Finding the Source, moving toward wholeness

4. December 2007 by BruceSmith.

Yesterday we addressed the importance of reconciling our view of God, ourselves, and reality with God’s view of life and His intentions for us. The practical significance of this key factor in our lives is vividly demonstrated in the passage which follows. The excerpt, from John Ortberg’s book, It all goes back in the box, draws out the real life implications of living lives detached from the God who seeks to do life with us. As is demonstrated in these true accounts, no amount of fame, privilege, money, sex, power, or pleasure can ever replace the life God intended. Once we separate ourselves from the God who created us and desires to know us, purpose, meaning, and wholeness is lost. John Ortberg, recounting an article from a news periodical years ago, makes this case as he writes,

All he ever wanted was more. He wanted more money, so he parlayed inherited wealth into a billion dollar pile of assets. He wanted more fame so he broke into the Hollywood scene and soon became a film maker. He wanted more sexual pleasure, so he paid handsome sums to indulge his every sexual urge. He wanted more thrills, so he designed, built and piloted the fastest aircraft in the world. He wanted more power so he secretly dealt political favors so skillfully that two presidents became his pawns. ALL HE EVER WANTED WAS MORE. He was absolutely convinced that more would bring him true satisfaction.

Unfortunately, history shows otherwise. …Emaciated, colorless, sunken chest, fingernails in grotesque, inches-long corkscrews, rotting black teeth, tumors, enumerable needle marks from his drug addiction, … Howard Hughes, died, believing the MYTH OF MORE. He died a billionaire junkie, insane by all reasonable standards.

John Ortberg continues,

Here is the question we need to consider: If Howard Hughes had pulled off one more deal, made one more movie, controlled one more president, indulged in one more sexual escapade, or made one more billion–WOULD IT HAVE BEEN ENOUGH? When is it ever enough?

The passage from Ortberg’s book ends this way,

She was the most adulated of women. Every woman envied her, every man wanted her. She had beauty, fame, and power–but she died alone, she died at her own hand. If Marilyn Monroe had starred in one more hit movie, been on one more magazine cover, had one more sexual relationship with a powerful man–WOULD IT HAVE BEEN ENOUGH?

The resounding answer to the questions which haunt us as we recount these two enormously famous lives is, “NO!” No, one more thrill, one more billion dollar deal, one more hit, one more blockbuster, one more sexual liaison, …no amount of any additional God-detached experience would have been enough to heal their souls. An no independent pursuit of our own will ever bring us to the source of our healing and wholeness. Sadly, it did not work for Anna Nicole Smith, it does not work for Brittney, does not work for Owen Wilson, and it will not work for you.

Our source, The Source, of all we are hungering for, is found in the source of life itself. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and to the full.” The life we all yearn for will only be found in the center of God’s will for us. Outside of that there is no hope for humankind. This is the way God built the whole thing, and we cannot get away from it. You can run off to Hollywood, become a billionaire, build a corporation, impress your peers, rise to political significance, pursue the “dream” you always thought would fix you, …none of it will bring you to wholeness. Without the gap in the soul being filled by the Maker of our soul, the void remains. Without God, through the person of Jesus Christ, no amount of stuff can ever hope to fill the chasm.

So, the first step to reconciling our lives in a way that draws us closer to becoming healthy and whole people, is to reject the idea that we are our own and to embrace the truth that God is the SOURCE of all we have need of. The remaking of our emotions begins when we turn to God as the source of healing. We need other wise and Godly people in our lives along the way, but this comes as an extension of the grace of God brought in to our lives. It begins with Him. Our relationship with Him grounds all directs all other relationships.

God desires to do life with us. His desire, knowing all, is that you and I find, embrace, and walk in His plans for us. While success, fame, money, and pleasure are not evil in and of themselves, detached from God’s plan for us, each of them become traps which enslave us to a life void of rest. The result of winning the race for MORE is a heart and mind in chaos if we have run that race apart from the will of God. More Godless living leads to less inner peace.

I talk and counsel with an endless amount of people who are convinced (though they would never say this) that some “thing” other than God will fix them and give them their sanity back. For some its a dream to be married. Others believe a promotion is the fix. Still others think fame will do it. I have met those who really think “seeing the world” will quench the thirst in their soul. The list is endless, and each attempt to find rest apart from a relationship with God, and His daily plan for us (more on this later), will leave us in a sinking vessel.

Zoe, the word Jesus used to describe “life” to the full, literally means life in an absolute sense. Zoe speaks of life as God has it, that which He has in Himself, and which He gave to the Incarnate Son to have in Himself. Zoe, life to the full, completeness, wholeness, then is found only in the person of Christ. No other agenda can provide for this. His life is our source and example of what wholeness looks like.

G.K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, describes the value of abandoning the common view of finding life, and points the reader toward the blazing glory of turning one’s affections back toward the pursuit of truth, which he calls orthodoxy (right belief, reconciled belief). He writes,

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into the foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It is sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad (with the passions of this world). Orthodoxy is the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that way, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic.

This is the path to wholeness–the pursuit of truth, a life reconciled with reality as God views it. In a culture that seems to be making a feverish dash to greater madness all the time, the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic, as it relates to seeing life as it ought to be viewed, is greatly needed. It can be found. It is indeed offered in the One who is for us, and who seeks to make Himself known to us. His will, His perspective, His agenda, is your healing. He alone is the source.

Praying for us all to know the source of life itself,

Bruce Smith

optimuslife.org

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