What's Missing in My Life? [27]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this episode of Back to Rurality, TJ Freeman, a rural pastor, delves into the endless pursuit of satisfaction in worldly things and its futility. He shares his own experiences of chasing material things and legalistic spirituality, only to realize true fulfillment comes from a deep relationship with God. TJ encourages listeners to focus on knowing and delighting in God in prayer and the study of His word, surrendering other pursuits, and strengthening their faith within their church community.

Key Points:

• Feeling Restless: Do you feel like you’re always chasing something? Maybe you always are jumping from hobby to hobby. Or you want a new wardrobe, truck, or the newest iPhone. Maybe you want to feel that closeness to God that you felt at one point in your life. 
• Finding Rest in the Lord: When our minds are fixed on worldly, lesser things, we will never feel truly fulfilled. When our primary pursuit is the Lord, we can find full satisfaction and true rest. Don’t continue pursuing things that will not fill you up. Instead, reflect on what it means to really enjoy the Lord. 
• Put Your Trust in God Alone: Believe that His word is true and that he is not withholding one good thing from you. He is good and wants you to delight in Him! He will not leave you feeling empty. 

Listener Takeaways:

• Memorize Genesis 1:26-28 and Psalm 16:11. God has made us with a purpose, and that purpose is to reflect him as a people who know him intimately. Spend time in the word and take time getting to know the Lord. 
• Pray and thank the Lord that he’s brought you into a close relationship with him. Ask him that he’ll help you have a sense of his presence. Then just praise him and thank him for five minutes. 
• Surrender your competing pursuits! Take an inventory of your life and think about the things that you might be putting ahead of the Lord. It could be your time on social media, a hobby you really love, or any number of things. Reset your priority on Christ’s kingdom.
• Spend time with your church community. They are meant to aid you in your pursuit of the Lord. Let your church members guide you towards loving God more. If you don’t have access to a healthy church, get together with another Christian in your area and pray with them.
  
  

Connect with Us:

• Website: backtorurality.com
• Social Media: Facebook

Transcript

Have you ever realized that you're just chasing one thing after another, but you're never quite satisfied. You buy something new and pretty soon there you are scrolling the Amazon again, looking at marketplace, dreaming of that thing you're sure you need to purchase. Maybe you start a new hobby. That one doesn't last long.

You pick up another one. You might even be setting a new goal, but eventually finding that your old ways creep back in and you're still left a little restless. You have that sense that something is missing. Well, whether we realize it or not, we are all in pursuit of something. And today we're going to talk about what it means to pursue the one thing who truly satisfies.

Well, thank you for joining us for another episode of Back to Rurality. My name is TJ Freeman, and I am a rural pastor. I live in the middle of nowhere, just like you. I'm not sad about it either. And I do understand what it's like to always be in pursuit of something and to have that dissatisfaction.

That feeling like, never really satisfied. And you just keep pursuing more and more and more things kind of restlessly. Totally understand what that feels like. Sometimes living out here in rural places, the context of that is a little different.

Like right now it's archery season. And I have a confession. I really don't even love hunting. Yep, I said that out loud on a rural podcast. It's true. Yet, oddly, because I've not yet bagged a buck, I find myself thinking about opportunities to get out there in the woods. And I, right now, I'm in my study. I see two European Mount deer heads on my wall and those didn't satisfy I still want more and I say, you know It's all about the meat in the freezer. 

I don't know if that's really true might actually be something going on in my heart What do you say? It's not the first time I found myself thinking that way and the most scary Most dangerous way that you can be chasing an ill pursuit.

Is that a phrase? I think it should be. A bad pursuit is that when you're spiritually chasing something. that doesn't satisfy, oof, that's a really discouraging place to be. I actually started out that way in my faith. When I became a Christian, I was in a very legalistic church. Love them, thankful for them, really super helpful ministry.

 Also, a little bit confusing for a teenager, because I didn't understand the line between the law and the grace of God. I didn't understand that by pursuing the rules, I was not actually pursuing the Lord. So I became a great law pursuer. I mean, if you got into my car, and you tried to, Turn the radio on to something that had drums in it.

Boom. I'm going to smack your hand away because we don't listen to drums. Those are the devil beats. You know, it was that, that kind of thing. And I actually quite enjoyed being a legalist. You know, it's not that the lifestyle is that much fun, but you do start to have a sense of, Oh, I can see based on my lifestyle, what I think to be closeness to the Lord, growth in the Lord, you can confuse a legalistic lifestyle with godliness.

