When I Feel Empty

I'm really excited about what we're gonna talk about for the next several weeks.

We're starting a series today called When I Feel.

When I feel.

We're gonna talk about feelings.

So I'm waiting for the men to just get up and walk away.

I had someone say to me years ago that one of the reasons that men stereotypically, I realize I'm being sexist right now, talking about men in a stereotypical fashion, but I'm a man, so I can do it.

And uh we we tend to have a hard time with emotions because typically men operate on really just three basic emotional levels mad, sad, or glad.

That's all we are.

And and so we're either mad about something, and if we're not mad, we're either sad about something, and if we're not mad or sad, then we're glad.

And you know, when I married Megan, I realized, again, stereotypical, I'm sorry, I'm just putting it out, like women tend to have more nuanced emotions than those three.

And it's been a great journey the last 20 years to learn those nuances and grow.

You know, the reality is our feelings determine more in terms of the joy and fulfillment that we experience in life than our reality much of the time.

Your joy, the degree to which you are experiencing life and all that it's meant to be, and how you feel about it, like all that, your joy is often more dependent on the way you feel about what's going on than what's actually going on.

And so we can, all the jokes and and all the fluffy comments we can have about feelings and and all that, the simple truth is, every single one of us, our lives are so often dictated by the way we feel.

And logically, we can always say, Oh, I just should ignore my feelings, but the truth is feelings are hard to ignore.

They're really, really hard to ignore.

And so, as people, we either have to learn how to understand those deep feelings, those deep emotions that we have.

We have to learn how to understand them and allow God to speak into them, or we're basically giving permission for those feelings, for those emotions to dictate the level of joy that we experience in life.

Because again, that joy, it's often more dependent on the way we feel about what's going on than what's actually happening.

So we're gonna talk for a few weeks about how to navigate those those deeper feelings.

And we're gonna start today with the idea of being empty.

The idea of feeling empty.

Now, empty is not a word I would typically hear someone say if I said, How are you feeling today?

I mean, it'd be you'd have to be pretty vulnerable, be like, I feel empty.

Completely and totally empty, wow, okay, I wasn't wanting to go that deep into a conversation.

I was just kind of being nice, being polite, right?

When someone says, How do you feel?

you're supposed to say, fine, right?

That's the token, fine, I'm good.

Even if you're not, you just lie.

And so you wouldn't often hear someone describe the way they feel as empty, but empty is one of those deeper emotions.

And so, if someone, for example, is like perpetually bored, where their life maybe has a lot going on, they've got a lot to do, there's a lot that fills up the calendar, but at the same time, none of it brings any excitement, none of it is particularly satisfying, that's emptiness.

That's that's signs of a deeper struggle, a deeper emotion.

You feel empty, nothing satisfies.

If someone is is jealous, if someone happens to consistently be looking around them and being like, man, why is my life not more like theirs?

One of the greatest things about social media is it's really helped us get better at jealousy.

It's really allowed us to master that in a way that we just couldn't without it.

So I'm so grateful that we have that.

But but like if you find yourself looking at people around you and going, my life isn't as good as that, and I wish it was, that's indicative of maybe an emptiness.

Or you feel like what I have and what I am, it's just not it's not enough.

Or if you find yourself perpetually angry.

That was amazing.

I wish I could say we planned that, but we didn't, you know?

It's not a bad idea though.

If I might just have like someone in the room and say, hey, if the message is ever not going well, just make your baby yell, and it every instantly gets better.

That was awesome.

So let's say someone happens to be particularly angry with the people around them, or maybe it's not people, maybe it's their job, their career, their circumstances.

That's that's often a sign of an emptiness because that's essentially a person saying, I'm not full, and you all ought to be doing more for me to feel better, and you're not.

And whether that's true or not, whether the people or the situations around you ought to be contributing more, it's still indicative of a deep emptiness.

Emptiness is something that people struggle with to a large degree, but but often without even realizing it.

Because it's one of those deeper emotions that sometimes we're just too busy in life to take stock of.

What do we do when we're empty?

And maybe you're here today and you're like, oh no, you've described me.

I'm empty, and I didn't know it.

So thank you so, so much for giving me this life crisis to deal with.

Or maybe you're like, I'm so full right now.

