God's Answer For An Empty Life

Text: John 3:1-5; Mark 10:17-22; Matthew 5:6

There is no doubt that at sometime in your life, you have experienced "emptiness:" a sense that something is missing in your life and you don't have true peace and joy.  Even when everything seemed fine on the outside and from an outsider's perspective you appeared to have it all together, you knew that on the inside your life lacked real meaning and you felt incomplete.  Everyone has these times of "emptiness."  The good news is that God has an answer for this feeling of emptiness and incompleteness.  I want to share with you four principles that relate to a person's empty feeling in their life.

1.  We Were Created To Have A Personal Relationship With God

No one can be truly satisfied unless the Lord is a primary part of their life!  But unfortunately many people ignore God's ability to fulfill the emptiness in their life and they try to fill it with money, prestige, accomplishments, drugs and alcohol, or sex.  But none of these offer deep lasting fulfillment and as a result people continue to search for that one person, event, or pleasure that will bring fulfillment, but they never find it.  It is only as we pursue God and not the world's pleasures that we will find lasting satisfaction.

2.  Reasons People Give For An Empty Life

The reasons people identify for having an empty life vary greatly.  But primarily they include:

• Not being successful
• Not having enough money
• Not married, or married to the "wrong person"
• Death of a spouse
• Divorce
• "Empty Nest" Syndrome--all the children are grown and have left home

There are many others.  But as important as these might be, they are not the reason for an empty life.  The cause of an empty life is much deeper than these issues.

3.  Consequences Of Emptiness

There are serious consequences when people begin to "focus" on the emptiness in their life, without first focusing on the only One who has the answer to their emptiness.  Often people begin to doubt God and His Word.  They begin to make wrong decisions today to get immediate fulfillment, forgetting about the consequences of tomorrow and they become disillusioned.  Remember it is only Jesus Christ who can fill the empty void in your life.

4.  Jesus Is The Answer For An Empty Life

Although the things of the world will offer a temporary relief to the void in your life, they can never fulfill it with an "everlasting" fulfillment.  To really find the completeness in your life you must allow God to give you fulfillment.  Three strategies for allowing God to fill the emptiness:

• Draw near to God--He wants you to have a loving and submissive relationship with Him.  We draw near through Bible study, prayer, meditating on His Word, spending time with God and through fellowship with other believers.
• Don't allow other priorities to crowd out your relationship with God.  We have to make sure God is always first!  It's too easy to pull away from God or scale back our commitment to Him.  Don't let that happen.  When you get too busy commitment and faithfulness to God is normally the first thing to go.
• Clear your life of activities and goals that distract you from pursuing a deepening relationship with God. Jesus told his disciple to store up their treasures in heaven and not on the earth.   What He was saying was that we shouldn't allow temporal possessions or pursuits to capture our heart, but allow God to capture it.

Everyone has times of emptiness in their life, but know this, God is ready to fill it!  Will you turn your feelings of incompleteness and emptiness over to Him today?  He's ready to make you whole again!