Success in life is about one-half drive and one-half perspective. To get anywhere, to accomplish anything, you have to mix both drive and perspective. You have to blend both drive and push, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the ability to back off and look at your drivenness.
Most of the people I know who have really accomplished anything ... professionally or in their families or in their personal lives ... most of the really successful people I know have that driven quality about them. They are dependable. They stay by the stuff. They don’t let go. They just keep on doing what they do, and they work at it, long and hard. They don’t lose interest easily, they don’t lose sight of their goals. They stay with the program. Successful people have a clear and profound commitment to whatever it is they do.
But they also have the ability to back off and look at themselves. They have the ability to stand aside from their drivenness and analyze it. Successful people take what they are doing seriously, but they do not take themselves too seriously. Do you get that distinction? Successful people take what they do seriously, but they do not take themselves too seriously. They can laugh at themselves, they can see themselves as others see them, they can back off from their pursuits and re-evaluate themselves.
Coach Gibbs, for example, appears to have decided that his real success will lie not only in winning football games, but also in winning the confidence of his sons. And so he is backing off to gain perspective. That’s success.
Success is one part drive and one part perspective. When you lose perspective and can do nothing more than do what you do, then you have crossed the line into obsession. When you get out of balance and lose the capacity to put your life into context and see it as it really is, at that point you’ve become obsessed. You have crossed the line into obsessive behavior.
Obsession, you see, is behavior that takes you over. Obsession is something you have to do and you cannot really remember why. Obsessive behavior is something that defines your life, something that seems to give you structure. Without this something you can’t function. You are in chaos.
Obsession is behavior that you don’t control; it controls you. And it can be very destructive. It may be something very innocent, like the need to follow a set housework routine; or it may be something very intense, like alcohol use. But if your behavior controls you rather than you controlling the behavior, it’s obsession.
The good news for today is that when Christ enters your life, He will zero in on that obsessive behavior and He will give you perspective to go with it. If there is something going on in you that seems to have taken you over, and you cannot avoid doing it ... it’s an obsession with you … then Jesus Christ offers good news.
Instead of my reading the text through today, I’m just going to ask you to turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 4, and we are going to touch down on the story of the woman at the well. The woman at the well is an example of obsessive behavior; but hers is also a life to which Christ gave perspective.
I
First, I want you to see that Christ encounters obsessive behavior and begins to heal it just by naming it. Just by calling it what it is and not letting us get by with avoiding reality, our Christ begins to give us perspective.
You remember the story. Jesus is sitting at a well in Samaria, when a woman comes up to draw water, and He engages her in conversation. He speaks to her about a living water which, if she should drink, she will never be thirsty again. And she is intrigued by this.
Now at verse 16, Jesus seems to change the subject radically. He says, "Go, call your husband, and come back." Instead of water, suddenly He is talking about husbands. The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, ’I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband."
How’s that for lowering the boom! Where did He get that?! Well, it doesn’t matter how He knew that. What matters is that He names the problem. He identifies the issue. He tells the truth. He puts his finger on obsessive behavior and pulls the plug on denial. "You are right in saying, ’I have no husband’; but what you mean is that you have been married five times and you keep on picking up these guys and sleeping with them and you don’t even recognize what it’s doing to you!" It’s obsessive behavior. She’s getting hurt, it’s destructive, but she just can’t stop it!
You see, the problem with obsessive behavior is that, even though it might start out innocently enough, it eventually becomes destructive, but we deny it. We pretend that it is no problem, and that we have it under control. The issue with obsessive behavior is that we deny its power over us. But eventually, whatever it is, it will erode our lives.
This is true even of the most innocent behavior; it is certainly true the deeper and the more intense that behavior becomes.
Let me give you an example. I have a few obsessions. One of my obsessions is with being organized. I just have to be organized, I just have to impose order on things. Do you remember the old movie, "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming"? Jonathan Winters romps through the whole movie moaning over and over again, "I’ve just got to get organized!" Well, that’s me. I’ve just got to be organized.
I review every day my list of tasks to do: order. The books in my library are shelved in a certain way: order. The funds in my bank accounts, meager though they may be, are sorted out into certain purposes; I have a checking account for taxes and insurance, I have a checking account for housing expenses, I have a checking account for car expenses, and I have an everything-else checking account. Order, order, order.
And so when my wife says, "I want to buy this piece of furniture", I can truthfully say, "There isn’t enough money in the housing account." And there isn’t! The mere fact that there is enough money in another account I just won’t recognize! I can’t listen to that.
