Is what you think you want different from what you really want?

Steve Brown:
Is what you think you want different from what you really want? Let’s talk, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you’ve suffered too long under a do more, try harder religion, Key Life is here to proclaim that Jesus sets the captives free. Steve invited Matt Heard to teach us all this week. Matt is a speaker, teacher, writer, pastor, coach, and the author of life with a capital L.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Matt. If you’re just joining us, Matt is one of the voices of Key Life and his ministry is Thrive as well as Key Life. And, give us that website again.

Matt Heard:
ThriveFullyAlive.Com

Matthew Porter:
If you’re interested, then you should be. And Matt and what God is doing through him, you ought to check that website out.

Steve Brown:
And this week we’re talking about the life you’ve always wanted. And we’re looking at the fourth chapter of the gospel of John. Let me give you just a verse and then Matt is going to talk about it. This is John 4:10.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that to ask you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living waters.”

And then there’s one other verse that we, that you suggested we look at, and that’s Jeremiah 2:13.

My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Matt Heard:
So, keys in on living water in John 4, and you know, the Jews in Hebrew would refer to it as mi haim. There’s a literal mi haim, which it was water that was not stagnant, but then the metaphor of mi haim was something that we all deep down are thirsty for. And it’s not just religious people. We all are and, but we should know better. And I think that’s what Jeremiah 2 is referring to, God saying, Hey, my people, these are my people have committed two sins. Number one, we forsaken him as the fountain of that living water. And we’ve, hewn for ourselves cisterns that are broken. The cisterns, a water container, could be hewn out of stone or sticks, but we all have those places where we go to quench our deepest thirst. And Jesus with this woman at the well, he’s addressing that he’s using what’s happening in that moment, she’s drawing water to go a lot deeper. And C.S. Lewis had a word that I learned from him. I don’t know German, but he referred to it as a Sehnsucht. It’s a German word that means longing, yearning, thirst, ache. And we all have that. We are at varying degrees, you know, I think of, how much we acknowledge it, how much we can articulate it. Artists often are really good at naming it, like Billy Joel, I mentioned yesterday, but I actually have a playlist on my Spotify called Sehnsucht. And it’s got like 130 songs on it by now. The majority are, as far as I know, are not believers, but they’re really gifted image bearers at articulating the question of our thirst.

Steve Brown:
That’s used by advertisers, and politicians, and con artists. They know that we know we’re missing something, and they tell us you can put a car, or a naked lady, or money in that longing, and they’ll talk us into doing that, and that’s why we’re so empty.

Matt Heard:
Yeah. And Hollywood. I mean, let me throw out a bunch of words and just let them ricochet around with our listeners, wherever they are. Words like significance, that’s not, that’s not just Christians. That’s all of us. We’re thirsty for intimacy and for love and for identity and dignity and security and meaning and wholeness and acceptance, we yearn for purpose for Shalom, connection, impact, influence, destiny, goodness, truth, beauty, belonging, joy, justice, triumph, freedom, meaning, resolution. I mean, the list goes on and on.

Steve Brown:
Good night.

Matt Heard:
We all yearn for those things at different times. At one moment, you might be more in the for security, and I’m more in the significance area. But you know, you don’t, you’re right, you don’t hear about that list a whole lot. You don’t hear about those words a whole lot in churches, but Hollywood knows that list. Madison Avenue knows that list. Any movie that is impacted you deeply, other than Dumb and Dumber, but other movies, they tap in on those deep longings that we’ve got. And Jesus is going deep with this woman saying, what is it that you really are thirsty for. And Lewis said, his whole journey, Sehnsucht is what accompanied him. This yearning for what he referred to as joy, but it was a thirst, a longing and, and he is, he said really the first time he noticed it was when he was, his older brother did a little toy garden and there was something that evoked in him. Then he, they moved to, outside of town to that. If any of the C.S. Lewis fans know little Lee, the Lieber house where he’s looking at the Castle Ray Hills in the distance. And he says he remembers as a six year old, my words, not his, those hills evoked something in me that they would not satisfy. And then his mother got cancer. God didn’t answer his prayer, he abandoned the church, just took a swan dive into the occult and sensuality, atheism. But then he began to, as an Oxford dine, you know, in dialogue moved from atheism to agnosticism, from agnosticism to deism, basically from deism to theism. And then finally accepting Jesus. And then that theism conversion, so to speak, that’s what he referred to as the most reluctant convert in all of England. But he said, what accompanied me throughout that journey was my Sehnsucht.