My life couldn't be more full, and if that's you, that's awesome.

But this is something to guard against.

Because emptiness, it's it's a thing we struggle with, it's a thing we all deal with.

I mean, you look at a culture that right now is spitting so fast, just going everywhere, doing all these things.

Our lives have more packed into them on a day-to-day basis than virtually ever in the history of the world.

I mean, if you would go tell someone 200 years ago what you've got planned for your day, it would look more like what they had planned for a month.

And yet, people, by and large, will say that they're just not satisfied with life.

Now, look, there's things that people will try to tell you that Jesus promises you that he doesn't.

Jesus does not promise you endless wealth.

He can bless you with it, and that's great if he does.

He doesn't promise that we'll never get sick and that every single negative circumstance in our life will smoothly work out.

He just doesn't promise that.

He can do those things and often does.

But he has a promise that that's how it's always going to go.

Sometimes people try to make Jesus out to be someone who promises things that he just doesn't promise, but there are some things that he absolutely does, and one of those, one of those, is the promise that if you follow him, you will be filled.

In John chapter 4, Jesus has this really interesting conversation with a woman that he meets at a well, and they strike up a conversation, and she thinks Jesus is talking about the water in the well, and when you're talking to Jesus, things can take surprise turns really fast.

John 4 · chapter mention

And Jesus said, if you only knew the gift God has for you and who you're speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.

But sir, you don't have a rope or a bucket, she said.

This well is very deep.

Where would you get this living water?

And besides, do you think you're greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well?

How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?

And Jesus replied, Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again.

But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again.

It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.

Jesus, he promised, he promises us right here, that when we live connected to him, there is some kind of life that should just like bubble up inside of us.

There's some kind of a different life, different energy, different passion that should fill us.

The Apostle Paul described it in Ephesians 3 as the fullness of God.

He says, I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have the power, together with all of the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

That's incredible.

Just to think about, am I filled to the measure of all the fullness of God?

And I really don't know what that means.

So I don't know.

Because I don't know if I could describe the fullness of God.

What does that even look like to be filled with the fullness of God?

I read a scholar describe it this way: imagine being at the edge of the Pacific Ocean and having a jar in your hand.

And as the waves come in, you take that jar and you place it right at the edge of the water and it fills up, and for this brief moment, it is completely and totally filled with the ocean.

Like that is part of the Pacific Ocean.

And we have this ability as people to sort of be like that.

That we have this God and He's everything, and He's amazing, and He's incredible, and He's all-powerful, and all-knowing.

And He's filled with love and compassion and mercy, and He can perform miracles.

There is no end to what our God is, there's no end to what our God can do.

And we as people have this ability for His presence to just fill us, though we're not really any more than individually, these small little jars, we can have that experience.

Are we filled with the fullness of God?

Because that's what we're promised.

So how do we navigate that?

How do we experience that if we very often as people have a tendency to run on empty?

We all know what that's like.

Running on empty, running on fumes.

I I will actually say, as a person, this is one of my greatest life accomplishments.

I've never driven a car that's run out of gas.

And I'm not judging those of you who have.

You don't have to raise your hand, like we'll keep that there for you.

Um, I never have.

And I should have.

I'm the person, if you know me, I should be the person who has run out of gas multiple times.

Like so often.

I got really close just a week ago.

Uh really fun, slim-eye scary story with me and all my children in Clarksville, uh, Georgia, which I don't think is a real town at all.

Like I saw a sign that said welcome to Clarksville, I saw no signs of civilization.

And I wrongly assumed that there would be another gas station somewhere close.

There wasn't.

We got to the point where, you know, the the air conditioning's been turned off, the radio's off, we are just like hoping gravity takes us somewhere.

It says eight miles left, it's 12 miles to the next gas station on our list, and our kids are asking us, are we gonna be okay?

And we're just you know lying to them as parents, saying, Oh yeah, we're we're good.

We don't know.

Like we might this might be it, guys.

This might be how we go.

Okay?

You can't say that to a six-year-old.

So you're like, yeah, we're good.

Daddy's got it.

Thankfully, we pulled into the Batesville Junction gas station, which uh looks like it could double as the set of a horror film, and that's great.

