You will be hungry

Does becoming a Christian mean you've unlocked the key to full satisfaction in life?  Let's explore that myth together. 

Our longing for God is infinite, and we won't find full satisfaction in this fallen world until we meet Jesus face to face. 

In this episode, we uncover a common error that may be holding you back from becoming whole. Recognizing your hunger for God can lead to true freedom and sexual integrity.  We discuss how accepting our infinite thirst can keep us on course towards God and His kingdom, instead of being misled by fleeting earthly desires. 

 Remember, we're in a season of 'now and not yet', and our ultimate satisfaction will come when we meet Jesus face to face. So join us on this journey of faith, pursuit, and anticipation. Let's lean into our hunger for more and see how it can lead us to a deeper connection with God. 

Want us to talk about a specific topic? Change up the format, or just tell us the podcast rocks! We want your feedback on Becoming Whole. You can leave your feedback here

If you are in the Baltimore Area, Regeneration is happy to invite you to our 2024 Dessert Fundraiser, Spark: One Small Thing Leads to So Much More. This annual gathering is a highlight for so many as we gather for tasty desserts, heartfelt worship, vulnerable and powerful stories, and an opportunity to partner with what Jesus is doing through Regeneration. Click Here for more info or to register.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Hey everybody, hey. So in today's podcast, I want to uncover for you an error that many Christian churches, that many in the Christian church, believe, but it is in fact an error, and this error specifically will keep you from growing in sexual integrity. So, if you want to grow in sexual integrity, you need to unmask this error, discover where it is in your life and do something about it, because it will continue to trip you up, to trip you up, to trip you up and, more importantly, it will hold you back or, more devastatingly, it will hold you back from becoming the sexually whole man or woman that you are designed to be and actually, it will hold you back from becoming the Christ-like person that you are designed to be in all areas of your life. So what's this error, this significant error? Well, like all errors that take hold in Christianity over the centuries, there's a grain of truth to it. It sounds almost Christian and it goes something like this Since Jesus meets my needs, once I come to Christ, once I put my faith in Him, I am satisfied. Once I become a Christian, once I start following Jesus, I will find that I am satisfied, and where I'm not satisfied, it is clearly an indicator that I am not putting my faith in Jesus. So let me pause there for a moment. Do you hear the error? It sounds right. Even as I'm saying it, I'm kind of like I better articulate this carefully, because I don't want to suggest that this is, that something that's true is an error, and I don't want to suggest that something that is an error is true.

Speaker 1: 2:08

But where the problem is with what I've just said is the suggestion, the whisper in what I've shared, that our satisfaction will be found in its entirety this side of eternity. So to put it plainly, let me just be bold here and say this this side of eternity, until Christ returns or we see Him face to face, we will not be fully satisfied. Hard stop. Now I don't mean that we won't have moments where we don't encounter Jesus in a way that fully satisfies us, abundantly so, overflowingly so. But we will continue to return to spaces and places and times where we are hungry again, where we experience hunger and thirst and pain and suffering, the ache, as Christopher West puts it. We will continue to encounter this for the rest of our lives until we see Jesus face to face.

Speaker 1: 3:12

For those of you who expect that, as you grow in Christlikeness as you pursue sexual wholeness, that you become healthier enough, whole enough, able to regulate your own emotions, mature enough to recognize where you have needs and to seek to get those needs met in healthy and holy ways through your relationship with Jesus, through your relationship with other people. If that's you, I want to say yes, do all those things, but also recognize that you will hit a cap. You'll hit a cap on how satisfied you'll be, or you'll reach a spot where the satisfaction you had seems to diminish. This is a part of living in the fallen world. This is a both-end situation. Jesus does fully satisfy us, and yet we will not be fully satisfied, perpetually satisfied. We'll not be perpetually satisfied.

Speaker 1: 3:57

This side of heaven. We are in a season of the now and not yet. Christ's kingdom has come, and Christ's kingdom is coming Now. Why does this matter so much for our recovery journey? Why would I say at the beginning of this podcast that you will never walk in ongoing sexual integrity unless you expose this error and get rid of it?

