Embrace Help
I love watching home renovations on TV. So on the rare occasion Iām actually watching TV, I tend to only watch HGTV or The DIY channel.1 One of my favorite home renovation shows is Holmes Inspection. Itās a show about people who have major problems with their homes. Whether itās a huge leak in the basement, a crumbling foundation, or heating/cooling issues, these folks are usually at their witsā end. So, they reach out to the main star of the show, Mike Holmes, to come help them out. Mike is an experienced contractor and home inspector who will come and assess the situation. Then he and his team will fix the issue.
The common thread between all the episodes is that although the homeowner can generally see they have an issue, they tend not to know how deep it goes. During his inspection, Mike will start by examining the clear indicators of damage, like a pool of water on the basement floor. He will then pull up the floor or pull back the walls to find that the real problem is a cracked foundation or a wall that is crumbling because of termites. As an inspector, Mike is able to look beneath the surface to help the homeowners understand the roots of their problems.
It can be hard to recognize the roots of our longing because, if weāre honest, weāre all masters at masking it with certain behaviors or thought patterns. Often this masking is subconscious, as we do our best to navigate life. It is also different for each person, with everyone having a unique set of behaviors or thought patterns they use to immediately soothe any discomfort or pain that might arise in their soul.
For some of us, our value and identity are closely tied to who we are or what we do. For high achievers, when expectations about a particular situation or relationship are not met, we will not only see the situation as a failure, but will attach that label to ourselves. In response, we might experience an onslaught of negative thoughts and speech toward ourselves or others. These overly critical words become a slow-dripping tool of destruction. In the moment, we donāt realize the damage our words are doing to us and others. But the depth of our sadness sometimes produces strong and powerful language that keeps us in a cycle of despair.
Or maybe itās not negative thought patterns for you. Maybe, if you are anything like me in moments of longing, you find it easier to drown out all that negative noise by focusing all of your efforts on seeking comfort. I can find myself believing that, If Iām comfortable, then everything will be okay. All thatās needed is one more meal, one more drink, one more show to binge, one more hours-long session scrolling through social media, one more text from an ex, one more random trip to Target, or one more [fill in the blank with your favorite comfort-coping mechanism]. I wish I could say I havenāt consciously or subconsciously said this to myself, but I have. Iāve learned the hard way that trying to combat pain by filling up on things that I think will make me feel good doesnāt work. As much as you and I might try, nothing can fully ease or soothe our pain but the Lord.
Or maybe you donāt drown out the negative stuff. Maybe you turn it all the way up, and instead of directing it inward, you direct it upward. After all, knowing that God has the power to intervene in your life, but sometimes chooses not to do so in the ways you want him to, is a hard truth to accept. So instead of solemn disappointment, some of us process our real emotions by becoming angry with God, who we feel is responsible for our pain. We raise our fist and shake it at him with a barrage of āWhy?ā questions that are almost entirely unanswerable. We wanted easy explanations. We wanted Godās ways to match our plans. But they didnāt. And now, well, heavenās gonna hear about it.
No matter what it looks like for you in your darkest hour, your longing can feel overwhelming and lies can sound like truth. So please know this, friend: you are not a failure, your pain is not the enemy, and God has not abandoned you. He is present with you in your pain and is able to bring you the healing that your soul desires.
But, in order to experience Godās healing, you and I first have to recognize the symptoms of our longing. In other words, when there is water dripping from the ceiling of our lives, we need to pay attention. Self-deprecation, overly negative thoughts and speech, over-consumption of any kind, and/or anger with God are all signs that we have a deep source of pain that needs to be addressed. And then, instead of only focusing on the surface issue, (for example, trying to indulge in food or entertainment a little less often, or practicing positive self-talk), we have to go deeper than that. We have to get honest about the sourceāthe rootsāof our longing.
But like the folks on that home renovation show I mentioned previously, we canāt go through this examination process alone.
We need help.
Learning from Joshua
Joshua first appears in Exodus 17, where he is chosen by Moses to lead Israel in a battle against the Amalekites. You may already be familiar with his story, but to recap it for you, Joshua was one of the hundreds of thousands of people Moses helped deliver from Egypt. He was born a slave and, through the grace of God, found freedom. Early into Israelās story, Joshua is identified as a leader, and after his victory in Exodus 17, he is chosen to join eleven other men as a spy. Moses tasked these men to explore the land of Canaan, the land God had promised to give Israel. When these spies came back from their trip, only two of them gave a good report. Joshua was one of those men.