And literally got there within 30 seconds of I walked in, the lady said, I'm closing the doors in 30 seconds, and the gas pumps don't take cards outside.

And I was like, it's fine, 30 seconds, time to spare.

Right?

That's that's happened to me so many times, things like that.

I should be the person who has run out of gas so often.

But I will tell you, while I've never done that driving my car, I have done that driving myself.

I have gotten to points in life more times than I would care to admit, where I'm just empty.

Where I'm all those things.

I'm I'm maybe jealous that other people's lives seem to be going better than my own, wondering what's missing.

I'm angry at the people around me for not doing more to make me feel better, where I'm just unsatisfied.

And that sense of emptiness, it's no good.

So let's let's dive in, let's figure out how to navigate that.

How do we identify it?

How do we address it?

Partnered with God.

It's not for us.

We can be people whose lives are filled with the fullness of God.

I want to talk about three specific concepts it's leaks, lids, and lesser things.

Leaks, lids, and lesser things.

When we're running on empty, when we're we're experiencing that emptiness, it's often because we're dealing with a leak, a lid, or lesser things.

And we'll start by talking about leaks.

If something has a leak, it doesn't matter how much you pour into it, eventually it will be empty.

And as people, we can be leaky.

And I've experienced this on a personal level, I've experienced this myself, but also with other people around me.

Like I described earlier, sometimes you get to this place in life where you're angry at your spouse or your boss or other things.

I've even seen it with church.

I've experienced times where someone is like angry with the church.

And like, we ought to be doing this and this and this and this and this.

And I'm tempted sometimes to like, oh, okay, maybe we should, but then I've recognized the times.

I actually it might be that you have a leak.

And it doesn't matter what we do, or your boss does, or your spouse does, it's all just gonna leak out.

And you might feel better for a minute, but eventually that deep dissatisfaction, that emptiness is gonna be there.

If you have a leak, it doesn't matter how many good things are being poured into you, it will go away.

How do you know if you have a leak?

What I have discovered is that when we're leaky, we tend to lash out.

When we're leaky, we tend to lash out at the people around us.

Because again, the the tendency is to either recognize that you have a leak, and I don't know why I'm pointing to this side of me.

Like why that I just realized that I had a moment.

Um let's say the leak's here.

I don't know.

Why?

Whatever.

It's okay.

Um awesome.

So we can either recognize that the leak is there, or what we tend to do is just get mad at the fact that we're not filled and think that it's other people's faults.

Great example of this in scripture, King Saul.

If you don't know anything about King Saul, he's the first king of the nation of Israel.

He's the king before David, their most famous king, and Saul is a man with a leak.

And you know this because he lashes out all the time, specifically at David, the man who will be king, and even the people in his life that happen to like David.

I'll give you some examples.

So, 1 Samuel chapter 19.

1 Samuel 19 · chapter mention

It says, as David played his harp, Saul hurled his spear at David, and we might think David was not good at the harp, you know, but David was actually really talented as a musician.

In fact, the reason David's even there playing the harp in the first place is because Saul would just get so angry and so upset that he needed something to calm him down, and they would bring David in because he was such a good musician, and David would play something to sort of put him at ease.

But it in this situation it doesn't work.

He hurls his spear at David, but David dodged out of the way, leaving the spear stuck in the wall, he fled and escaped into the night.

This is not the first time this has ever happened to David by means of Saul.

In fact, just a chapter earlier it says David was playing the harp, as he did each day.

But Saul had a spear in his hand, he suddenly hurled it at David, intending to pin him to the wall, but David escaped him twice.

This happened twice.

Like just imagine you're David and you're playing that harp, spear, and you're like, ooh.

And then I guess Saul walked up, pulled the spear out of the wall, went back and sat down and did it again.

And so, that's a crazy thing to just think about.

Kudos to David, though.

He's agile, he can multitask.

1 Samuel 20.

A little bit later, Saul is speaking to his son Jonathan, who's very good friends with David.

And he says to Jonathan, as long as the son of Jesse, that's David, is alive, you'll never be king.

Now go get him so I can kill him, but why should he be put to death?

Jonathan asks his father, what has he done?

And then Saul hurled his spear at Jonathan, intending to kill him.

So at last Jonathan realized that his father was really determined to kill David.

Couple takeaways.

Saul is terrible with spears.

