The Hole

 Dedicated to those of you who faithfully prayed for me while I was in the darkness; may God bless you all.

12/22/2020

John 6:44 “No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him.”

“When God draws me, the issue of my own will comes in at once—will I react to the revelation which God gives—will I come to Him?”

                                                                    ~Oswald Chambers

As I’m sure many have you have already heard, we are born with a hole in us that only God can fill. There is, in our human existence, always a searching on our journey, a desire in us that needs to be satiated. We can, of course, find some fulfillment in many areas through education, career, personal relationships, talents, etc. These, however, are all temporal finite ways to quench the hunger we have inside.

Have you ever noticed that many of the most successful people in the world are also miserably unhappy? They may have absolutely everything this world can offer them, yet the hole remains. There have been many entertainers, captains of industry, writers, artists, etc. whose inability to fill that hole causes them to do the unthinkable: at the height of their careers, they take their own lives. As I sit here, many of these sad stories fill my mind. We know there are many mitigating factors to why these tragic events occur, most of which have to do with mental illness of some sort.

I struggle in this terribly painful area as well, as I have shared before. I often think about how blessed I am that I yielded to God before I had my breakdown several years ago. I truly believe I would have self-medicated in some way to try to ease my raging mind. I know that can be a very slippery slope, especially for someone who may have a predisposition to alcohol usage. God saved me from that horrible fate, though, because even in my darkest times I knew He was still there. I had, even if it was dim and far from my reach, the light of hope inside of me. It was the light of my Savior that drew me out of the darkness.

During that time, I wrestled with God for sure, and certainly asked Him “why?” a lot. I was His child, so why was I suffering? How could that happen to me? I was hurting those around me and hurting my witness for Him. I was, I believed, a failure through and through. I felt wholly unworthy. I now know that God allowed that time in my life to occur so He could teach me. I was not walking with Him as I should, because I was distracted by the business of life and being drawn away by external things. I was holding onto deep pain and guilt. I was – and this is very difficult for me to admit –a lukewarm Christian at best. I was not on fire for God, and even though others may have believed I was by my actions, He knew better. I needed to surrender FULLY to Him or, as I feared at the time, disappear into oblivion. Now I know that would have never happened because He was cradling me in His arms the entire time. Jesus had truly, in a very tangible sense of the word, saved me. My hole is now completely filled. This is why I proclaim Him so loudly, because everyone needs Him. He is the only way out of the darkness of this world.

“There must be a surrender of the will, not a surrender to persuasive power, a deliberate launching forth on God and on what He says until I am no longer confident in what I have done, I am confident only in God.”

                                                         ~Oswald Chambers