Sunday 5th February - Thirsty No More - Ian Harding

foreign I want to begin this message and I want to speak on the idea this morning of satisfaction that's right this morning I want to speak about satisfaction in a message this is part one um a message that I am entitling um a part of a series we we are entitled sorry feed your soul um inspired by the um incredible uh um signage outside um and this week um I want to preach a message called thirsty no more so if you are notetakers and I know a number of you are and you can write that down thirsty no more and just so you're aware of kind of like where we're going with this particular message series we're going to be exploring like what is it that your soul actually needs how can we ensure that we're feeding our soul well and what happens when we do that consistently and so to begin I want to take us to a very from what I hope is a very familiar story in the Bible we're going to read from John 4 starting at verse 5 and I'm reading in the passion translation and with any look it should come up behind me yay it all works okay fantastic here we go Jesus arrived at the Samaritan Village of sikar near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph wearied by his long journey he sat on the edge of Jacob's Well and sent his disciples into the village to buy food for it was already afternoon soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water Jesus said to her give me a drink she replied why would a Jewish man ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans Jesus replied if you only knew who I am and the gift that God wants to give you you would ask me for a drink and I would give you living water the woman replied but sir you don't even have a bucket and the well is very deep so where do you find this living water do you really think you are greater than our ancestor Jacob who dug this well and drank from it himself along with his children and livestock Jesus answered if you drink from Jacob's well you'll be thirsty again but if anyone drinks The Living Water I give them they will never be thirsty again for when you drink the water I give you it becomes a gushing Fountain of the Holy Spirit flooding you with endless life the woman replied let me drink that water so I'll never be thirsty again and won't have to come back here to draw water and then we're going to skip down to verses 39 to 41 which then says these words many from the Samaritan Village became Believers in Jesus because of the woman's testimony he told me everything I ever did Then They begged Jesus to stay with them so he stayed there for two days resulting in many more coming to faith in him because of his message satisfaction is something we all long for and it's something we're all looking for kind of make clear at the beginning I'm not just talking about externals here you know the new car I don't know why I put that in first in the list maybe that's a subconscious thought that I'm frequently having at the moment should I why fix the um passenger door of my car when I just just go buy another one now that new house yes I have been watching Grand designs and yes my wife does love right move um the promotion you know like our personal dreams and goals Financial Security and stability developing strong rooted friendships love family good health though of course all of these things are important you see what I'm talking about this morning and what I want to um explore with you is that deeper satisfaction which isn't measured by any of this stuff I'm talking about a satisfaction that is not external but internal oh Who We Are we feel free to be our real selves and we're not driven by a need to prove ourselves either to anyone but we live freely and generously with our time with our talents with our friendship with our energy and we are becoming the kinds of people that others feel that whenever they're in our presence whenever they're in our company and then they leave it there's that sense where they say I just love being with this person because there's something about being around them that makes me feel refreshed anyway I encourage you to actually go and look up this song because what's quite interesting is and I would sort of say um quite perceptively actually the song in its verses talks about all the different things that he's going to to try and find satisfaction which then leads into the chorus where he says I Can't Get No Satisfaction in other words I've tried all these different things but I Can't Get No Satisfaction but here's the interesting thing he then goes on the next line and says but I try and I try and I try and I try and whether you're a Christian here or not um isn't it true that even with all the complexities of life you know all of the different moving Parts all of the different responsibilities or not that we may have the pressures you know anxieties about the future different expectations that I've always put on ourselves or we allow others to put on us our life can feel less like this picture of and becoming a person of loving joy and more like the rolling stone song where we're like I Can't Get No Satisfaction but I'm trying and I'm trying and I'm trying and I'm trying foreign but I want to say to each and every one of you this morning emphatically that that is not God's design and so today I want to pose two questions and here they are where do you go for satisfaction and do you have a blend of satisfaction because here's what I've realized what this passage of scripture demonstrates as it explores these two questions is that our answer to them is either creating a deep and a lasting satisfaction in our life or it is leading you into greater dissatisfaction where you may even achieve all of your external goals in life but somehow you'll be left feeling empty like something's missing and I say this not just because I know In this passage we often see it through the filter of and once you've found Jesus you never struggle with satisfaction ever again I say this because I believe for every single one of us here there are parts of our lives there are areas in our life where we're still struggling to encounter the fullness of that satisfaction but I want to bring this message because I believe in the same way as this series is about feeding your soul I believe right now where we are at as a church I believe that what God is