Steve Brown:
the longing

Matt Heard:
My longings, my thirst. And so, often we think, okay, most people, especially church people, we kind of impose on everybody what their questions are. And we think they’re all asking every morning when they wake up, how can I be forgiven of my sins and get to heaven? Sure, that’s a very real need, but we’re not asking those questions, but we are asking, where can I find significance? Where can I experience ultimate belonging? Where can I fulfill some of this deep ache within my soul? And that’s what Jesus is tapping with this woman. She’d been married five times, and the guy she’s living with now, it’s not her husband. It’s not, that’s not 21st century Hollywood, that’s first century Middle East. And when he, after you read the passage yesterday, at the end of that passage, she says, okay, I’m open to this. Why don’t you give me some of this water. And he tells her, go get your husband and come back.

Steve Brown:
And she says, nuh-uh.

Matt Heard:
She says, I have no husband. And then he says, you’re right when you say you have, and the man, that you’ve had actually had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now is not your husband. And there are a lot of legalistic, fundamentalist religious types that will say, that a boy Jesus at that moment, you know, you let her have it out, you know, who are you kidding, she’s been married five times and is now living with a guy. There’s no shame in what Jesus is saying. He’s using words like a surgeon would use a scalpel. He’s wanting to get to at the core of what she was looking at. We don’t know the cultural context of why she was divorced, or did they die, did they discard her? But bottom line, her go to had something to do with all of those longings or many of them, where there’s significance of security, or thirst for intimacy, but men in marriage were involved in that. And Jesus is saying, why don’t you go get that one thing that you’ve been ultimately relying on and it hasn’t satisfied you. I mean, for some of us, it might be, go get your golf clubs, or go get your 401K your portfolio, or your degrees, or your car, or that third house that you have on the beach. We all have these broken cisterns that Jeremiah is talking about, where we put that cistern up to our parched lips and think maybe this new car will give me the significance that I long for, that I thirst for. Maybe this new job title, or this new bank account balance. And God says, you’ve forsaken me. I’m, and that’s what Jesus is saying to this woman. If you knew, that’s a big phrase that he uses that you read. If you knew who you were talking to, and a lot of times we don’t explore our longings deep enough to say, are all the pursuits in my life actually giving me the fulfillment that I’m wanting to?

Steve Brown:
You know, I quoted Fred Smith, my late mentor yesterday. He told me one time that the most miserable people in the world are rich people, and I said that’s cause riches make you miserable. He said no, it’s cause you got what you wanted and you found out it wasn’t what you needed or what you wanted anyway.

Matt Heard:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, what Lewis kept referring to. He said, you know, in the Weight of Glory, he made that sermon, he said.

Given the promise of rewards and the nature of rewards promise in the gospels, he said, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We’re half hearted creatures.

Steve Brown:
That’s so good.

Matt Heard:
Fooling around with drink and sex and ambition. when infinite joy is offered to us. We’re like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can’t comprehend what’s meant by the offer of a holiday by the sea. He says, we’re far too easily pleased.

And so, often we go to these broken cisterns thinking, okay, that’s what’s going to satisfy me. And Jesus says, why don’t you come out here into the living water?

Steve Brown:
Oh man, that’s such good stuff. And we’re going to continue with it tomorrow. If you have longings, then you don’t want to miss it. But there’s an answer, and it’s always Jesus. He fulfills what you desire for because he created us for that. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
That is good stuff. Thank you Steve and Matt. We are talking all this week about the life you’ve always wanted, and we still have two more days to go in this series, so hope you will join us again tomorrow. Well, I’ve mentioned this a few times. Years ago, Steve wrote a powerful book on the Holy Spirit, it’s called Follow the Wind. Well, we took excerpts from that book to create a special free booklet. Actually, it’s most of the last chapter of the book. And we would love to send you that booklet for free and getting your copy is super easy. Just call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that booklet. Or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the U.S. and Canada. Again, just ask for your free copy of the booklet about the Holy Spirit. And finally, if you value the work of Key Life, would you join us in that work through your financial support? You could charge a gift on your credit card. You could include a gift in your envelope. Or now you can give safely and securely through text. Just pick up your phone and text Key Life to 28950 that’s Key Life, one word or two. It doesn’t matter. Just text that to 28950 and then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. Both of those organizations assure financial accountability. And we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.