Like, that's clearly not his thing.

Like, move on to a different weapon.

This is four times that I've counted that he has thrown and missed, apparently at close range.

So not good for Saul.

But also, Saul has something deep, deeply wrong.

I think we get a hint of it right before he throws the spear the first time.

Go back to 1 Samuel 18.

It says, Whatever Saul asked David to do, David did it successfully.

So Saul made him a commander over the men of war, an appointment that was welcomed by the people and Saul's officers alike, and when the victorious Israelite army was returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women from all the towns of Israel came out to meet King Saul, and they sang and danced for joy with tambourines and cymbals, and this was their song.

Saul has killed his thousands and David his ten thousands.

You know, the truth is Saul was strengthened by David.

David is successful for Saul.

David is, in many ways, ensuring that Saul's kingdom will thrive and survive.

He should have just been overjoyed that he has this superstar in David, but he can't handle the fact that the people like David more.

It's that jealousy.

It's that looking around, it's that insecurity of saying, why am I not more like that?

Why don't people like me that way?

Why am I not more this or that or whatever it is?

That insecurity, that jealousy causes Saul to lash out.

He has a leak.

Where did it come from?

I don't know.

Something in his childhood very often, leaks are caused by trauma.

Something happens to you, it affects you really deeply.

And maybe you don't even deal with it, maybe you're unaware of the damage that it's caused, but later in life someone else does something and it sort of brings that same thing up and you just lash out.

If you have a leak, some some trauma, some unhealed wound from your past, you will never feel full, at least not for long.

And it literally doesn't matter what the people or or the organizations around you do.

I mean, everyone in your life could give you exactly what you want, and you would still feel empty.

Because that leak has to be addressed.

And so what do you do when you have a leak?

Well, first off, you find it.

You find it, and that might be something you cannot do on your own.

I I had a conversation with someone earlier this week, and it exposed a leak in my life.

And what I found in the moment, they said something to me, and it reminded me of something someone that had hurt me in the past had said to me, and I found like that person's face was literally in my mind as I was talking to this other person, sort of lashing out.

And I realized, like, oh no, I'm not talking to this person, I'm talking to that person in my mind.

That's a leak.

So you you you identify it.

Maybe that can happen in a moment like that, where you're like, oh, that's what it is, or you you need to go to God and ask him to help show it to you.

Like we have this word in our faith, revelation.

And that just means God revealing something to you.

God can reveal things about you that you do not know.

Because he knows you so well.

And he loves you.

He loves you.

He never wants to reveal something to you to shame you, for you to feel like you're less.

But if you'll go to him in prayer and say, Lord, help me figure out what's going on, I'm so I'm so upset.

I'm so empty, and I'm I'm looking at all the people around me, and I feel myself being angry with all of them, and and clearly something's wrong with me, he'll show that to you.

Maybe you have a few godly people in your life that can help you with that.

I will say, just to put it out there, our prayer team.

Every Sunday morning, as soon as we wrap up, there is an amazing group of people in that room in the back to pray for you.

And we should, yes, absolutely.

And that team, like, that's a really special team at our church.

And those are people who have dedicated their entire focus here to prayer.

And so you get in that room and you pray a little bit, you might, you might learn something.

Because God wants to show you something.

So first you've got to find the leak.

Then you have a choice.

You either patch it or you fix it.

And sometimes we just choose in life to patch the leaks, right?

It's easier that way.

Alright, just do something that sort of temporarily makes it less of an issue, you distract yourself, whatever.

Uh, but that won't last long because the pressure keeps building, or you fix the leak.

And what I have found, the the only surefire way to fix a leak, which again it's it's gotta be connected to that trauma, that hurt from the past, is full blown Jesus style forgiveness.

You're gonna have to forgive whoever put it there.

And that's hard.

That's that's so hard because so often the people who have wounded us Think that they have.

And maybe we find ourselves waiting for the day when that person walks up to us or calls us or texts us and says, you know, I've been thinking, I really wronged you.

I was wrong.

I'm sorry.

And that doesn't really happen that often.

But if we understood that we could hypothetically get a text from Jesus that said, I know that person really wronged you and really hurt you.

I'm sorry they did that to you.

And I died on the cross to cover it.

