That feeling resonated with me. My entire life, if something had my interest, it had 100% of my interest. If I’m going to do something, I’m going all the way. My interests, activities, the sports I played, music I listened to, even later in life when choosing a career, I was going all in.
This mindset certainly helped in different parts of my life. I can tell you facts about my favorite punk rock bands, their influences, where they’re from, lifestyle choices of the members, so on and so forth. I can tell you about the pro skaters I looked up to as a kid, describe to you trick by trick their video parts, and even what they’ve said in magazine interviews ages ago. But when I think about my faith in Jesus, sadly it doesn’t go that deep.
Think about the first disciples of Jesus. Jesus found them and said, “Follow me.”
They dropped everything and did so.
Certainly, I am guilty of not pursuing Jesus the way I have pursued other things in life. But the great thing about Jesus is that he has always pursued me. As a young kid, He pursued me. As a teenager obsessed with punk rock and learning new tricks on my skateboard, He pursued me. During my early adult years, focusing on chasing fortune and status, He pursued me. And as a 34 year old, married, and father of four, He is still pursuing me. Even though my pursuit of Him stopped, He never stopped pursuing me.
I’ve thought deeply about this recently. Why would I stop pursuing something that is the ultimate pursuit? The pursuit of Christ will never leave emptiness. It leads to satisfaction. The more I’ve pondered this, I’ve come to one conclusion:
it’s hard to connect with Christ when we are so busy all of the time.
When I say “busy” I mean we’ve forgotten how to be bored. We’ve forgotten how to be quiet. We’ve forgotten how to just sit and be. Since the introduction of the iPhone, we’re no longer allowed to be quiet. We have unlimited access to an unlimited amount of distractions, 24/7. We are so overstimulated from computer screens for work, social media, or binge watching shows that we have actually forgotten how to sit quietly with our Creator and listen to Him.
Busyness and overstimulation stop us from actively pursuing Jesus through all of the distractions in our day to day lives. I spend so much time being busy with work and being a husband and a dad that at the end of the day, I find myself wanting to escape to a mindless scrolling session through social media. Watching people I don’t know, doing tricks I’ll never try. That is not how God designed us to be.
God designed us in His image, to pursue and be in relationship with Him.
I’ve challenged myself in this season to put my phone away, turn off social media, stop the Netflix binges, and spend quiet time in the Word, listening to the Lord. This pursuit hasn’t left me empty or unsatisfied; it has only left me wanting more of Christ. There’s a story of Jesus talking to a woman at a well found in John 4. He tells her that, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The well water in my life–the satisfaction I try to find myself–are the distractions, the overstimulation. The things that I believe will fill me up and satisfy me. But what Jesus is saying is that He is the true source of satisfaction. When we come to him, we won’t ever be thirsty again.
