Lessons from John 4: Purpose in Life

What is your deepest longing? Your deepest desire? What is it that your heart, mind, body, and soul yearn for?

The culture we live in today tells us that our deepest needs are to be happy, healthy, financially secure, self-sufficient. And so people spend their entire lives striving to fulfill their dreams or desires with things that, in God’s economy, are temporal and fleeting.

In a time when people have never had so much physically, materially, and maybe even financially, we also have never had less emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. And people have never been more depressed, disappointed, or disillusioned.

People today hunger and thirst for more…more…more. Some hunger for more knowledge. Some for prestige or position. Others for approval. Some for love, others for peace. And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these things.

But it is wrong when we strive for these things as a means to satisfy us or quench our deepest longings so much so that they get in the way of clear and godly perspective.

True Satisfaction

The very word “satisfaction” conjures up all kinds of meanings. Words like approval, pleasure, happiness, fulfillment, and contentment. And the antonym for this word would be “dissatisfaction,” a word that I would say our world thrives on.

People of our day thrive on dissatisfaction. They purchase one home and exchange it for another. Some purchase one car and in a year or two grow tired of that one and exchange it for the latest and greatest. People grow tired and dissatisfied in their marriage and just up and leave. Others are discontent with their children and thus abandon them or leave them with family or friends, or worse yet take their lives.

We live in a world that is driven by self-help books and yoga classes asking you to be free. “Empty your mind and let everything go.” I am here to tell you tonight that if this is you, you are in the right place. Because the truth of the matter is that none of these things will ever satisfy you or anyone else for that matter.

There is only one who can fill and satisfy your heart, mind, body, and soul and that is Jesus Christ.

Jesus alone can satisfy the thirst for acceptance, truth, and purpose in life.

Terri Hamman

Faith & Fitness Coach