Kind of makes you go, okay, well, I can forgive that.

I understand that when you ask a group of people to deal with deep forgiveness, it's like handing people a giant problem.

You know, so we'll move on.

We'll move on.

But I just know that the only way to truly fix a leak is deep forgiveness.

Even if it's forgiving yourself.

Let's talk about lids for a second.

Have you ever had a situation where you're trying to talk to someone and like you just can't even penetrate?

They're not open to receive a thing.

A few months ago, we were having some issues with our internet.

You know how you get mad when the internet fails at home?

Like you get like so angry so fast, like it's in your mind ridiculous that the internet has gone out.

In reality, like keeping the internet alive, or I don't even know the right word to use, running, it's gotta be like one of the most complicated things that has ever existed in the history of the world.

And yet, like one second of like it's just buffering, and you're like, it's buffering.

What am I paying for?

You know?

And so our internet was was was going in and out, just off and on, and and our kids, you know, that's like they can't handle that.

They've grown up in a world with the internet, they don't realize how either blessed or cursed they are, depending on your perspective.

And so my my son, my oldest, says to me, Dad, why don't we get Verizon internet instead of Comcast?

Maybe that'll fix it.

And I looked at him and I was like, stupid kid.

I didn't say that, but I mean, you know, what does he know?

And I said, Verizon doesn't do internet, it's a cell phone company.

You don't know what you're talking about.

And then I told this story to a group of my friends who promptly informed me that Verizon actually does provide internet.

I was like, cool.

I didn't leave a lot of wiggle room in the way I responded to my son.

And uh that's maybe why he's at that age where he's like, my dad doesn't know anything.

You know, you go from my dad knows everything to my dad knows nothing, and I'm I'm on that journey right now.

It's great.

But like that happens sometimes, where I'm just not receptive to what someone has to say because I've already evaluated ahead of time that they just don't have anything worthwhile to give.

That's called pride.

That's sort of that pride, that arrogance.

That's the biggest lid that you can live with.

If you have pride, if you have arrogance, you'll never be full.

Because it's like you're living life with a lid on and nothing can get in, nothing good can penetrate.

When I think about pride, I always think about the Pharisees, the religious leaders who were around when Jesus was teaching.

And it always blows me away because, like, I'm someone who spends every single day of my life basically trying my best to understand what Jesus has said and then try to communicate that to people in a way that can be grabbed a hold of and understood in our culture, in our time.

So I spent my whole life just Jesus helped me understand you better.

And I never got to sit in the same room as Jesus.

I never got to physically be there.

And if I could go back to be around Jesus, you know, it's like, what would you, what would you want to see?

And of course, you want to see one of the miracles, right?

I'd love to see him walk on water.

I would love that.

I think that'd just be amazing.

But actually, for me, I would just love to sit and listen to him teach.

Because I've spent my whole life trying my best to like convey his teachings to people.

I think it'd be amazing just to sit and listen to him in person.

And the Pharisees did that all the time.

They had hours and hours and hours of time in the presence of Jesus, hearing it directly from his mouth, and none of it penetrating.

And like to me, there's nothing more crazy than that.

There's actually a story in John chapter 9, Jesus heals a man who's blind.

John 9 · chapter mention

He's been blind from his whole life, and the Pharisees are mad about it, because they're mad when good things happen to people.

That's, you know, that's who they are.

And so they're grilling this guy, and they get to this point in verse 26.

They say, What did he do?

How did he heal you?

And the man's already explained this to them once.

So he says, Look, I told you once, didn't you listen?

Why do you want to hear it again?

Do you want to become his disciples too?

Then they cursed them and said, You are his disciple, but we're disciples of Moses.

We know God spoke to Moses, but we don't even know where this man comes from.

Well, that's very strange, the man replied.

He healed my eyes, and yet you don't know where he comes from.

We know that God doesn't listen to sinners.

This is something the Pharisees would have said all the time.

But he's ready to hear those who worship him and do his will ever since the world began.

No one has ever been able to open the eyes of someone born blind.

If this man were not from God, he couldn't have done it.

You were born a total sinner, they answered.

Are you trying to teach us?

And they threw him out of the synagogue.

There's this phrase that a person with an experience is not at the mercy of a person with an argument.

