Left in Want

I’m sure the prodigal son started out being very happy with the decision he’d made. He’d rejected his father, and left his presence. He was out from under his father’s rule, and he could do whatever he wanted. He was free. Luke 15:13 tells us:

“And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.”

It sounds like he was enjoying himself to me. I don’t know everything he did, but I do know he had sex (his brother later tells us that). Sure, he paid for it, but he probably thought it was great at the time. The world taught him to pursue sex above all else, and he did. He had money, and he had sex. Who knows what else he had? Maybe friends who stuck by him as long as he flashed money around. Maybe he gambled, and got a rush from it. I’m not really sure. I’m sure that it made him feel fulfilled. For a time. In the same way we can feel satisfied if we turn from God so that we can sleep around, gamble, use drugs, or just worship ourselves by accumulating wealth. For a time. The very next verse shows us precisely what happens when we turn away from God for such things:

“But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in the land, and he began to be in want.”

Sin will always cause us to be in want. No matter how much we try to fill our hearts with our wealth, our families, our video games, or physical health, or anything else it is wrong to worship we will eventually be left in want. There is only one thing that we can fill ourselves with that will never leave us wanting, and that is the living water offered to us by Jesus Christ. Only with him can we be filled, and stay filled. No matter how we try to hold to other things, no matter how much we try to deny that they don’t really satisfy us, and no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that we don’t need God the fact remains that we do. We need Him if we ever hope to be satisfied. We need him if we ever hope to be filled.