If you do that, you wind up exchanging the pursuit of the Lord for simply the pursuit of things that you think are pleasing to the Lord. That's actually not a healthy thing to be. As we walk through this episode, I hope to kind of unpack that. Now, you maybe didn't grow up in a legalistic environment, but you may find that you can identify with what it feels like to be trying to do things that are pleasing the Lord, but still feel like there's something missing.

Here's where it happened for me. In college, I started studying some things in scripture that talked a lot about the grace of God and the evidence of the fact that it's not by our works that we're saved and therefore it's not by our works that we're held. And I was just honestly a little confused and thrown off and disoriented.

And I realized that all this time, even though I, I wanted to know the Lord more and I wanted to love the Lord, I was chasing a whole bunch of other things, namely rules. And probably if I'm honest, a little bit of the approval of man. I don't know what you're Maybe it's something like that. Maybe it's regarding your faith.

Maybe you had an experience in a church where you had this like, closeness that you felt to the Lord because, you know, the, the atmosphere just felt so holy. You felt so connected to God and his people in that moment, and now you don't feel like that, so you're kind of chasing that spiritual high, and it may be that you just haven't really thought about that much, and you're going, man, as you talk about this, I do realize I'm always thinking I need a better truck.

I'm always thinking I need a little bit bigger house. I'm always wanting to upgrade my phone. I'm thinking of all these things that I need better gear, better clothing. If you identify with that at all. I think the thing that you need to be encouraged to do is to spend some time considering what it means to really enjoy the Lord.

And some really famous Christian dead guys have talked about this throughout history. I don't know if you've heard of these guys or not, but if you have a little extra time, you may want to pursue looking up some of the things that they've said or written. Here's Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards said, the enjoyment of God.

is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. He goes on to say, these are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the ocean. So talking about the fact that there's all these things in the world that we can enjoy and find delight in, but God is the source and the center of all of that.

And the highest pursuit is to actually pursue the Lord himself, to know him, to love him, to want to obey him out of a close knowledge of him that wants to be pleasing to him, not in a legalistic way or not to try to earn his approval, but out of gratitude and a sense of fear of the Lord. That's a healthy kind of fear because You understand he actually is mighty and awesome and great.

And he's made you his own. Augustine, you ever hear of St. Augustine, not to be confused with that Augustine guy that everyone seems to be talking about. St. Augustine said, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

Now that's a pretty clear argument, and I think it's right. That restlessness you feel is because you don't quite have your mind fully fixed on just knowing and loving God, and you're, you're finding little joys and little delights in lesser things. And believing that those things, if they could only be more present in your life, would bring you fulfillment.

But it's actually only God that can do that. How about Charles Spurgeon? Now, that guy had a nice beard. I'm looking at a picture of him next to the deer head on my wall. He's up there as a reminder to be faithful. That was one faithful preacher. Real encourager. He's also my beard inspiration.

So, the inspo pic on my wall is staring back at me now. One day, maybe, my beard will be Spurgeon like. Nevertheless, Spurgeon says this, Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else. Man, that one stings a little bit, to be honest. It's hard to think that all these other things that we're pursuing actually have an emptiness in and of themselves.

If they're not first processed according to the grace of God, the goodness of God, the priority of God, then we find that these, these other things, even good things, are truly empty. in the absence of a primary pursuit of God. So what are some practical ways that you can think through this? Well, number one, you can dive into the scriptures.

That's a pretty good place to start all the time. And I keep going back to this one in Genesis 1, 26 to 28. If you've not yet memorized that passage, let me encourage you to spend some time just, I don't care if you have word for word. But having the gist of it down in your mind so that you go, okay, that's that passage that tells us that I'm made in the image of God, I have been given dominion over everything else on the planet, and I'm supposed to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it as man.

This is the creation mandate. This is what God calls man to do. And what this tells us is that because we're made in God's image and we're made as his representatives, our, essence, everything about us needs to be oriented back to the one who made us as a demonstration of his glory. And the psalmist talks about that in Psalm 1611, where he says, in your presence, there is fullness of joy at your right hand are pleasures.