And oftentimes that phrase comes to mind when I read this story.

But what's interesting is that this man doesn't just have an experience, he actually has a really valid argument.

Like what he says is so valid, it's it's very, it's like right on.

He says to the Pharisees, like, honestly?

You've spent your whole life saying that God would never do the will of a sinner, and and that only someone who's truly following God could ever do God's will.

And here this man is, and he's healing blind people, and you're like, we have no idea who this guy is or where he comes from.

That doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't make any sense.

But the Pharisees couldn't receive it at all.

They don't go, ooh, good point.

We need to rethink things.

They're like, How dare you try to teach us get out?

Pride and arrogance, it's a lid.

And you know, I think about emptiness, and the Pharisees, they spent their entire lives, this group of men, searching for a savior who had already come.

They spent the rest of their lives looking for a Messiah who was standing right in front of them.

That's an emptiness that I can't even imagine.

But it's all because of pride.

Arrogance.

And that's something we we have to like own as people.

We all have that tendency to be prideful, to be arrogant, to not be receptive, to look around and evaluate people and say, that person has nothing to offer me, that person doesn't know what they're talking about.

And the only the only solution for pride for arrogance is humility.

And so something that I used to pray, God, humble me before I humiliate myself.

And I liked that.

It sounded clever.

But now what I've learned to pray is just, Lord, humble me or let me humiliate myself.

Because either way, humility is the result.

And so, God, if you don't humble me directly, if you don't tell me something, if you don't help me out, then at the very least, Lord, let me do something stupid so that I'm humiliated enough to recognize, oh, I've got some emptiness and it's coming out sideways.

Humility is a beautiful thing.

It's not a fun thing to experience.

No one's ever put humility on their Christmas list, right?

No one's ever said, What do you want more of in life?

Oh, just humiliation.

I think it'd be great if I had a butt man, when you're humble, and when you've been humbled, that lid goes off, and guess what?

You are open to receive from God, and he is able to fill you just like he promises to.

And that's powerful and that's amazing.

But it's but you gotta recognize the lid.

So pray that.

Again, a lot of this is just prayer.

It's you and God.

Lord, do I have a lid?

Do I think I'm better than other people?

Do I think my sin is less than other people's?

Do I think I have more knowledge than the people around me?

Do I think that I've I've solved it, I've figured it out, and all those other people are.

No, do you have those thoughts?

And if you do, look, you're a human.

Don't beat yourself up.

But just take the lid off.

Or ask God to allow something to happen to you that does that for you.

Because then you'll be open to receive from Him.

Final thing.

Final concept.

We've got leaks, we've got lids.

Let's talk about lesser things.

Lesser things.

John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

Go back to that story of the woman at the well.

Jesus said, Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again, but those who drink the water I will give will never be thirsty again.

It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.

Jesus is making a point that this water that this woman is pulling from the well, it's a lesser thing.

It will fill you for a moment.

But you'll need it again.

It's funny because immediately after this, Jesus goes in an interesting direction.

The woman responds, please, sir, give me some of this water that you're talking about.

She's being sarcastic, likely.

Then I'll never be thirsty again.

I won't have to come here to get water anymore.

Okay, go get your husband, Jesus told her.

I don't have a husband, the woman replied.

Jesus said, You're right.

You don't have a husband.

For you've had five husbands, and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now.

You certainly spoke the truth.

And this woman was probably just like now what's Jesus doing here?

Is he shaming a woman who has had a really, really unlucky love life?

Is he trying to make this woman feel like she's cheap and dirty?

No.

Jesus doesn't do that.

In fact, it's it's interesting.

If you ever read Jesus in scripture being really intense, and maybe you might even say harsh, stop and pay attention to who he's talking to.

Because when he's like that, he's talking to the religious people who think they've got it all figured out.

But when he's talking to everyday people who know that their lives are messy, he's so gentle.

And so he's not telling this woman that she's a failure.

She already knows that.

He's just showing her that her water has been relationships.

And she's gone from one to the other to the other to the other, and they've never satisfied, they've never filled her like she's hoped that they would, and now she's just in another one, and she's maybe even at the point now, like, why even get married?

What's the point?

I think we all have a version of this in our lives.

And it's that thing that we're convinced that if we just had a little bit more of that, or a better version of it, then we'd really be happy.