speaking into every single one of us is he's stirring us once again and he's stirring our souls once again to say do not be satisfied with what the externals that are on offer do not allow your life to become sidetracked by satisfaction found outside of Jesus because when we are satisfied by Jesus we will become the kinds of people who are full of love and of Grace and of mercy and of goodness and that is something that Jesus wants for every single one of us and that's that but the great thing is is when you've got it on every device you can still keep going try guys no short Preach Today I'm joking um and that's what this passage is talking about when it talks about first it's Blake Jesus is basically Jesus Jesus Jesus I feel like I'm coming like some kind of thing out of like if you've seen the chosen it's like cheese so like Jesus is pointing us to the fact that true satisfaction I want to write this down true satisfaction leads towards your true self whereas dissatisfaction leads you into your faults self and what Jesus has for each and every one of us is our true selves that's what he's articulating when he says in John 4 and verses 13 to 14 he says this if you drink from Jacob's well you'll be thirsty again but if anyone drinks The Living Water I give them they will never be thirsty again for when you drink the water I give you it becomes a gushing Fountain of the Holy Spirit flooding you with Endless Night with endless life I don't know if you caught this the first time I read it but you are meant to be a gushing Fountain full of endless life I don't know about you but that image excites me that image reminds me that this is what I'm called to that image reminds me not to accept a substitute of something less that image reminds me I am called to feed my soul with something that actually fills my Hunger not something that just takes the edge off my Hunger because often what I find is that is that lots of those small things they take the edge off the hunger but they don't really satisfy it it's like for example when you go and you have a McDonald's you know it's not good for you it kind of takes the edge off your hunger for a bit but then about 30 minutes after that you are left absolutely starving or alternately you know like when you decide to go into the snack drawer at home and you get out like um one of those small mini bags of like tank Fire Sticks and of course you eat all of them in one because they're just tiny Haribo little things and you know for about 25 minutes you're like that was nice um but then you're left with a dissatisfaction in actual fact you're then left with a weird kind of like satisfaction whereby you're like oh I'd like more of that and more of that and more of that but we all know that he who tries to live as it says in the Bible he who tries to live on timefastics alone shall not experience eternal life I'm pretty sure that's what it says pretty sure so today what I want to do I'm just in the time that we've got remaining um I'm looking at my watch the time we've got remaining we're on doing well the time we've got remaining I want to look at two traps that this passage reveals that we can avoid so that we can actually experience this true satisfaction leading towards our true selves foreign so this story this Story begins and in John's narrative he makes it clear that this meeting is not an accidental one Jesus comes to this particular well on purpose to meet with her I know it might not be obvious to us um because we're not the first century reader that John was writing for um spoiler alert you were not the original audience and the the Bible was written for In This Moment her arrival at this time of day does tell us something about her reputation and how she's viewed by her community you see women in that time would go to collect water early in the morning before the sun came up and it got too hot and by all going at the same time of day these moments of gathering water actually became for women within the community it became a social Gathering too it was an opportunity to catch up with friends to exchange news probably gossip as well share what was happening in one another's lives and to actually connect and therefore it was a vital and essential part of belonging to their community so what the Bible's hinting at here by the fact that she comes at a very different time of day is that by her coming at this hottest part of the day what John wants us to realize is this woman is someone who's been exiled from the community and by extension she's been exiled from the fullness of friendship and community that she's born for so when Jesus talks to her she's surprised now she's surprised for two reasons number one he's a Jew and she's a Samaritan and yes they hate each other which meant that they just didn't talk to one another there's years of hatred and suspicion that keeps them from having any kind of meaningful connection or meaningful conversation but also as well as you've seen the text she says like I'm a woman you're a man it was unusual in that time for a man to initiate a conversation with a woman who was not someone in his family but what we see Jesus doing here is casually breaking like these religious traditions and these societal rules anyone to talk to her I wonder therefore like when she in this early part of the conversation I wonder what goes through her mind I wonder like what is she thinking is she thinking like what what is this guy looking for is this guy is this guy on the cell is this guy looking for something is he looking to kind of like take advantage of the fact that I'm on my own you know because as we see later on her experience with men is not what we would call Healthy and so I wonder what she's expecting but Jesus kind of talks to her about this water and as often happens in the Bible Jesus is speaking of one thing but she's hearing something completely different but eventually we get to this moment where he gets to the real root of the issue the issue that is actually keeping her from community and we read about it in verses 16. Jesus said go get your husband and bring him back here but I'm not married the woman answered that's true Jesus said you've been married five times and now you're living with a man who is not your husband you have told the truth now it might not be immediately obvious to us but this moment