How are you today? How are things going? How are you down deep within?
What’s that you say? “What does it matter, nobody cares anyway.” Or “I couldn’t be better.” “Just living the dream.”
If you were to be truthful , do you feel empty?
God has created us that He would be a part of us and we a part of Him. He has given us a relationship with Him from the very beginning. He desires that we love Him, follow Him and give ourselves over to Him so that He can care for us and give us an intimate existence that is perfect. When we turn our back on Him, by loving ourselves and following our own ways we break that relationship and create a separation between us. In so doing, we fall way short of that which He has for us leaving us, feeling empty deep inside. And we ALL are in that predicament.
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23
We try to fill our emptiness with so many things. Ourselves, our job, our hobbies, sports, gambling, eating, sex, shopping and sometimes even ministry work or good deeds. Frustration after frustration takes place until we one day decide that this life is hell. Which is a real place that is everything opposite of what God offers.
In the relationship that God offers us we have life. But God tells us that due to our iniquities we have broken that relationship with him to the point that He doesn’t even here us. He further tells us, in Romans 6:23, that our sins, iniquities, loving ourselves more than God, have not only caused us to fall short of His presence but that we have lost our lives.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. “
Did you catch that? Death is the wages we receive for our sin. In other words, we earn death.
But, rather than turning back to God and giving ourselves over to Him we try to work at fixing it ourselves. We work at being a good person, going to church, giving to the poor, trying to read through the Bible among many other works. We rely on ourselves rather than believing God when He says that He wants to give us a gift which is further stated in Ephesians chapter two and verses 8 and 9.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Are you working harder and harder to find some joy in your life? Maybe you need to stop and look to God to receive the gift He has for you. Until we set ourselves aside and call out to Him, admitting that we can’t bridge this separation ourselves we will continue to live with this emptiness.
How do you do that?
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