You know, it might be wealth.

Scripture talks a lot about wealth.

Wealth is not evil, wealth is not wrong.

Proverbs 23, verses 4 and 5, though, it does say, don't wear yourself out trying to get rich, be wise enough to know when to quit.

Proverbs 23:4

In the blink of an eye, wealth disappears, for it will sprout wings and fly away like an eagle.

Many of us are like, I have lived that.

But isn't it funny how how we can be people, and we'll just use wealth as an example because it's an easy one, we can be people who have had more than we used to have, and it hasn't satisfied us.

And yet at the same time, we can think, well, what's the solution?

Just more.

Like I've I have so much more than I used to have, and I thought I'd be happier if I would have ever talked to the 20-year-old version of myself and said, hey, here's the house you live in.

You know, here's your financial situation.

My 20-year-old self would have been like, I mean, he worked at Chili's.

He would have been like, I'll take it.

Surely you are just so content and happy.

Like, oh no, not at all.

There's so many things I don't have that I want.

Right?

And so even though we we play that game and it leads us nowhere, we still keep playing the game.

And say, well, yeah, but if I had more, if I just had a little bit more, then I would be satisfied.

No.

That's not living water.

You can have some, but it doesn't, it doesn't fill you.

It doesn't matter if it's relationships, it doesn't matter if it's wealth, it doesn't matter if it's possessions, it doesn't matter if it's accomplishments, whatever that is for you.

It just will not satisfy.

The prophet Isaiah said, Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.

And he who has no money, come, buy and eat.

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and you and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Ooh.

I don't know if that hits anybody else.

Why do you spend your labor?

We might say, why do you spin your wheels for that which does not satisfy?

Listen diligently to me and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear and come to me here that your soul may live, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

And he's writing to the people of Israel and kind of using David as like a proxy to say, Hey, I will love you.

God is saying, I will love you just like I love David, if you'll come to me.

If we spend our lives in pursuit of lesser things, we will be empty.

Because lesser things just don't fill you, it doesn't last.

It's like, okay, silly analogy.

Has anyone here ever been to a Brazilian steakhouse?

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Like where the meat keeps coming around?

First time I ever went to one, uh, a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, was like, look, here's, he gave me like a heads up.

He's like, here's what we're gonna do.

We're going in, and there's just gonna be all this meat, but you're gonna see this giant like salad bar.

And it's got bread and starchy foods and all kinds of stuff.

Don't go there.

We're not paying for that.

Right?

He's like, that's just it's just fluff that's designed to fill your stomach so you eat less of the good stuff, and so we're just going to eat meat.

And I was like, I'm in.

I'm in.

Let's go.

Right?

But like we've all had that, there's stuff that you can eat, and it just, you're still hungry.

Like, how can you eat an entire bag of chips and still be hungry?

I've done it so often, too many times.

You know, you starve, you're like, I have a handful, and then it's gone, and you're like, well, I guess I gotta go get more.

There's certain things that don't satisfy, and that's the way life is.

We spend our lives so often pursuing things that will not leave us filled, they will not fulfill us.

And we know that because culturally we have more of that stuff than anyone's ever had before, and we are not satisfied.

Yet we keep pursuing the lesser things.

There's nothing wrong with money, there's nothing wrong with romance, there's nothing wrong with success and accomplishment.

But if you believe that those things in and of themselves will fill you, then just ask yourself why the world's most successful people who have all of that that you can imagine are deeply broken.

Doesn't satisfy.

He was a baseball player, really big-time baseball player in the 80s and 90s when I was a kid, and so I had like his baseball card, and he he's a pastor now.

And he everything in his life came crashing down.

And he said though, before it all came crashing down, he had this moment.

He was in his huge mansion, he had like 30 cars, you know, one for every day of the month, except for that 31st day.

So you know, sometimes that comes.

But he had that many cars, he's in this huge, huge.

He has everything he worked.

He said he had this moment where he woke up one day, looked around, and he said, Is this it?

Is this it?

And he said it was terrifying because he was miserable.

And he woke up and had thoughts like, which car should I drive today?

I say all that to say this.

Jesus is not the lesser thing.

He is not, and ultimately what he promises to give us is himself.