God didn't just make us and then just, you know, wind up the, the, the clock and then turn it loose to see what happens. God didn't just make us and say, go, go out there and try to do what I said. Good luck with that. God made us to represent him as a people who know what it's like to have a close and intimate relationship with God.

with him. Our greatest joy is when we're close to the Lord, and then out of that closeness, we are demonstrating his character, his nature, his message of salvation to the whole rest of the world. Again, as an expression of the delight we have with him, and I, and I just need to tell you, maybe you've never really felt that before, and you don't think it's possible for you.

Maybe you have felt it once, but then you really had a season in your life where you weren't doing what you knew you needed to be doing. You feel like God's now withholding that from you, like a spouse who just like gives you the silent treatment because they're upset with you. Don't know how you feel about it.

You may though be in a position where you're thinking, you Yeah, that sounds nice, but I'm not sure that's achievable. Let me just encourage you, it's totally achievable. God is not vindictive. God wants you to have a close relationship with him. He sent his son to die for you that you could have that. I mean, it's not like you have to find the secret path to suddenly stumble upon a close relationship with the Lord.

He delights in you delighting in him. So you need to reflect on that. Think about the reality that right now in this moment God is allowing through my headphones or across my phone, whatever, me to hear these words that point me back to him and urge me to develop or cultivate a close relationship with him.

God in his kindness is not withholding himself from you. He's making himself very evident and you just need to Maybe even pause this and get on your knees, pray, thank the Lord that He's allowed you the opportunity to be close to Him. Ask that He'll fill you in a way that helps you have a sense of His presence.

And forget about the passages of Scripture that talk about waiting on the Lord as well. Maybe you don't feel a sense of His presence right now because God is strengthening you by causing you to wait on Him. He's no further away though as you wait. Than he was when you felt super close, and just know that.

Not theologically. Know that for real. God is very close to you. He's with you. His Spirit is present with you if you're a believer inside of you. So reflect on that reality. Think about the character of God in general. Think about like Psalm 145 3 that says, Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised and His greatness is unsearchable.

And you could just, as you're praying, Praise the Lord or magnify the Lord for His greatness. Think of the ways that He's great and tell Him about those things. He loves to hear those things from His people and those things are true. He's worthy of those things being recited. Maybe just spend, listen to this number, five minutes.

Five minutes, praying a prayer of gratitude, a prayer of praise, and you won't run out of things. At first you might feel weird, you know, 30 seconds can feel like a long time, but just really, God's not tripping over your awkward silence. You can sit there and just think for a minute as you're praying, and start to list the things that you know about God that make him great. 

Nobody has to make God great again. He's always been great. You can talk about those things. He's steadfast. Reflecting on his character, you're talking to him in prayer, actually engaging with the Lord, and just expressing things to him. You know, talk to him, be honest. I'm not into this whole like, you know, I screamed at God, I was so mad.

That's weird, okay? Maybe somebody told you it wasn't. It is. Yes, God wants to hear your heart on things, but God is mighty and holy and He made you. He can't make mistakes. You know some things about His character that should restrain you from screaming at Him. But you can, however, say, Lord, right now my heart is broken.

I don't understand why you've decided this or why you've not intervened or whatever. Or, Lord, I just don't want this. I'm not feeling it. You can be honest like that and still be genuine without doing weird things like screaming at the Lord. Talk to Him in prayer. Just open up, be, be faithful. And then also, as you're praying, if your theology is ahead of your feelings, you can say things like, Lord, I know That in your word you said you'd never leave me or forsake me, but I don't have a sense of you being with me right now.

Please help me with that. You know, your emotions aren't tracking with your theology. Ask the Lord to help you get to that point. But remember, your theology is a lot more reliable than those emotions that change all the time. Another thing you need to do, and this is really important, Surrender competing pursuits.

What I mean by that is, Take a little inventory of your life. Figure out what things you're putting ahead of the Lord. And I'll tell you one of them, your thumb might be flicking up and down scrolling on that device for hours. You can check. Go on there and see how long your phone tells you you've spent, I want to say worshiping it.

I don't mean that in like a snarky, like, you're holding your little pocket idol. You are giving your attention in a prioritized way to things on your phone, probably more than you realize. That's just one easy one, but maybe, you know, maybe you are a big hunter, and you're investing tons and tons of money.

money and time in that. But if somebody asks you to meet up for discipleship, you're like, oof, I'd love to, man. I'm so busy. I just don't know when I could do that. Or maybe you're not giving very faithfully to your church, but you're happy to buy a bunch of camo and archery equipment or a nice rifle or something like that.

