I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
Part 3: Who Cut off the Water?
Ever since I first heard the song way back in the 80—
Wow 30 years ago,
I’ve been troubled by the lyrics of
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW88EvEAd0k&feature=related
I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one, bleed into one
But yes I'm still running
You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains
Carried the cross of my shame, of my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
I think it’s a song about spiritual doubt.
Doubt, that for all its claims, the gospel of Jesus Christ is not enough to
satisfy ones deepest needs.
Even after making a sincere and complete commitment to being a follower
of Jesus I become startled at the realization that
I still hadn’t found what I’m looking for.
How could such a thing be possible?
Last time we spoke of getting served up Christianity lite and told that it’s the full
bodied brew of living your life to the full.
Religious conformity, passionless confession, a quest for comfort,
No wonder you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.
We’ve discovered what you still haven’t found is Eden,
Eden the symbol of a passionate faith relationship that is rooted in
your experience of Jesus. (Crabb, locations, 1118-23)
Right relationship with God, Others, Self and the Earth is Eden.
It’s living your life to the full,
Jesus called it living water.
Only Jesus can give you living water.
Revelation 21:6 (NIV)
To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.
Without this living water,
even though you have done the ABC’s of faith
even if you are practicing the 7 habits of a disciple,
you still will not have found what you are looking for.
Once you’ve experienced living water you know that is exactly what you’re looking for—
Unconditional love, flowing into you, flowing out of you;
That sets you free to be the person God created you to be.
In Eden there is acceptance, and belonging, and intimacy.
“I” gets swallowed up in “We”—its being one.
No longer alone, no longer needing to control,
No longer afraid, we live life together.
Wildly free to “be” for the other.
Its not about comfort, its not about easy street, its not about happiness,
Its about joy, the thrill of being one with your Creator,
With your brothers and sisters in Christ,
With yourself.
Its about being complete and whole because
of relating rightly.
In our series so far we’ve learned one reason why Christ followers
might still not have found what they are looking for.
We haven’t acknowledged the desperation of our thirst.
We have refused to walk the via Dolorosa,
The way of suffering.
We haven’t cried in the desert.
The result is a Passionless faith,
Well and rightly rooted in prepositional truth of Scripture, Tradition and
Reason.
But that’s not what you’re looking for regardless of how necessary it
is to mature in your faith.
Last time there was an opportunity to acknowledge your thirst,
To begin to embrace your desperate thirst for Eden.
Its been my prayer for you that since that time the path has opened up that allows
Jesus to draw near to you,
The path of your complete and unconditional surrender,
The path of realizing how desperately thirsty you are
and that Jesus has offered you the cup of thirst quenching
water that only He can give.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews has told us to push past the elementary
teachings of the faith so today we are going to look at two problems that can
develop after you’ve drunk the living waters that only Jesus can give.
Both can stop the gushing flow of that artesian spring of endless life.
One is obvious.
We will consider the problem of digging our own wells.
The other is very subtle.
It is the problem of a demanding spirit.
At that thirsty time of the day, in the hot climate of Samaria,
Jesus leans against Jacob’s well.
He’s thirsty but the well is deep, and he has nothing to draw with.
A woman comes to the well.
We can surmise that the woman is an outcast that she would travel alone to
the well in the middle of the heat instead in the morning with the rest
of the woman folk.
John 4:13-14 (MSG)
Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life."
Do feel like you’ve got a gushing fountain of endless life flowing out of you?
Living water, rushing water, is life.
In the Bible it is symbolic of a right relationship with God.
It’s the love, the fellowship that was lost when the Creator expelled
His wayward Creation from Eden.
The invitation to come to the waters is one to get right with God.
Isaiah 55:1 (NIV)
Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters…
You are now well acquainted with the idea that there is a thirst of the soul that can
only be quenched with the living water which is the gift of God.
The fresh spring water gushing out of your inmost being is the abundant life that I
have taught and preached and modeled and urged people to seek with their
whole heart.
Love and being loved
Acceptance and belonging in community
Inner peace and Joy
Meaning and purpose and significance.
Knowing and being known,
Relational intimacy with your Creator and with His children,
Your brothers and sisters in Christ.
A life filled with faith and hope and love.
A contagious, attractive way to live.
A becoming more and more like Jesus.
All a prelude to life eternal,
To becoming completely one with your Creator.
Do you feel like you’ve got a gushing fountain of endless life flowing out of you?
If not, one possible problem is that you have dug your own well by
forsaking God.
Jeremiah 2:13 (NIV)
"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Digging your own well is like retreating on the path that allowed Jesus to draw
near to you to give you living water.
You start picking up what you laid down,
Reclaiming what you surrendered.
What was surrendered?
You surrendered your self-sufficiency.
Self sufficiency, is the thought that on your own you can;
That you can do this religious thing;
That somehow if you just follow the right rules,
Keep the right disciplines,
Practice the right habits that you’ll be good.
Now this is a different kind of forsaking than an out right refusal to follow God,
to disobey His commands.
Willful disobedience will stop the flow of living water real quick.
This is a forsaking that happens when we again assume that we know what’s best.
To author our own sanctification,
our own becoming like Jesus,
we dig our own well in the name of Jesus.
We still hurt so we start digging to find our own remedies for our pain.
Galatians 3:3 (NIV)
Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?
The righteousness God shares with you becomes self-righteous and that cistern
won’t hold water.
So after a while of trying and failing
you feel like you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.
Only one remedy for this—Repent of your self-sufficiency.
Go back and open the path that allows Jesus to come to you,
Taste the living water that only He can give,
And then get back into that life giving flow.
John 4:14 (NLT)
“…those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”
Do you feel like there’s a fresh bubbling spring of eternal life within you?