Like that's that's what he offers you.

And we go back to that verse in Ephesians that said that God will give us what?

His fullness.

Think about that for a moment.

How full of wisdom is God, how full of power is God, how full of mercy and grace and compassion, how full of anything is God.

He is He is full of all that we need.

And He promises to us to fill us with His fullness.

Again, my brain can't even wrap around that.

It's like the jar in the Pacific Ocean is it hit my soul right, but I don't quite understand it.

But sometimes, to keep on that analogy, I'll just put my jar somewhere else.

And wonder why I'm not full.

Jesus is never the lesser thing.

In Matthew chapter 5, I don't think I have this verse up on the screens, but it's fine.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Jesus says, blessed are those, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Now, years ago, I heard someone say that it's interesting that it doesn't say, but blessed are those who are righteous, for they will be filled.

It says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

If we want to be filled, we've got a hunger and thirst for the greater thing, not the lesser thing.

And that greater thing is always Jesus.

He is your answer.

If you're here and you've never given your life to him, I'm not gonna lie to you and say that, you know, give your life to Jesus, get baptized next Sunday, and no more problems.

No more struggles, no more issues.

No, no, no, no.

Like it's it's a journey.

But but it's the right journey.

It's the right journey.

It leads to the right place.

It's not an easy road.

But look, would you rather have a smooth paved road to destruction?

Or would you rather have a rough, bumpy ride to fulfillment?

Jesus is the right path, he's the right journey.

Because he always, always fills you with the greater thing.

So you're angry at that person in your life.

You go to Jesus and he fills you with compassion.

Or you're you're deeply, deeply offended and hurt, and Jesus fills you with a perspective you never had.

Or you feel completely rejected, and you go to Jesus, and he fills you with a kind of love and acceptance that nothing in this world can ever give you.

Jesus is never the lesser thing.

And so, look, if we want to be people who know how to navigate that emptiness, we've got to be people who can identify the leaks, remove the lids, and recognize the lesser things for what they are, and put all of our focus and all of our attention on the greatest thing, which is Jesus Himself.

So, with that said, we're gonna take Lord's Supper.

And some of you are like, oh no, I didn't grab one.

Don't be, don't be like that at all.

There's nothing you can do wrong in this situation.

So if if you didn't grab a cup of bread and juice on your way in, they're in the back, you are not gonna mess anything up right now by by getting that.

This meal, this tiny little meal, is a reminder that Jesus came to fill us.

He said, if you only knew who you were talking to, you would ask and I would give it to you.

Jesus also described himself as the bread of life.

He can fill us.

That's a promise that he can make.

I can only talk to you about what Jesus can do, but he can do it.

And taking this meal together, it's that reminder that he is what satisfies, he is what fills, and he is what removes the emptiness in our lives.

And so this bread represents his body.

And he gave it all for us.

He gave it all for us.

He always gives us all that he has.

He sacrificed his body on the cross to pay a price that we couldn't pay, and to fill a void that we can't fill.

And so, with that in mind, let's pray.

Father, thank you for this bread.

Thank you, Lord, for what it means to us.

You give yourself to us.

You fill us with yourself.

It's your presence, it's your spirit.

When we take this bread, Lord, we're not getting more of you than when we had when we had when we walked in the room.

You've already filled us.

For those of us who have given our lives to you, you've already filled us with your spirit.

And sometimes, Lord, we just need reminders that we have it.

It's as simple as that.

Sometimes we forget how full we actually are.

So as we take this bread, Lord, I pray that you remind us that you have filled us.

Let's take the bread.

This juice represents the blood of Jesus spilled for us on the cross again.

This reminder of what he gave.

We still have a phrase in our culture today that if you love something, you'll bleed for it.

Jesus loves you and he bled for you.

He gave everything.

So with that in mind, let's pray.

Father, thank you.

Thank you for sending your Son to shed his blood.

Jesus, thank you.

Lord, help us receive this in a manner that it's meant to be received with humility and gratitude.

Recognizing that there's no meal that we're gonna have this week that can truly fill us more than you can.

There's no experience, there's no other person, there's nothing, Lord, that can fill us completely and wholly like you.

So help us ignore the lesser things, pay them much less attention, and put our eyes on you.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.

Let's take the juice.