Obtaining the Life Our Soul Desires
You ever had a big dream or aspiration? I have. And this aspiration was anchored so deep within my heart, it once landed me in a parking lot, sitting in my car expelling words out of frustration. I followed the guide in the best way to see to it my aspiration would come to fruition. Even with this being so, I still fell short of gaining ground in having it realized. “What’s the purpose of life for me if not this?” I irrationally blurted out. All the while, cluelessly missing the life our soul desires.
On the heels of recovering from the major disappointment I shared in my writing, Your Response When God Doesn’t Come Through , I couldn’t fathom this too being a thing God would withhold from me. It just seemed so unfair.
“Lord if you love me, please not this!”, I shook my head pleading. I allowed the tears to cascade down my cheeks, exposing the deep pain this was causing.
Taking in account the amount of time I had left to pull myself together, I looked over at the time displayed on the dashboard. Approximately fifteen minutes or so before I was required to report to my occupational duties.
This occurred in the season of life, prior to a true relationship with Christ. It was when my satisfaction was tied to the desires of my heart being met. The sense of my fulfillment was held together by the hope of God providing me with something I’d always wanted. I had very little trust in God’s plan or authority when it came to this part of my personal life.
The exposing of my heart years later, revealed to me my aspiration had been greater than my desire for God.
Hence my utter hopelessness when things weren’t going my way.
Maybe you have held or currently hold a deeply rooted hope outside of Christ that you assume will complete you. Or perhaps you believe it will bring about ultimate fulfilment. So much so, that having this desire go unmet is disrupting your view of God and the meaning of life.
You and I are not the only ones guilty of this–wanting God’s handouts in life as opposed to His heart. Scripture records a telling account in John 6 of how hearts can be bent toward what God can do for us and not what He can be for us.
The day after Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand, the same crowd of people searched to find Jesus on the other side of the lake.
“They found him on the other side of the lake and asked, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs.” – John 6:25-26 NLT
Jesus brazenly calls out the crowd’s motive of only wanting Him for what He could do for them and not because they understood the miraculous signs to be an indicator of who He is. To put it plainly, they were more interested in what Jesus was giving out and not Jesus—the giver.
Bread of Life
Jesus wasn’t reaching in His judgement of their interest in Him. His assessment’s validity is revealed in the following verses. In the following verses, the crowd requests Him to show them yet another miraculous sign to prove He was the Messiah.
Get this. Just a day ago, they were proclaiming Jesus to be the Prophet they were expecting after He miraculously fed them all and now, they were asking for another sign? As if using two fish and five loaves of bread to feed five thousand people wasn’t good enough!
Their ancestors were supernaturally given bread from heaven. They wanted a miraculous sign such as that. But Jesus had another thing coming for them. He desired to fill them spiritually and not only naturally. Therefore, instead of calling down bread from heaven, He presented Himself as the bread from heaven; the bread of life. At hearing all of this, many of the people stopped following Jesus (John 6:33-35).
The despairing truth is, many are unwilling to trust Jesus Christ to be enough.
Instead, efforts go toward desperately creating a life while missing the truth that Christ is life.
No matter how many times God comes through in the way we demand, if Christ is never revered as and trusted to be enough, we’ll never be satisfied with life. Our earthly time only becomes a never-ending cycle of getting what we want but never what we desperately need.
God has set eternity in every human’s heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Our hearts and souls deeply desire eternal life. Not a met career goal, not a love interest, but our soul desires life. Life that lasts. Life that fulfills. And apart from Christ, life is unattainable.
Learning to love, lean into, and trust Christ during our times of longing produces a spiritual satisfaction that fills the chasm in our hearts. We receive what our soul so desperately longs for—life.
I thank God for loving me enough to withhold what I wanted in order to supply me with what I desperately needed. And what I needed was life through Christ.
Trust Jesus for Life
Although my meltdown in the car was several years ago and to date, my aspiration still hasn’t been fulfilled, I still at times find myself going back to the question of is Jesus truly enough? Will I continue to love, lean into, and trust Him if the deepest earthly longings of my heart go unmet by Him? By the grace of God, without fail my resolve has been that He is more than enough. I have seen that Christ can be trusted for life that satisfies.
I’ve heard people say to “try Jesus”. But, I don’t believe Jesus should ever be tried. And I don’t believe so because He’s proven Himself to be true (John 5:36-40). Furthermore, if Jesus is tried and things work as planned, a person runs the risk of only following Him for the wrong reasons. On the other hand, if things don’t work as planned, a person may try following something or someone else. But when we “trust” Jesus, we believe that no matter what, He knows what’s best and that all things work together for the good and His purposes.
Therefore, if you’re feeling hopeless in life due to an unmet longing, I want to encourage you to “trust Jesus”. This resurrection season, forsake the pursuit of a hope outside of Christ and receive life through Christ Jesus. He really is more than enough.