If not maybe there is a very subtle problem that may be the obstacle
to living in the life gushing empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
That subtle problem is a “demandingness within us.” (Crabb, locations, 1520-27)
Demandingness happens when you think
“if I do this then God must give me that.”
(Crabb, locations, 1555-61)
To develop this we need to look at the life of Job.
The story of Job at first glance is the story of a righteous man who has everything
taken away from him and yet still remains faithful to God.
We sing about his story—
He gives and takes away,
He gives and takes away,
May heart will chose to say blessed be His name.
We get encouraged as we read Job that when bad things happen its not
necessarily because of some sin we’ve committed.
But if you read a little deeper in those 42 chapters of the poem you see a chink
developing in Job’s faith.
Job 1:1 (MSG)
Job … was honest inside and out, a man of his word, who was totally devoted to God and hated evil with a passion.
Job is a very successful individual,
maybe like a Warren Buffet,
or Peter Drucker,
regardless he’s one well respected successful guy.
But by the end of chapter 1 he’s lost everything.
Yet we read:
Job 1:22 (MSG)
Not once through all this did Job sin; not once did he blame God.
As the story wears on, Job starts to get more and more upset that he has been
unfairly treated by God.
Job 19:8-10 (MSG)
God threw a barricade across my path—I'm stymied; he turned out all the lights—I'm stuck in the dark. He destroyed my reputation, robbed me of all self-respect. 10 He tore me apart piece by piece—I'm ruined! Then he yanked out hope by the roots.
Job is beginning to feel that God has somehow mistreated him,
or made some kind of mistake to allow what has happened to him to take
place.
He has searched his soul and can’t figure out anything that he’s
done wrong.
Job 23:12 & 31:4 (MSG)
I've obeyed every word he's spoken, and not just obeyed his advice—I've treasured it…Isn't God looking, observing how I live? Doesn't he mark every step I take?
A demanding spirit starts when we convince ourselves that our complaints are
legitimate. (Crabb, locations, 1580-87)
“I’ve been treated unfairly.”
So we build our case.
Job 31:35-37 (MSG)
"Oh, if only someone would give me a hearing! I've signed my name to my defense—let the Almighty One answer! I want to see my indictment in writing. Anyone's welcome to read my defense; I'll write it on a poster and carry it around town. I'm prepared to account for every move I've ever made—
Let the Almighty answer—
There’s the demand.
“A demand that things be different represents an accusation against God,
a charge that he’s guilty of mismanagement and negligence in His
duties.” (Crabb, locations, 1672-80)
Job is demanding relief.
He’s shouting –this isn’t fair I’m innocent,
I demand that God fix the situation.
“We tend to measure someone’s love by their degree of
cooperation with our plans.” (Crabb, locations, 1597-604)
If they don’t meet our demands then they don’t love us.
“God’s failure to cooperate with Job’s demand makes God seem less
like a concerned friend and more like a cruel enemy”
(Crabb, locations, 1588-96)
Demandingness has tragically altered Job’s perception of God.
Job 16:12 (MSG)
I was contentedly minding my business when God beat me up. He grabbed me by the neck and threw me around.
“Demandingness can create an angry despair,”
That erodes trust and confidence is God’s plan,
God’s love, God’s care for you. (Crabb, locations, 1622-29)
“To demand anything,
including what we believe is essential to our well-being,
reflects arrogant pride,
a sin that tops the list of what God detests.”
(Proverbs 6:16; 16:5) (Crabb, locations, 1738-47)
Demandingness leaves you with a lack of trust and arrogant pride.
That deters, damages and can destroy a right
relationship with God.
In its most subtle form demandingness convinces you to expect that
if you do this _________ (you fill in the blank)
then God has to do ____________ (you fill in the blank)
Demandingness cuts off the flow of living water.
Without that relationship.
You’re going to be revisited by those feelings that you
still haven’t found what your looking for.
Only one remedy for this—Repent of your demanding spirit.
Go back and open the path that allows Jesus to come to you,
Taste the living water that only He can give,
And then get back into that life giving flow.
Today we’ve discovered not two but three possible reasons for why
The flow of living water bubbling up from within us can be stopped.
1. We willfully disobey God.
With forethought we choose to do what we want instead of
submitting to the will of God, that’s a high handed sin
and the flow of living water is turned off.
2. We dig our own wells.
We convince ourselves that we know what’s best,
We know what will quench our thirst,
We know what will keep the waters flowing,
So we fall back into the old trap of self-sufficiency and subtly
forsake God, only to come up dry again.
3. We harbor a demanding spirit.
We accuse God of not doing what we want.
We doubt His love and care,
That erodes our trust in Him.
Faith is trust and confidence in God that moves us to action.
A demanding spirit lets go of faith,
And you soon find yourself parched.
“Desire much, pray much,
but demand nothing,
To trust God means to demand nothing.” (Crabb)
If you are a believer but feel that you still haven’t found what you’re looking for
then maybe its because of willful disobedience,
maybe its because of digging your own wells,
maybe its because of a demanding spirit.
If that’s the case then its time to again open the path that will allow Jesus to draw
near to you with yet another cup of living water to prime your soul to get
the living water flowing again.
We talked about that path last week,
But to refresh your memory--
The path that allows Jesus to draw near to you is the path of suffering,
it is a path of desperation,
it is a path of self renunciation.
You have to own the ache of realizing that you have never been loved like
you were meant to be loved.
You have to know that you’ve still haven’t found what your looking for
because you’ve looked in all the wrong places.
You have to see all your vain efforts at trying to fix yourself are a waste.
When you surrender,
Give up trying to be good,
Give up trying to figure it out,
Give up on yourself,
That’s when Jesus draws near with just what you’re looking for.