The Longing That Lingers

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

On the first Sunday of a new year, Williams preaches to the feeling nobody can quite name: you do everything you know to do, you get the thing you prayed and begged for — and when you get there it still is not good enough, because something is still missing. His text names it. "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?" (Psalm 42:1-3). There is a longing that will always be there until you put what is supposed to be in that place.

The sermon's foundation is a law of the creation: emptiness longs to be filled. In the beginning the earth was without form and void (Genesis 1:1-2), and God did not leave it empty. Adam in a perfect garden had everything he could ever want — and something was still missing: "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18). Even with a wife, the proof that the emptiness remained is the forbidden fruit itself: if Adam and Eve had had everything they wanted, they would never have craved what God forbade. Humanity has an insatiable appetite for the things it cannot have, but what it actually needs is a living God.

Against that longing the world runs a lifetime of bad prescriptions. From the teenage years on, everybody knows what you need — the phone, the license, the degree, the money, the 401k, the big house, the spouse — and each acquisition only raises the sermon's two-word question: then what? A husband cannot fix it, a raise cannot fix it, a prescription cannot fix it; man shall not live by bread alone, because bread is only ever an appetizer. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness" (Matthew 5:6) — the hunger itself is the diagnosis, and it is only answered in him in whom "we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

The altar call distinguishes knowing God is present from feeling him: if you have filled the God-shaped place with other things, there is no room to feel him. Empty it out — repent of loving the job, the career, the money more than God — and he will fill the void with his Spirit. The final word he leaves for the year is a single imperative: when his presence comes near — in a tug to fast, to give, to pray thirty more minutes, to worship — respond.