I have an obsession ... a mild one, I hope ... an obsession with organization and with order. But you can see how even that mild obsession can erode family life. If I just insist on my sense of order; if I impose that on others who are not so rigid, then my behavior has become destructive. And somebody has to name it so that I will see it for what it is.
Now imagine if that is more serious behavior. Take that out to more intense behavior. Somebody gets involved with alcohol or with drugs, but calls it recreation. Or calls it having a good time. And even when it becomes the dominant thing in your life, even when it is taking you over, and you are obsessed with it, you keep on denying that it is destructive. The only way to break that is for somebody to name it. Somebody has to call it what it is. You have to be brought face to face with obsession before it can be broken.
So here is this Samaritan woman, obsessed with and no doubt victimized by a whole series of lovers. Her sexual behavior has become obsessive. And she won’t name it. She won’t call it what it is.
But Jesus will. Christ will name it. When Christ encounters our obsessive behavior, He puts His finger on it and removes all our pretenses, He destroys our denials.
This is one of the reasons we have the Scripture. The Bible just won’t let us get away with euphemisms. The Scriptures don’t let us excuse our destructive behavior. They name it.
And it’s one reason, too, why we have the church. Brothers and sisters ought not to let anybody get by with obsessions. They ought to name it.
Christ encounters obsessive behavior and begins to heal it just by naming it. Just by calling it what it is and not letting us get by with avoiding reality, our Christ begins to give us perspective.
II
But merely naming our obsessive behavior is not all that Christ does for us. Not only does He name our obsessions, He heals them by offering Himself as a refreshing substitute. In the place of our destructive behavior, He offers constructive behavior. And in the place of our broken relationships, He offers a relationship with Himself.
In verse 10, Jesus says, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ’Give me a drink’, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." And then in verse 14, "Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
A moment ago we saw a missions video. Did you catch what the young woman in the video said? No longer doing this, no longer doing that, no longer using crack. And why? Very clearly she said that she did not do it by herself. What then? She said that God did it. God in Jesus Christ offered her a refreshing relationship, He offered her a substitute for the things that obsess. He offered her Himself.
I am well aware that that sounds too simple. I am aware that someone is saying, "It’s not that easy. Religion doesn’t cure everything. Religion doesn’t take away those appetites.”
Guess what? I agree with you. That’s right. Religion doesn’t solve much. Religion doesn’t do a thing. Merely substituting one kind of compulsive behavior for another solves nothing. And I think that’s what the woman at the well thought Jesus meant. She raised the religion question in verse 20: Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." What is the magic ritual, Jesus? What kind of ceremony do I perform? What is the religious obsession I should adopt?
But Jesus says "No." Verse 21:"The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem ... the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth". I hear Jesus saying, "I am not recommending mere religion to heal your wounds. I’m not trading obsessions with you. I am telling you that you must have a relationship with the living spirit of God.
He offers Himself as a refreshing companion. You are not going to heal your brokenness by yourself, and you are not going to heal it with religious mumbo-jumbo. The only way to deal with control is to let Christ control.
Last week I told you a little about Charlotte Elliott, the author of our theme hymn. I told you that Charlotte’s life was dominated by illness. Every time they asked her to do something, she used her frailty as an excuse. You’ll remember that one night in 1834 her pastor brother had tried to get her to participate in a benefit for a church-related school, but that, true to form, Charlotte Elliott pleaded illness and said No.
But then I also told you that that night she just admitted to herself that that illness had taken over her life. It dominated everything that she was. She could not do anything except be sick. You might say that being sick had become an obsession with her. It was all that she was.
And so that night, out of her loneliness and pain, she penned our hymn, "Just as I am ..." In the second verse: "Just as I am, and waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot, to Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot, 0 Lamb of God, I come, I come."
One dark blot ... an obsession had defined her. Nothing else seemed to matter.
One dark blot ... a brokenness that had taken over everything else.
One dark blot ... like the woman at the well, behavior that, no matter how much it hurt, she could not stop. One huge, horrible, everlastingly dark blot.
But the blood of Christ is able to cleanse each spot. The power of Christ can deal with every human deficiency. The love of Christ can counter every human failure. A relationship with the living Christ is a refreshment that will never, never fail.
Like the woman at the well, we are seeking for things that cannot satisfy. There are hungers that will not pass away, there are cravings on which our minds are set. And our lives are fixed on that one dark blot that nothing can remove.
Then fill my cup, Lord; I lift it up, Lord. Come and quench this thirsting of my soul; bread heaven, feed me till I want no more … fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole.