Speaker 1: 4:21

I can say that confidently because you are designed for union with God, eternal, infinite union with God. You are intended to feed on Him, to shake your thirst in Him, to find Him, to see Him, to dwell in Him, to experience His love in a never-ending, everlasting way. That is what you are designed for and that is not our experience in full as long as we are living in this fallen world and in our present state. Our bodies need to undergo death and resurrection before we will live fully in that state. So if we fail to recognize that we have an infinite longing, or a longing for the infinite love and infinite presence of God, and we fail to recognize that we will not fully experience that this side of seeing Christ face to face, then we will end up diverting our path, turning away to something finite to try to meet that need, and that something finite could be anything from pornography or acting out sexually with someone else, the thrust and focus of our ministry, where it might also be something as prevalent as seeking to be satisfied in the media that we watch, the music we listen to, the food we eat, the work we do, our level of physical fitness heck, our level of education, even our level of religious education All of these are finite and if we seek to satisfy ourselves there, we will continue to be dissatisfied.

Speaker 1: 6:02

So maybe here an analogy will help, and I want to come back here and focus specifically on the topic of moving towards sexual integrity. So let's assume for a moment that we are a member of the Israelite community who has just been delivered from slavery in Egypt and we have crossed the Red Sea and we are moving towards the Promised Land, and so assume with me for a moment that the Promised Land will include sexual integrity. The Promised Land itself is not sexual integrity, but it will include sexual integrity. It will include you being absolutely free from the tyranny, the slavery of your sexual sin. You'll be free, but as we travel through the desert, we grow weary and we grow tired and we grow thirsty and we grow hungry and we see in the world around us offerings to satisfy our hunger and thirst, and though the Lord says, no, not this country. I have a land that is specifically for you, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of rest for you, and we say, well, yeah, but you know, this land here looks pretty good and they've got some pretty good meat and they've got some pretty good drink, and we divert our path and park there, even stop there for a little bit. Then what ends up happening is that we never make our way to the Promised Land. And this, I think, is just a simple illustration, but it's a picture of what we do so often, by trying to satisfy ourselves with the finite rather than continue to press forward to the Promised Land.

Speaker 1: 7:36

Now, what's the solution? What's the answer? The answer that I'm advocating here is simply this Accept your hunger and thirst for more. Accept that you are hungry and thirsty for more, and I don't mean that you despair, that you will always be hungry and thirsty. Rather, I mean you relish the fact that you are hungry and thirsty because your hunger and thirst is calling you home.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Your hunger and thirst is not just for a religious service, it is for God Himself. Your hunger and thirst is not just for sexual integrity, it is for God Himself. Your hunger and thirst is not just for a restored marriage, it is for God Himself. And I've worked in this area of ministry for 25 years and I can tell you that, as wonderful as sexual integrity is, as wonderful as a rebuilt marriage is, as wonderful as a deep sense of yourself, as a restored man or woman is, it is not what satisfies the deepest ache of your soul. God Himself is that. God Himself is that and I say this not just at you, I say it to myself too, I'm saying this confessionally it is so easy to get distracted and to assume that the finite will satisfy the infinite need inside of us, the infinite longing inside of us, and it doesn't do it.

Speaker 1: 9:02

So, brothers and sisters, if you want to grow in sexual integrity, accept the fact that you will be hungry, that there's a hunger in you that God put in you that you might desire Him and nothing else, and that hunger is meant to not be satisfied by anything visible or tangible. Jesus, would you help convert us, all of us, lord, not just our heads. We already believe in you. Help us in our unbelief, lord. We want to believe in you more that we would direct the deepest hungers of our heart, lord, towards you and you alone. And where we hit a cap in this earthly world, this tangible, visible world, and find that we are still hungry, lord, let it call us and draw us and drive us towards continuing to pursue your kingdom and to seek eternity, infinity with you. Lord, I pray these things the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.