I'm not saying those things are bad, but what, where's your priority? The advancement of Christ's kingdom? Or another deer head that goes on the wall that your grandkids are not going to know what to do with. And they're going to feel bad putting it on Facebook Marketplace or giving it away to Goodwill.

But that's what's going to happen to it. Are you investing in Things that matter for eternity. So you can look, you can look at what you spend money on and have a pretty good idea of what some competing pursuits might be. If there's a sin in your life, like if you're just doing something that's so clearly sin, you know, you're, you're getting drunk, you're looking at pornography, you're having an affair.

You're flirting with the idea of having an affair. You're being really unkind to someone. You're being disrespectful to your boss. You're cheating at something. You know, some of these obvious things, you're not careful with your words. You're hurting people instead of building people up. You're complaining all the time.

These are all competing pursuits. You need to turn those over to the Lord. and just ask for his help, but do it with the same kind of delight we're talking about. Don't have this begrudging, like, oh Lord, you know I'm doing this and I don't want to stop, or Lord, I'm doing this and I can't stop, whatever.

Listen, go and delight in the Lord and ask him. God, would you show me what I need to surrender to you and help me to do it because I delight in you and I realize that other stuff truly is empty. There's no redeeming value in those sinful things that we tend to hang on to. Spend time in the church community.

This is a huge one. Your church family, your church community, the body of Christ that you're a part of is meant to be a vital aid in your pursuit of the Lord. I think of taking communion together as an example. When you take communion, it's, it's a means of grace. It's meant to encourage your heart, to put some steel in your spine, to make you thankful and just really be an encouragement and a blessing.

And then you're watching other people in your congregation take it. And they're seeing you take it. And the unity that comes around that, the spiritual conversations you have and how they keep you from going down some bad paths and push you to go in a good direction. All of that. Your church family is meant to help you love the Lord more and you're meant to help them love the Lord more, too.

Now, here's the kicker. In the middle of nowhere, as we often say on this podcast, you might not have a healthy church. And if you do, pause and thank the Lord for that because that is such a blessing. I am always so amazed and thankful that the Lord has allowed me to be in a healthy church in the middle of nowhere.

I've lived in communities where I could not find that before, and it's really frustrating, and it's a challenge. If that's you, again, would you please let me know? I really want to be praying about that with you. And it's just tj@brainerdinstitute.com. You can email me. I'd love to follow up with you. You though are a representation of the church in that community, and I would bet you're not the only Christian.

One easy takeaway, get together with another Christian in your community and pray. That will bless you and it will bless them and it will honor the Lord in a way that goes beyond what you probably even recognize and That will grow you in your your pursuit of God. It'll help you draw closer to him and of course Spend time in his word You need to hear from the Lord and don't just rifle through it like read my verse of the day check read my chapter I'm really spiritual this week check man.

Slow down Think about what the Lord has said think about why he said it and how that should shape your life. That's awesome. Pray back those kinds of things to the Lord. Pray the principles you're learning from his word and grow in the relationship you have with him that way. 

All right, so to recap, it is easy to pursue all kinds of other things.

All of those things will leave us with some degree of feeling empty, but God does not leave us feeling empty. He fills us in a way that we can't even handle. You know, in this lifetime, you, you just can't even, there's, there's so much more of God than there is lifetime available, which is why eternity won't be old and dull and boring.

You're going to delight in learning more and more and more about the Lord for all eternity.

We've heard from some famous Christian dead guys, some quotes that help us think about the importance of pursuing the Lord in opposition to a pursuit of a bunch of other stuff. And we've heard that we should be thinking about God's character, we should be talking to Him in prayer. We should be surrendering, competing pursuits.

We should spend time in our church community. We should spend time in God's Word. And it's all rooted in the fact that God made us. He made us in His image, for His glory. And He's, He's made us in a way that we're designed to delight in Him. And we find great joy when we do. So, If you find yourself pursuing other things that leave you empty, realizing that your pursuit of God has felt like a burden, I hope that this podcast episode has been an encouragement to you.

This is a ministry of the Brainerd Institute for Rural Ministry, and we want to see healthy churches in every rural community for the glory of God and the good of the saints. Thanks for being a part of that. For now, let's get back to life, back to rurality.