Christian Living

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Love is one of the most basic of all needs that we have as humans. We all have the need to be loved. Sometimes we put on an act and give the impression that we don’t really need anybody but the fact is that we all need to be loved. Without this need fulfilled, there is a gaping void within us. There are times when this need isn’t fulfilled in the way that we need. This search for love and acceptance can, unfortunately, lead us to looking for love in all the wrong places. In one of his classic songs, Waylon Jennings sings:

“I was looking for love in all the wrong places
Looking for love in too many faces
Searching your eyes, looking for traces
Of what.. I'm dreaming of...
Hopin' to find a friend and a lover
God bless the day I discover
Another heart, lookin' for love”

When we choose to love someone, we are also taking a chance, a gamble. We always run the risk of getting hurt. Unfortunately, some of the people we choose to love don’t always return those same feelings. I think we’ve all experienced that rejection. I remember many times in school when I would just be in love with a in one of my classes. I was painfully shy and it would take a week or so until I finally got the nerve to share my feelings with the . In most every occasion she would not share those feelings. Sometimes the would be awfully cruel in her rejection of me. I would be devastated. Rejected love is a tough obstacle to overcome.

In some of the more serious cases, abused people often look for a love they haven’t experienced. They are hungry for love. They look for love in a person that falls short in returning those feelings. Many times this failure to find love is due to the fact that there is a void in the person’s life. They had an absence of love from a parent or other significant person. A son or daughter may seek all of his or her life for someone to fill the love that was absent from a mother or father. This void of love often results in failed marriages and relationship problems with other people. Life becomes such a because that satisfaction of love missed can’t be found in a person. No one can cure the need for love that is needed. The one true love that can fill that void is only found in Christ.

Yes, Christ is love but this cliché we are told that God is love seems rather difficult to comprehend. Although we know God loves us, we are still physical beings. We need a reassuring touch or other physical confirmation of that love being returned. I’m not talking about something , but we all need a physical confirmation of love. Love is such a powerful force. Without it we feel lost and lack an identity. Yes, we know that God is love but we need people that can strate that love. We also know the truth of John 3:16 that God loved us so much that He sent His own son to die for us but this didn’t happen in the time that we live today. We read it in the Bible or hear it from a sermon by a preacher. I’m not saying that we don’t believe it but just that we need to experience that love in a physical or emotional way.

The woman at the well had a void in her life. (John 4:1-26) She couldn’t find satisfaction in life. She had several husbands but still couldn’t fill that love that she needed in her life. Jesus recognized this when he found her at the well. Thinking perhaps Jesus was yet another man offering another line to her, she was puzzled at the “living water” that Jesus offered. It wasn’t long before she realized that Jesus wasn’t just another man with a line for her. He truly offered a peace that no other could offer. Whether it was a void of love from her earthly father as a child or betrayal by one of her husbands, she now found the quenching to her thirst in what Jesus offered.

Many of us have been at that well. I have also found myself at that well before in my own life as a man needing approval and something I was seeking desperately from my parents. I thirsted for this approval in the wrong place. At a significant “well” in my life I found a Savior that offered a relationship, not a religion. It wasn’t through a denomination or the family heritage of church service. It was – and always has been – about a man who died for me. When I had exhausted other means to quench my “thirst” for approval, I met Jesus who offered me a drink of that living water. I now know the source of that living water! Was it something physical that I could touch or water I could actually drink? No. It totally surpassed anything physical. It totally engulfed my whole being. From that moment on, I have realized that the thirst of my soul can’t be quenched by anyone else or anything. Jesus himself can only quench this thirst.

Are you looking for love in all the wrong places? Do you keep looking to fill this void of love through a relationship with a man or woman in your life? If so, you are looking in the wrong place. Look unto Jesus today He is the love of your life.

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