has something powerful to say about a trap that we can fall into which leads us towards dissatisfaction because the thing I want you to notice and it's this is the fact that sometimes our good desires can lead us towards something that's actually eventually not good for us you see I want you to notice that her initial longing for a husband it's not a sinful one in actual fact you know if you read the Bible throughout it the Bible models that companionship real connection real friendship is something it models it celebrates and it encourages yet quite clearly here something has gone wrong with her desire it started something good but now it's a compulsion now it's an addiction and that addiction is actually destroying her life you have to understand how unusual it is in first century culture to have had five husbands and to now be living with a sick person who is not your husband like in her culture that's like what did you do did you kill all your other husbands like people would be deeply deeply suspicious of someone like her and what I want us to see is that what this demonstrates is that this first trap is this sordid desires distort I desire for Jesus it's almost as if she reached a point whereby she's begun to say to herself and the narrative and the story that she's living out of this is this the only way I can be happy and live a satisfied life is if I have a husband and so her identity and her security is all wrapped up in that way of living and without it it's like she doesn't know who she is yeah it's quite clear from the fact that she's on to man number six that that relationship that She's continually looking after is clearly not working for her it's almost as if she's with a man for a particular length of time but then when she realizes that he's not going to match up to her need for security and affirmation and identity it's like she checks out she decides no this is not gonna work it's not satisfying me it's not working for me and so she's trapped in this cycle of compulsion probably knowing if she answers every single relationship that she's been in that it's not gonna last she's long since past that point where she expects relationships to last she's in a place where she expects her relationships to fail but and here's the here's the thing that we see with Jesus here it's almost as if he's saying to her look if you reorder your desire you will receive what you truly desire the issue is not that your desire is wrong the issue is that you have your desires in the wrong order and I think that this happens to us too because at the end of the day we all have good desires too am I right we have good desires most of us the issue is in that actually you know like most of us it's not like we're struggling with bad desires most of us are not thinking oh do you know what I really I really want to take up a life of crime that's what I'm really that's what that's what I'm really struggling with like that's not actually our story and for most human beings that's not our story our story is is that we want things that are good in and of themselves but we make them those things that are good and this is where we get into trouble it's where we make good desires our God in the Bible there's a very simple word for this it's called idolatry it's basically rather than worshiping the creator of God as it says in the Bible we worship the created things instead and we put them above God and what how what happens when we do that is that it distorts our desire for Jesus that because we're so consumed by chasing after the good things in life we miss the god of the good things we we become we become people who we chase after the hand of God we chase after the blessing of God we chase after what we think God can give us and our relationship with God becomes instead of fulfilling loving giving and receiving relationship it becomes a transaction God if I do x y z then will you love me God if I do this this and this and this is something that um I've got to say you know as a church we've not always preached this very well we've preached people into morality we've preached people into come to Jesus clean yourself up make yourself a better person and then somehow you can be part of Church community but that's not the gospel the gospel is you come as you are you come with your dysfunction you come with your Brokenness you come with where you're messed up you come even with your good desires that you think are good at the moment but are actually your gods and you come before Jesus and you say Jesus show me how to live I will take all this group of different desires and I will put them together and Jesus what I notice in my life is is I will miss the best that you have for me because I'm chasing good isn't that our story I know it's my story like for years and even now you know having followed Christ for many many years I recognize the Trap is always there for me to turn this fullness of relationship into foreign God if I read my Bible God if I just have this thing and what I do is I pivot into I'm making those things I'm looking to those things to secure my identity I'm looking to those things for security I'm looking for those things looking to those things for stability and the same is true for all of us like being financially stable is good I'm not going to pretend it's not but when you make Financial stability your goal it has become your God good but when you make family the goal of life it has become your God education is good but when you make education your security your stability your identity it has become your God if there is something that is human beings we still struggle with is we love taking good things and making them God things and in doing so we find ourselves gosh God I just feel so exhausted do you know any good thing that isn't God will always exhaust you you go after the good things of life it will exhaust you eventually because what we do is we we find ourselves where we're like oh this is amazing I've discovered this brand new thing and we get really excited about it and we get really like involved in it and we tell everyone about it and it's like oh you should check this thing out you should do this thing and for a while we're really buzzing and we're loving it but then would become kind of like obsessed by it and we get to a point where we're driven by it and let me say