The Need: Relationship
Our Need For Relationship
Life is a solitary journey through space and time, and yet each individual spends his or her life longing for union with another. Indeed, if an infant does not have human touch, once outside his mother's womb, he shrivels and dies. That need does not change as the infant grows to adulthood. We spend our lives searching for someone who understands us completely. We hunger for some person to love us for us and not for what we have or what we can do for them. We search to find a person that knows our faults and accepts us the way we are, warts and all. We all have a hole that can only be filled by relationship.
I. The Search for Relationship
The loneliest place to be is in a crowd, for there we realize how anonymous we are to the world of individuals all around us. As we try to interact we get the feeling that these people that are close enough to touch don't want to know us. True, they need to be understood and loved as much as we, but they seem to be looking in other directions from where we stand. However, the real truth is that most are afraid of the strangers that they meet. They are afraid that if they open up and are vulnerable, they'll be rejected. And they just cannot stand that! In a strange way, they think that it is just not worth taking the risk. They may abhor being alone, but it is better than someone seeing them for who they really are, and not accepting the person that hides inside them.
So here we are, our innermost being encased in these bodies of flesh and bone, concealed and begging to be released from that which separates what I am from what you are- my essence from your essence. Not that flesh and bone, formed by an all-wise God, is evil. This is far from the case. However, apart from love, communication, and connection, those bodies become stone walls surrounding us and forming prisons, built with the mortar of fear.
Who Will Love Me for Me?
II. The Fear of Intimacy
Most of us fear intimacy. We are afraid to reach out; terrified of rejection. We know us better than anyone else does and sometimes we ourselves reject who we are. We dwell on all the mistakes, sins and just plain dumb things that we've done over the years. And we have a fear of being found out. We maintain a dread that someone will truly see us and realize how inadequate we really are. So we hide certain things but at the same time go on searching and searching for perfect connection in a world that lost this ability centuries before we were born, in a place called Eden.
III. The New Hope for Relationship
Just as one man Adam lost relationship (Romans 5:12); another made it possible for us to regain it (I Corinthians 15:19-21). The founder of a new humanity was and is the Second Person of the Trinity, the infinite God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He became like us so that we could become like Him. He, the Second Adam, died for the sin that separated us from a holy God and causes separation among mankind as well. It is only through Him that the longing of the heart for intimacy and relationship is completely fulfilled. And He is the only one who knows us fully but loves us anyway. He accepts us, warts and all.
The only requirement is that we come to Him freely and accept His gift of love and intimacy, given by means of Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross. We may choose, but be warned that the alternative is an eternal separation, an eternal void that will never be fulfilled (John 3:16-18;36).
In Jesus and only Jesus will the feelings of aloneness and separateness be one day completely eradicated in the New Heaven and the New Earth. There will come a day when there is no more mourning the loss of a loved one, no more crying over broken relationships and no more pain of separation. In Jesus Christ, the great need of humanity to fill that void of intimacy will finally be done away with forever. And It will be replaced with an eternity of love and relationships with God and His redeemed people.
Conclusion
If you've been searching for love and relationship and have come up void all of your life, then come to the God who longs for a relationship with you. It's not because He needs it Himself, but because He knows you do, and He loves you enough to share Himself with you. He wants to give you the desires of your heart. He wants to fill that void with His presence. It has been said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. Jesus said: "Come unto me you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28). That is a promise from the God of the universe. And He never lies. So come to Him today. It will be the greatest decision you've ever made in your life!
© 2012 Jeff Shirley