Praying God's Wisdom: Filling the Hole in Your Heart

 

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will.  Romans 12:2

 God made us, intentionally, with a hole in our heart. We feel it deeply. We ache for it to be filled. We can’t be satisfied, we can’t be at peace, until our heart’s hunger is satiated. This causes people to do all kinds of things. You may have heard of people travelling to India on a journey to find themselves. Some join a monastery. Others devote their lives to research, finding a cure for the world’s ills. There’s a deep, driving need in all of us, and until we recognize what it is, and meet it, we will feel a constant pressure to do so.

 The world has devised a plethora of options to stuff inside this hole and see if it fixes it. There are the darker vices – gambling, alcohol, drugs – things that will take hold of your life and take you where you do not want to go. These promise relief, but they only give more cravings to satisfy through addiction. Other, more socially acceptable possibilities abound as well. We might seek to fill our need through caring for our body, exercising and devoting ourselves to seeking the best nutrition. Becoming financially stable and building a “nest egg” can draw us in. Perhaps it is about how we present ourselves to the world. We might attempt to develop the best beauty routine, seek out the finest treatments, and share our findings with the world by becoming an influencer. The opportunities abound because God has made us to be creative, like Himself, and where we have seen a need, we have developed innumerable options to fill it.

 The trouble with this is, it will never work. Those first vices I mentioned show this clearly. When it comes to gambling, the house always wins. You might be up on Tuesday, but Friday’s coming. It never fully satisfies because when you hit it big, you always wonder if the next spin will double it. Alcohol and drugs have a similar problem. You might start out with a little, and it feels nice, so you have more and more and more, until it no longer feels nice. You have an insatiable need, one that blurs all others. Taking care of our body, on the other hand, seems like a more noble calling, but the flesh is a cruel master. There is one more workout, another new supplement, the diet that will cure you for sure this time. Becoming financially stable just seems responsible, but it too can never satisfy because when is enough, enough? If you reach your goal, another appears in the distance, promising that it will be all you need, but when you get there yet another will take its place. Power, influence, beauty, they are all temporary and fleeting. Nothing this world has to offer will ultimately satisfy us or bring us peace.

 So what are we to do? Why would God make us with such a desperate need that can’t be met by anything in this world? Because He is the only thing that can fill that God-sized hole in our hearts. It’s like those toys that we give to toddlers with shapes that go into different holes. Try as you might, you won’t get a square peg to fit into a round hole, and likewise, you’re not going to get anything this world has to offer to fill the God-shaped hole within us. Only He can do that! The thing is, not only is He the only one that can do it, He does it very, very well. Once we ask Jesus to come into our hearts and be Lord of our lives, the peace that He brings truly does defy understanding. Every need we have, every problem we face, every illness that plagues us finds its salve in Him. And here’s this really interesting part, once our primal, intrinsic need for God is met, other things become a blessing instead of a curse.

 When we are seeking to find peace at the bottom of a glass, it will only bring woe, but if our heart is already at peace, we can enjoy the fruit of the vine that God created and let it be a joyful accompaniment to the feast that God prepare before us. Instead of building our own financial nest egg, or empire, when God is directing the way we use our money we find that we can give and give and still always have enough. True beauty comes from within, far more than any regime or concoction can attain, and when we are at peace with God, that beauty shines out from us like a lamp on a stand lighting up the room. Yes, there are some things that will still not benefit us. I can’t think of how something like heroin for example would fit into a healthy, God-directed lifestyle, but what I’m getting at is that when we have peace with God we are fully satisfied. We don’t need anything else, and because of that we can enjoy things as a blessing rather than a drive to quench the unquenchable.

Here’s the Thing: Who the Son has made free will be free indeed. In committing ourselves to be the bond servants of Christ (Romans 1:1, Galatians 1:10), we find freedom from everything else that seeks to enslave us. It’s upside down. It’s counter cultural. It’s God’s amazing, perfect design.