this to you and I say this in love that if there's something in your world right now then you could not give up then it's a disordered desire it's not that it's wrong but it's out of order we're called to love God first we're called to place God first because when we put God first good desires become blessings in our world they are an addition to our life they are not the replacement for it nothing good can satisfy if it is not God the second thing that the second trap that I think that we see in this passage is that distracted desires dilute our desire for Jesus so just as we can get sidetracked by going after good things oh I want to speak on this issue because I think actually right now I would say the biggest thing that every single Christian is facing every single human being is facing right now whether you are a Christian here or not is a distraction that we can't [Music] and the way the distraction is destroying our life and leading towards greater dissatisfaction is the fact that what we do is it's not so for us us as Christians it's not necessarily that we don't have a desire for Jesus we desire Jesus we want Jesus but Jesus has become a desire in a group of lots of other desires whereby Jesus is not the center of our life Jesus is not the focus of our life Jesus is essentially a part of our life so rather than it being I am a Jesus follower he is my North Star he is my compass he is who I am following he is the one who shows me what is good what is right if Jesus says this is good then I'm gonna go after it if Jesus says this is what I need to do then I'm gonna do it instead of that what we do is is we decide oh I'm gonna have a little bit of Jesus and they'll have a little bit of this and a little bit this and a little bit of this we've become almost as it were expert cocktail mixers and Jesus is just Jesus is the kind of the potent punch that we start the cocktail with but then we're just like adding loads of others like stuff on and the reason I say it like that is because the thing about a cocktail is it tastes great and that's the thing that fools us is that we've Blended all this stuff together and actually it's like a smoothie it tastes pretty good right you're like well I got a little bit of this and that was good so I got a bit of banana cup with this gotta be this but like the reality is is this is that what happens is is that Jesus becomes diluted in our lives you know and when Jesus becomes diluted in our lives our hunger for Jesus gets diluted to but I believe right now that as a church we are called to be counter-cultural I was thinking about this the other day the way in which it's so easy now to live distracted like confession here guys like cat was doing something on her phone like I think it was yesterday and so she's got her phone out to do something that she needed to do and so like and we'd literally been having a conversation so we paused the conversation because she needed to do this this thing guess what I did did I wait there for the 10 seconds that it took her to complete that task no I did not the first thing I did was oh I wonder what's happening on Instagram right now and and then so like Bear In Mind by the way guys we are in the middle of a conversation and she just had she had to do something so like and it was a legitimate thing but it was me picking up the phone in like 10 seconds and then suddenly like within 10 seconds I've literally checked out the conversation mm-hmm I like she's like babe and I'm like what and I can't even remember I can't even remember what we were talking about like because for because my attention span apparently now pretty much is the same attention span of a three-year-old child I don't seem to have any attention span longer than that and and what I'm realizing is is that if I'm not careful what I'm going to become is I'm going to become the kind of person who even when I get out my Bible do you have your Bible there just to pass me just for a second foreign here's what I mean in terms of distracted living so like I'm reading the living and active word of God whilst at the same time I'm just wondering what's happening on Facebook because of course I need to know at the same time right but you know and I know no I don't and here's the thing that I realized here's the lie that we've been told the LIE is you need to have everything and that saying no to anything is basically the great sin of our time so we're almost encouraged to multitask all the time how many of you now watch a film where you've also got your phone in front of you and you're probably like I'm Googling I mean if you're me you're Googling who the actors are because you rubs it because you're because you're clear I'm like I know that voice I've heard him he's in somewhere so you're like Google and finder oh it's back to oh yeah yes I remember I saw him in that film and then and then like and I have no idea what happened in the past five minutes in the dialogue and I probably I've probably like missed out on the film slightly and I share that with you to just kind of like highlight the fact that what I'm realizing is is that if I'm not careful I am gonna miss the Beauty and the satisfaction and the Deep deep connection that I'm supposed to I actually experience in life because I live distracted where I can't actually be present to anyone or anything now that's bad enough when it's been present to your wife who I remember standing on an altar 10 years ago basically saying that you know this was the person I had chosen to spend my life with and build a life with for the rest of my life now 10 years in all I can give you is 10 seconds babe after that it's a 50 50 throw up you might have my attention there's a good chance you won't but here's the thing like I say that's like slightly joking inside but I'm like how am I ever going to develop a rich relationship with any other human being if I can't be present to them how can someone experience the love of Jesus Christ through you if you can't be present to them and what we see in this woman is this woman has one particular issue but I think in our day and age what we are faced with is we are faced by a multitude of issues that all demand our attention and all seem to be screaming at us I'm important I'm important I'm important take notice of me take notice of me take notice of me and what we see here