During Israelās decades of wandering in the wilderness, Joshua became Mosesās servant and one of his most trusted and courageous captains. For those forty years, Joshua served Moses faithfully. And then, right before Israel is finally set to lay claim to the land of Canaan, Moses shares these words with Joshua and the entire nation of Israel:
āI am 120 years old today. I am no longer able to go out and come in. The Lord has said to me, āYou shall not go over this Jordan.ā The Lord your God himself will go over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, so that you shall dispossess them, and Joshua will go over at your head, as the Lord has spoken. And the Lord will do to them as he did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when he destroyed them. And the Lord will give them over to you, and you shall do to them according to the whole commandment that I have commanded you. Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.ā (Deut. 31:2ā6)
At this moment, Moses is announcing his impending death. He would not be leading Israel through this pivotal moment in their history. Joshua would experience the fulfillment of a forty-year journey without the man who had led the nation through it all. But Moses did not leave Joshua empty-handed. In Deuteronomy 34:9, we are told that, āNow Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Mosesā (niv, emphasis added).
While we see the Holy Spirit permanently indwell believers in the New Testament, in the Old Testament he temporarily indwells certain people to help them achieve specific tasks.2 Joshua is one of these people, and by the power and help of the Spirit, he had been given the wisdom he needed to navigate his season of longing. At any particular point in time, this wisdom would allow him to assess his situation and determine whether or not he was on the right track. Said another way, the spirit of wisdom would help Joshua examine himself, so that he could make the adjustments that would enable him, and Israel, to experience the fullness of life that God had set out for them.
Because of Christ, the same spirit of wisdom that was given to Joshua lives in all believers (Eph. 1:17). The Holy Spirit has been given to us that we might have the help we need to live the life we have been given, especially in seasons of longing. The writers of the New Testament tell us that the Holy Spirit will guide us (John 16:13ā15), teach us (John 14:26), pray for us (Rom. 8:26), and provide us with wisdom (Acts 6:10; 1 Cor. 2:12ā14; 12:8; Col. 1:9). But, like God the Father and God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is also all-Āknowing. Nothing gets past him. In the same way that he did for Joshua, the Holy Spirit helps us examine our lives and make the adjustments we need to experience the joy that, through Christ, is available to us. So, even though we may be able to see our longing, we need the Holy Spirit, as the divine heart inspector, to pull up the floors of our life to show us what the root of our longing actually is.
Friend, if you hear anything at this point, let me encourage you with this: the Holy Spirit is your Helper. You donāt have to go at this alone. He is present with you and wants to help you. Embrace his help.
The Root of Our Longing
The truth is, Godās Spirit should be our primary influence as we navigate our longing. But sometimes we donāt give him much room to help us because weāre already being āhelpedā by a whole host of other influencesāones that have created all sorts of expectations about life. These expectations come from lots of different people and places. Many of them were shaped by our family. For better or worse, our childhood home was the place that developed our thoughts of how the world should function. Itās where we learned what love looked like and what it meant to be an adult.
I wonder how your upbringing shaped your expectations about life. Maybe you learned that you should be treated with honor and dignity, no matter who you are or where youāre from. Perhaps you inherited an assumption that life was supposed to be free from suffering and pain. Or maybe you were raised to desire love, harmony, and oneness. Perhaps none of that is true, and you grew up in a broken home, learning that chaos is the way of the world and only the clever and the tough will make it in the endāthat joy is reserved for those brave enough to leave all that craziness behind and go chase down the good life for themselves.
Because of these influences, you likely expected that in some way life would be full of goodness and joy, whether that life would be handed to you or hunted down yourself. You may have also learned to expect that you will always have control over the outcome of your life. Nothing, including finances, health, and relational commitments, should prevent you from having all that you desire. In the words of the good olā American adage, if you believe it, then you can achieve it!
But your family unit isnāt the only place your expectations come from. You and I have also been heavily influenced by the media. Hereās the truth: you and I probably spend too much time online looking at other peopleās lives! The digital descriptions and images of the āperfectā lives that we are bombarded with on a daily basis shape our expectation of who we should be and what we should have. We see countless pictures showing other peopleās joy and want to have the same. We want what we think they have: their happy marriage, beautiful appearance, perfectly behaved children, or successful career. As we virtually consume the lives of others, our hearts begin to crave attention, accolades, and superiority. We want to have the best and be the best, and anything that falls short of this goal becomes an immediate disappointment.
As Iāve wrestled with my own feelings of longing, Iāve come to believe that whether they are reasonable or not, prolonged disappointment from unmet expectations is caused by the same rootāidealism. This is the belief that what I have is not enough and that true joy would be found in something ābetter.ā In my mind, the good life happens when everything is as I believe it should be, when real lif...
