The Empty Place In Your Soul

What do you need in your life?

Answer with one word.

Not a physical need.

What are you looking for, searching for, wishing for?

What one word describes what you need in your life?

Got your word? Great!

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The top answers to this question are: love, joy, peace

1) Love

2) Happiness

3) Peace

Love - I just want to feel loved. You know, a lot of people have never experienced the love of a mother. That mother’s love is something special, isn’t it? Many don’t have a father in their lives. Did you know the love and protection and provision of a father is an earthly picture of the Heavenly Father? If you don’t have that good daddy you might have a harder time understanding the love of God. Many don’t feel loved by their husband or wife. Maybe their spouses just doesn’t express love well. Maybe they just have different love languages. I just want to feel loved.

Happiness - Maybe you haven’t felt happy in a long time. You know, life beats us ALL down. We’re trying to live the American dream. But every time we get one step closer, something happens that sets us two steps back. And the dream seems farther away than it’s ever been. If I could just feel happy..

Peace - These times are so uncertain. We don’t know what’s going to happen next with our government. Prices keep going up. Death is all around us. It’s touched everyone. We’ve all lost family, church family, friends, co-workers. We don’t know if we’ll have a job tomorrow. We don’t know if Dollar General is going to get a truck in this week! We’re worried and afraid about the future.

And in our everyday life? We’re all so overwhelmed. We have too much to do, to get it done in the hour of a day. Some of us are working, taking care of our own household, helping with grandkids, and all of the sudden we’re caregivers for our parents. Too much to do in a day. Then same thing happens the next day but we’re also trying to catch up on all the stuff we didn’t get done yesterday and the day before. We feel like everything is out of our control. We’re worried about the things we need to do, we’re afraid we’ll never catch up. If we could just have a minute of peace, we’d be okay.

And I’m gonna tell you, my word, the thing I need, is peace.

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So where can we find these things that we need? How can we get them?

Well I’ve got the answer for us.

The things we truly need can only come from a close relationship with God.

There’s a saying that everyone has an empty space inside of them, a God-shaped void. We’re trying to fill it by ourselves, and we just can’t do it.

We try to fill that emptiness with STUFF. Or if we can’t get the stuff we want, we think, If only I HAD… THE STUFF.

Had what? A new phone, a new car, a boat, a bigger house, a better job. You might even be thinking… a better wife, or if only my husband was _________. If I asked you to think of the one physical thing that you need, you wouldn’t have to think. It’s right there… on your mind all the time.

But when we get those things, they put a bandaid on the hole in our soul. It distracts us for a week, a month. But then we realize, we still have that emptiness inside of us. We still feel unsatisfied. So we set our sites on the next new thing!

But you know?…. It’s not uncommon to hear that someone who is rich and famous has committed suicide. And everyone is like, “WHAT!!!??? They had EVERYthing!” A person can have everything that money can buy, go everywhere on the earth and can experience every pleasure this world has to offer but that empty place is is still there.

King Solomon even wrote about that. It’s recorded in the Bible in the book of Ecclesiastes.

While we’re saying, “Well, if I just had this other thing, I would be happy.” that rich guy comes to a point where he has bought EVERYTHING. He has LAVISHED himself with EVERY luxury and EVERY pleasure. There is no other thing that he can try to fill that void, to satisfy that longing in his inner self, in his soul. And he says, “I’ve tried everything that I thought would make me happy, and I still feel empty. What’s the point in living?”

The Bible says, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…. (Galatians 5:22)

What does that even mean? It means love, joy and peace grow in our lives when the Holy Spirit fills that God-shaped emptiness. If God’s spirit is in you, it fills that emptiness, because love and joy and peace grow in that empty place inside of you, and they will overflow into your everyday life.