in what Jesus is doing is he dismantles that lie he basically says to her look you can go to the well of this thing you can go to The Well of this thing and here's the thing it's not that we're it's not that we can't spot like the bad Wells I think actually we're quite good at spotting the bad Wells that is a bad well I am not drinking from that thing but what we're bad at doing is that we're going to go I'm going to go to each and every one of these Wells a little bit here a little bit here a little bit here a little bit here a little bit here and then there's Jesus mixed in there as well it's not that we've forgotten Jesus he's still there we're still drinking from The Well of Jesus but we're drinking from The Well of Jesus but our time is also scattered in all these other areas as well and I think the thing that I've realized is that that's why we're dissatisfied can I be honest here and say that sometimes when I read the book of Acts the hunger the hunger I experience when I read the book of Acts is so real because I know I don't see it in my day-to-day because I'm like God what would it be like to walk into someone else's world and simply because I'm so full of the presence of the Holy Spirit and the person of Jesus I would be able to hear your voice so clearly I would know your Saints me put your hands on that person or speak to that person because this is the word they need to hear what would it look like if I was the kind of person who I intentionally made sure that every single day I went to The Well of Jesus in exactly the same way as I go to The Well of YouTube and we all know that the well of YouTube basically you meant to go there for two minutes but you were you have still been on there for two hours and I'm not talking about like necessarily just social media here I think our work does the same thing sometimes we can not set boundaries when it comes to our work so that what happens is our work fills our minds and fills what we're doing so much so that we are incapable of receiving from The Well of Jesus Christ because our mind is dominated by other Wells and we're never going to experience satisfaction ever and the reason why this matters is it made me realize like if you ain't got the fullness of The Well of Jesus on the inside of you what do we have to say to the world how can we how can we help people who are broken if we are not full of the wholeness of the Holy Spirit how can we be present to people suffering and pain if we are not present to the Wonder and the beauty and the Majesty of Jesus because you and I aren't the answer Jesus is but Jesus wants to fill you so much with the fullness of who he is that like it says in verse 14 you become a gushing Fountain of everlasting endless life that when people spend time with us they experience the love of Jesus The Experience knowing that they are loved and accepted and received and welcomed knowing that and what they see in US is they see a deep well of satisfaction that it's not that we've necessarily said no to everything else it's the fact that we know what our priorities are in life we know what Jesus is calling us to and we are absolutely laser-like focused on being present for all of that stuff and we have therefore developed Rich meaningful connection with one another where we have friendships that go back not just five minutes but five years we have friendships that go back 50 years over time whereby we have been in each other's lives we have seen each other at our best we have seen each other at our worst we have seen each other messed up mixed up all the rest of it broken but we're also on a journey of becoming whole and as we become whole as a group of people we are real we are actually living out that gushing Fountain of Life so it's not just that he's benefiting us it has the power to impact this city it has the power to impact anyone who is dissatisfied with life anyone who is saying I long for satisfaction I want to find satisfaction and we are actually living a kind of Life whereby satisfaction is Who We Are because we've discovered who our true self is and therefore we don't need to go anywhere else that's what this woman discovers you know when she says come and see this man who told me everything what she got freed up to see was who she really was she thought she was just that woman that everyone else talks about she's that woman who's had five husbands and is on to her sixth man you know we can we can translate that into our culture that just that person who whatever but the thing is that Jesus wants to by the power of his living water so every single one of us free when Jesus comes to us and he's saying to us look your your desires are disordered you're living distracted Jesus isn't saying that to us because he wants to scold us Jesus is saying that to us because he wants us to thirst for something more that Jesus wants us to live out of a place where we are thirsty no more and therefore we know what to say yes to we know it to say no to when you are no longer thirsty you will know what is good and what is God but if we do not have that we will always chase good over God and we will live dis satisfied so right now as we come to close and it literally is almost like 12 o'clock I don't know like I just wanna I just want to speak to some people here and I want to I want to say like Maybe you are realizing you have been living with some disordered desires and as you as I've been bringing this message you're aware of that God does some stuff in my life that's in the wrong order and this is a moment for you to come to Garden to say God I want to get that right or maybe for some of you it's like you realize gosh distraction has a hold on me and it's a you know getting free of this stuff all of it starts with actually being real and saying yep I'm struggling with it I'm struggling with dissatisfaction because I'm distracted or yep Jesus I recognize it I've been chasing some good things and I've made them into my gods and I want to put them in the right order again not get rid of them because they're good but put them in the right place or maybe you're someone here and this is the first time you've heard that actually you don't need to live dissatisfied you don't need to live without satisfaction and that actually Jesus has come to satisfy you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music]