Do you realize where your longings really come from?

Steve Brown:
Do you realize where your longings really come from? Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life. We’re here to let you know that because of what Jesus has done, God will never be angry at you again. Matt Heard is a speaker, teacher, writer, pastor, coach, and the founder and principal of a ministry called Thrive. He’s been teaching us all this week.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Welcome Matt. If you’re just joining us, Matt is one of the voices of Key Life and his ministry, Thrive, is a world impacting ministry. And we, you guys love it when Matt is here to teach and I get to sit and learn myself. I’m not so old that I don’t. And so, when I hear you teach, I learn all kinds of new things. Now, if you’ve been listening, and I hope you were. If you’ve been listening, the first program of this week, we talked about our longings and acknowledging that. Then yesterday, we talked about the phony ones, the broken cisterns that we pour water into and they leak, and we begin to realize somebody lied to us. And today, we want to talk about where does all that come from?

Matt Heard:
Well, hi, Steve.

Steve Brown:
Hey Matt.

Matt Heard:
You didn’t give me a chance to even say anything today.

Steve Brown:
I put the ball over the net.

Matt Heard:
You just

Steve Brown:
you’re supposed to play it now.

Matt Heard:
get going.

Steve Brown:
Okay. I want to get into this.

Matt Heard:
Well, our overall passage, and we’d looked at it years ago and circling back around to this conversation Jesus had with the woman at the well, talking about her thirst and she’d been married five times and she’s living with a guy now, that’s still not addressing those deep longings of, that we all have. And what we don’t realize, a lot of people think I don’t have a desire to go to church. Well, you know what? Get in line. A lot of people don’t, but thinking that should be what we yearn for. No, what we yearn for is what happens when we engage with the gospel. A lot of times churches, they don’t, we’re not connecting people deep enough to the gospel because I think a superficial engagement with our longings will lead us to a superficial engagement with the gospel. And that’s why I C.S. Lewis and the quote that I brought up the end of yesterday.

That our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.

We don’t go deep enough and to understand, you know, my thirst, to me a really helpful passage is that very familiar passage in Ecclesiastes 3. And as I’m looking at what Jesus says to this woman and how they interact about how they said.

If you knew you’re talking about, I’d give you living water. You’d come to me. I’ll give you eternal life.

Ecclesiastes 3:10, 11.

I’ve seen the burden God has laid on the human race and he’s made everything beautiful in its time.

And he’s also said.

Eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

I think that’s a great description of every image bearer. We’re all created in God’s image. We all have eternity in our hearts. We all engage with beauty. We all engage with those things that call to us, you know, and that’s actually the Greek word for beauty and for calling are very similar in kaleo where beauty calls us, it evokes something deep within us. And, you know, a while back, remember the eclipse, the solar eclipse. I was watching one of the news stations on that and everybody, they would have this sense of awe, there’s something that’s evoked in them, when they’re seeing that. And it’s that eternity that we all have in our hearts. The problem is we try to satisfy those longings that are rooted in eternity, rooted back in the garden was superficial stuff. There’s not a car fancy enough, expensive enough, beautiful enough to address my God sized longings, which is that whole God shaped vacuum that we have.

Steve Brown:
And when people hear it, they respond to it. Richardson wrote a book a number of years ago called, taken from this Ecclesiastes passage, Eternity in Their Hearts.

Matt Heard:
Mm hmm.

Steve Brown:
And he was talking about how when missionaries go to third world countries, exactly what we’re talking about on this week of broadcast is present in people who have never heard the gospel. There’s a longing, and there was a lady in a third world country when she heard about Jesus. She said, I knew there must be a God like that somewhere, because it was built into her DNA.

Matt Heard:
When you say built in, I love that. And I love, goodness, I haven’t heard about Don Richardson for a long time, but that was an amazing.

Steve Brown:
That’s an amazing book.

Matt Heard:
You know, my sister and her husband were missionaries in Irian Jaya and they actually lived as newlyweds and in one of the houses that he had been in previously, but that’s a sidebar. Let’s not get too sidetracked. But that whole, you know, Lewis he wrote. Years ago, I was doing some study time in Oxford and right across from Christ Church, there was a used bookstore. Always go to used, I don’t know if I get high on the mildew or what, but I’m just drawn to used bookstores. And I went in this, was just wandering around. Found this little volume of poems, that’s all it said, C.S. Lewis. And I thought, what? Didn’t know he’d written it. And it was actually a compilation of some poems that his, that Hooper, his assistant had put together after he died. And I found there was one, as I was thumbing through that, called Vowels and Sirens. And when you that, there’s something that we’re drawn to when that eternity in their hearts type thing, and I’m scrambling here to find the words to it, he says.

