Identity Theft - Relationships Series

I want to begin by asking a rather fundamental question… for you to consider within your own soul… Who are you?

Interesting question… we might begin answering it with simply our name… or our roles in life… or perhaps our relationships. Yet each seems to long for a deeper answer.

As you ponder that… I’d like to ask for a volunteer to take a little test.

(Shape Toy)

Did you ever take the ACT/SAT? This will be kind of like that. Have you ever seen one of these? I want you to take a few seconds to put these shapes into the canister. (According to our UCLA alumni this is the entrance exam into USC. Of course the USC alumni doubt the UCLA students could open it. Wow … now I’ve alienated everybody.)

Why didn’t you try to put the square in the round hole or the star into the square hole? Do you think if you tried hard enough it would have fit? Why not?

Each of my children had this type of toy… and each figured that out. (Eventually I figured it out as well. Quite a bright family.) No matter how forceful one of those ankle-biters is, they can’t fit a square peg into a round hole. Neither can you!

Yet I wonder as God looks upon his children… those created in His image… if He doesn’t see us trying to do just that.. I wonder if we don’t spend most of our lives trying to fit square pegs into round holes of life… all in an effort to find our identities.

That search isn’t new of course…

In the Bible, Solomon – the richest guy who ever lived struggled w/ this concept. In fact, the Bible says he tried, “Everything under the sun” to fill the hole in his heart. In his journal, the Book of Ecclesiastes, he says, “I said to myself, I said to my heart, ‘Come now. Let’s just see what might fill up that hole in my heart.’”

By the end of his life after trying it all, Solomon said, “You know what I discovered? It’s all meaningless. It’s just like chasing after the wind.”

Ecclesiastes 6:9

“This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

The very things that we most tend to identify ourselves with… cannot fulfill our identity.

Because you can’t cram a square peg into a round hole and you can’t use the things of this world to fill the God-shaped hole in your heart. Now that can lead to despair… and many honest souls have faced the potential futility of life… and decided not to just distract and divert into amusement and entertainment… but find the bottom. He concludes that the end of man… is to know and love God… and be loved by Him.

Solomon’s conclusion from Pr.19:22

“What a man desires is unfailing love…” - Proverbs 19:22

What a man, what a woman desires, what they’re REALLY after is an unfailing love.

I sense that’s true – don’t you? If one was to look at the root of the soul… the core of our longings… I believe that what we find deep within… is a longing for fundamental acceptance and affirmation that we are willed and wanted… that we belong. Such love is the answer to the longing that is inherent to human nature. (And because we are finite and will never fully understand all of the meaning in this life… finding that we are intended and wanted and loved proves even more significant.) Unfailing love is by nature that which transcends that of fellow creatures… it is unfailing because it existed before we developed these temporal bodies and will exist after.

The problem is we tend to go looking for love in all the wrong places.

Our culture revolves around that quest.

There has never been an end to romance stories and novels.

• Most popular genre in modern day literature.

• Over $1.2 billion in sales

• 55% of the paperback books published

> We are a culture looking for love… to love… and to be loved.

The pursuit of love has forever filled more songs than any other theme. . Just how many love songs have been written through the years? Songs that pledge their devotion like, “Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no valley low enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep me from you.” (As someone said… What you need is a restraining order on that person!) Yes, I do think Solomon was correct – what we need is an unfailing love.

And of course the longing to be loved never ceases to run through the movies that fill the screens of our culture.

I’d like to quote the infamous philosopher Jerry McGuire. You know the movie w/ Cruise and Zellweger In the movie there are (3) famous lines – do you remember them? “Show me the money.” “You had me at hello.” The third is when he looks at his wife and he says, “You complete me.”