Filling the "Soul Hole"

“As long as you think there is a pretty good chance that you will achieve some of your dreams, as long as you think you have a shot at success, you experience your inner emptiness as ‘drive’ and your anxiety as ‘hope.’ And so you can remain almost completely oblivious to how deep your thirst actually is. Most of us keep telling ourselves that the reason we remain unfulfilled is because we simply haven’t been able to achieve our goals. And so we can live almost our entire lives without admitting to ourselves the depth of our spiritual thirst.” ~ Tim Keller

I hope that each of you had a wonderful week leading up to Easter. What a glorious time in our lives as believers to celebrate the hope we have in Christ! Now it’s time to get down to business and close the book on our study of idolatry. Just to recap: We spent the first week doing a great deal of background work on idolatry. We learned about the importance of confessing and forsaking our sin. We also studied God’s love through His rightful rule in our lives. Then, in week two, we looked at four different idols that we are prone to as women. The idols of relationship, emotion, control and image are always lurking around the corner. Thankfully, this week, we are going to learn what it means to uproot and replace our idols with the fullness that God has provided us in Christ!

Ladies, it has been a long journey over the last two weeks. It has been a painful journey as we have allowed our hearts to be searched by the Holy Spirit and no doubt, many idols have been revealed. I don’t know about you but as I uncover idols in my own life I am ashamed, embarrassed and overwhelmed by my blindness. I want us to get a good look at the picture scripture paints of us when idols take hold of our lives.

Turn to Is. 44:9-20

This passage continues to run over and over in my mind when I think about how deceived we become in our own lusts and sin. Why do we feast on ashes? Because a deceived heart turns us aside! Isn’t this the very first thing we studied at the beginning of week two as we began to identify idols? The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Idolatry has a way of skewing our feelings, our actions and our thoughts. When it’s something so important to us we become irrational, it becomes magnified and more important than it should be. In “Lord of the Rings” connotation, it becomes our “Precious”. We can’t see the truth - we can’t back up to focus. We can’t see that the thing in our right hand is a lie!

When I look back at my biggest trials I can see that the Lord was merciful in opening my hand. But, the prying open of my hand hurt!! It hurt to realize that I had been feeding on ashes and happy about it! I can just see us sitting around the fire with black soot around our mouths from the ashes we have been eating, tightly gripping our idols, unable to see that the things we are holding onto are lies!

Lies that a relationship will make us whole. Lies that we can control everything in our lives and those around us. Lies that our emotions are paramount. Lies that image is everything.

This is no way for the children of God to live yet, we cannot deliver ourselves. Our will power will only suffice for a time and the enemy never tries anything new. Eventually, we will find ourselves right back in front of the fire...worshipping.

Simply put, idolatry is misguided worship. Misguided worship takes temporal things and elevates them to the eternal position. In the passage we just read in Isaiah 44 we see the absurdity of making an idol out of a tree, using that same tree for firewood that cooks food and makes heat then bowing down to the same tree. This is the example of how foolish it is for us to make temporal things our god.

God told Israel through the prophet Jeremiah, “My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters and they have hewn for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Jeremiah 2:13

This is us! We have forsaken Jesus, the fountain of living waters and we have hewn broken cisterns for ourselves that can hold no water. The first, forsaking the Lord, has enabled us to do the second, carving our own broken cisterns. We must come back to the fountain of living waters and replace our idols with worship that occurs in spirit and in truth.

Just as drinking a cup of water will only satisfy our thirst temporarily, our soul remains thirsty until it is quenched by an eternal, living water. There is nothing temporal that can quench an eternal thirst.

Jesus preached this very thing in the Beatitudes. In Matthew 5:6 Jesus says, “those that hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.” These are not fleshly appetites and they are not satisfied with fleshly things. The thing that the eternal part of us longs for can only be filled by something eternal. Jesus told Nicodemus, that which is born of spirit is spirit and that which is born of flesh is flesh (John 3:6). In other words, this isn’t another law for you to follow. This isn’t another thing for you to try and cram into the “soul” hole. This satisfies, completely because it is soul satisfaction.

As in Tim Keller’s quote at the start of this lesson, we often believe that satisfaction and happiness in life is dependent upon something outside of us. If I were to ask you, “What would make you happy?” Most likely you would look outside of yourself for the answer to that question. You would look to relationships, control, emotions and image. Ultimately, you would look to your circumstances right? But what if you could have satisfaction that is not based on something outside of you? Something not based on your circumstances?