A vanished knowledge was their interpret song, a music that resembled some earlier music that men are born remembering.

So, we’re all born remembering some music. And then he says.

What all the gods refuse, the backward journey to the steep rivers hid source, the great returning, the sirens fain to give.

You know, that’s his literary background in the classics of mythology and the sirens that would distract the sailors and mislead them. We’re all trying to trace the music we’re born remembering. We’re all born with some music that we’re trying to get to its source. We’re trying to trace it back to where it comes from. And Jesus is tapping that woman. The gospel taps us right there. So, when he says.

Everyone who drinks this water is going to be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them is not going to thirst and in deed the water I give them will become in them a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

Our longings are eternal sized. They’re not going to be satisfied by the turn. It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a great meal, or a great vacation home, or a great car, of course. But put them in context of what they’re really capable of and don’t expect more. You know, like marriage, marriage is a great thing, but if I’m trying to extract from my marriage what only Jesus can give me, that’s putting a lot of pressure on your spouse. Jobs are great, but if I’m trying to extract from my job what only God can give me, workaholsim. I mean, the list goes on and on because we’re trying to draw from those things what they can’t provide. I know with my book, when I was writing it, I was up in the mountains at a friend’s cabin. Some people had loaned it to me. It was pretty rustic. It was an older cabin, but it was awesome, it was in the middle of nowhere. Actually you go to the middle of nowhere, take a right and go another 10 miles. And I had a deadline, it was one of the temporary deadlines, you know, with books, the publishers give that to you. I had been jammed schedule wise. I was trying to carve out, I think it was two and a half days and I had a lot to do and everything was mapped out and I got there in the middle of the afternoon and I’m typing away, everything’s going great. And then in the evening, I noticed my, you know, my battery on my laptop is flashing. So, I get out the cord to plug it in. Now, this might be over your head, Steve, but somebody who’s got electrical engineering degree is going to try and get me. You know, there are two thingy plugs and there are three thingy plugs, that’s technical language. I had a three thingy plug, it was an old cabin and there were only two thingy. And I start kind of panicking cause I’m thinking I’m going to get this written and I’m going around this cabin. And I, because the nearest store was probably an hour and a half away. I mean, it was where I could get an adapter, which I didn’t have, and I finally found behind the refrigerator a three thingy. And so, I got my deadline met, the milk spoiled, but I got the deadline, but what was I doing there? You know, I had a two thingy plug and I’m looking for, I mean I had a three thingy plug and I’m looking, it’s being haunted, mocked by two thingy outlets. And so, often we’ve got eternal, an eternal plug, we’re trying to find where can I plug this? And this woman had been doing that with men in marriage. And Jesus has said, it’s not going to work because what you’ve got is an eternal plug. Don’t try to force it into a temporary outlet, which is some of why Thoreau said.

Many men go fishing all their lives without realizing it’s not fish that they’re after.

Steve Brown:
That’s so good. And so very true. And that’s a gift, by the way, and you never, this is not something that you do, and it’s settled once, forever. It’s a constant, just as we’re thirsty. It’s a constant drinking from eternal water and saying, that is so good, cause it matches my thirst.

Matt Heard:
Amen. Absolutely. Absolutely. We’ll unpack it more tomorrow.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, we will. Boy, this is good stuff. And by the way, if you’re a Christian, don’t say, I don’t need this, I get all this. Mmm, nobody does. We all need the gospel and that’s what this is. Preach to us, said Martin Luther, lest we become discouraged. I get there sometimes, it gets dark and I have a yearning and I’m not sure what will fill it. And then I remember him. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thanks guys. If you’re joining us on Key Life, we are in the middle of a series called The Life You’ve Always Wanted. And teaching us in that series are Steve Brown and our good friend Matt Heard. We will wrap up things tomorrow with Steve and Matt, so don’t miss it. Well, if you’re a regular listener to Key Life, then you’ve probably heard Matt before. He’s thoughtful, he’s very well read, and very tall. Which has no bearing on the matter, but I just, I thought you should know. So, you may be interested in reading some articles Matt has written on our website. So, just go to Keylife.org then on the left hand menu, click Authors, then scroll down until you find Matt’s name. And as you’re there, you’ll also see info and articles from all our Key Life contributors. It’s an easy way to deep dive into the content that ministers to you the most. And, great news, all of our website content is still free thanks to the generous support of listeners just like you. If you’d like to donate, just call us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. If you’d like to send your donation by mail, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Or e-mail [email protected]. You can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. And of course, now you can give safely and securely just by texting Key Life to 28950 that’s Key Life, one word or two. It doesn’t matter. Text that to 28950, then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And as always, we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.