, and bliss, but we need to remember that our race isn’t about earthly relationships and materialism. It’s about digesting as much of the example of Christ as we possible can, and then allowing his love to transform us. God didn’t make this an automatic occurrence. We didn’t and don’t receive all that He has in store in one big gulp. Life was created by God to be a walk. It’s an opportunity to walk with Him daily so that our relationship with Heavenly Father deepens through Christ, and we will be prepared for that glorious day when our Lord and Savior returns.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“The True Story About the Void and the Longing”, written for victoryinjesuschrist.life. Copyright© 2024. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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