Filling the Void

This is a paper I wrote for school and wanted to share.  The testimony is real.  It has been one of my favorite papers to write, as it let me discuss a subject I love to talk about:  The God-sized hole in our hearts.

Why Should We Want Jesus?

~*~ 

The month before I turned twelve, I was a mess.  Five months earlier my family had moved from the suburbs where we had lived for my whole life to a small town where the only people I knew were my grandmother and my uncle.  A decade’s worth of friendships had been pulled out from underneath my feet.  I didn’t fit into the new town as of yet, but I knew that my old life was left behind forever.  I felt pretty homeless.  Perhaps the biggest shock was to discover just how frail my settled, adjusted lifestyle had been.

I had been so comfortable in my established life I had been able to convince myself that I didn’t need God.  When that sense of security was blown apart by the move, I was faced with the fact that my life was empty and had always been empty.  And it would continue to be empty unless I let Jesus fill that void.

I know what it means to push away Christ and to pretend I don’t need Him.  I did not want Christ in my life.  Praise the Lord that “God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable!” (Romans 11:29)

Why do we need Jesus?  Why should we want Him interfering in our lives?  The Westminster Shorter Catechism attempts to answer this with its very first question:

Q:  What is the chief end of man?  

A:  Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Humans were wired since the beginning of time to need the strong presence of our Creator in our lives.  Without Him we are only shells of what we are meant to be.  To quote Saint Augustine, “Because God has made us for Himself, our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.”

The psalmist writes, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”  (Psalms 42:1, 2)

C.S. Lewis adds, “All that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

When we exclude God from our lives, there is a void within in us that refuses to be filled by anything in this world.  It is a “God-sized hole” in our hearts, as some have called it.  We can pretend that it does not exist, but it is there.

Jesus came to earth to fill that emptiness.  Of believers, He says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:8, 10)

We should want Jesus—and through Him, God—because we need Jesus.  We were created to enjoy eternity with Him.  Our sin makes us dirty and creates a barrier between us and God’s holiness, but Jesus destroyed that barrier by taking the penalty for our sin on the cross.  Now, He again offers us the chance of spending eternity with Him.

And that is the true prize:  Not Heaven itself, per se, but to spend infinity in the company of our glorious Savior.  We do not want Heaven because of its golden streets, but because it is where our hearts are full.  We desire Heaven because of the presence of our God.

Because we were made to be with Him.

finis.

Please respect my work and don't steal it.  Thanks!
And sorry for some of the odd formatting -- sometimes this blog is wacky.  --Rachel