BP13
“None of you get it,” Curly announces.
Then he reins in his horse and stares at his riding partner with steely eyes. “You know what the secret to life is?” he asks.
“This,” he says, holding up one finger. “One thing. Just one thing.”
These words are uttered by Curly Washburn, the leather-skinned, alpha male cowboy in the movie City Slickers while out on a ride with Mitch, the city boy.
Curious, Mitch asks, “What’s the one thing?”
The seasoned sage replies, “That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”
Unfortunately, Curly dies not long afterward and so is unable to offer Mitch any help discovering the One Thing.
So, do you ever wonder what the One Thing in life is? Do you often ponder what’s the elusive quintessential ingredient for your life?
Maybe it’s not One Thing.
Maybe it’s Two Things.
I’m proposing in this blog that life is indeed about Two Things. There’s Two Things we all must address to fulfill our purpose on this planet—for love, for peace, for life. These Two Things are not optional. We all have dealt with them already in one way or another.
The first thing is to fill the emptiness of your heart with something that makes your life worth living. Or, better yet, with Someone who brings all the random pieces of your life together in an amazing way that leads to purpose and joy.
I envision a person’s life as a million individual tesserae waiting to be assembled into a beautiful mosaic by the divine Artisan.
Then there’s the second thing: Getting rid of the badness inside. God’s word makes it clear that we’re all born rebellious human beings who want to do whatever we want to do even if it results in frequent disobedience against God.
These disobedient thoughts and actions leave behind them a wake of guilt and shame just as getting drunk is followed by a hangover. God has built into humans the sin hangover as another one of His smoke detectors warning us that something is wrong and that we need to return to Him for forgiveness and a life-long relationship.
Have you ever wondered if mental illness occasionally might be one manifestation of the sin hangover? Is it possible that swallowed rage and hatred might manifest in depression? That hiding sinful behaviors or trying to be pridefully self-sufficient leaks out in anxiety? That bitterly rehearsing for years the abuse committed against us as children might lead to the inexorable development of a Borderline Personality Disorder?
So, now you know the Two Things that every human must address while they have breath in their lungs: Fill the emptiness and expel the badness.
I see the Two Things as analogous to breathing.
The first stage of respiration is to inhale so the lungs can send via the blood vessels the life-giving oxygen that must be transported to the cells in your body. Without oxygen, glucose cannot be burned as the fuel required by the human body to stay alive.
Did you know that each of the one trillion cells in your body is equipped with a million micro-pumps that maintain the precise chemical balance of sodium and potassium required for life? If these pumps do not receive fuel from the glucose that is burned with the help of oxygen, they will be flooded with too much sodium and you will die.
Inhaling oxygen is critical to life.
The second stage of respiration is exhalation.
When the glucose and oxygen interact, they produce energy that is transferred to ATP. As a result of this energy production via cellular respiration, waste products are generated, namely, water and carbon dioxide. When you exhale, the carbon dioxide is breathed out.
Too much CO2 in your body will kill you, so exhalation is mandatory for life. A high level of carbon dioxide is inconsistent with life.
In summary, we need both phases of respiration to live—inhaling the good oxygen and exhaling the bad CO2.
In a similar way, we need the Two Things in order to stay alive and to avoid death.
Filling the emptiness inside of us by taking in valuable fuel for our souls will lead us to live meaningful lives characterized by a steady state of peace, joy and Presence. Getting rid of the waste products generated by sin will relieve us of the toxic and crushing presence of true guilt, shame and badness, leaving behind a clear conscience.
Believing in Jesus has amazing consequences for your body, mind and soul. Loving Him is not some legalistic religious practice characterized by boredom and drudgery. No, being in a friendship with Him is practical, utilitarian and necessary since you are designed for Him.
He is the only way to fill the emptiness and expel the badness.
In this current post, I’ll address the first thing a bit more—psycho-spiritual-relational inhalation (PSRI). In BP 14, we’ll dig deeper into the exhalation process of the Two Things.
To apply the breathing metaphor one more time, just as the human body requires oxygen to live, so the human soul requires Jesus to live. Oxygen is not optional for physical life. Jesus is not optional for PSR life. We were designed to breathe oxygen. We were designed to take Jesus into our hearts.
These statements about Jesus do not portray some irrelevant and spiritual airy-fairy aspect of life. In fact, we can step away from the realm of metaphysics and state that Jesus is needed in every part of our lives.
People who take Jesus in as their oxygen—not as a compartmentalized religious character but as their best friend and Savior—experience many benefits in this world.
On average, they live longer physically, have higher quality relationships, are capable of developing a peace and a joy that are not contingent on external circumstance, and know where they’re going at the end of their lives so they are much less likely to fear death.
Since we’re designed for Jesus, we function in a totally different stratosphere when He lives within us than when He doesn’t. His Presence in our souls changes everything in our existence—both inside and outside.
He gives us a new heart and new prescription glasses through which we see the whole universe.
It was C.S. Lewis who said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
We all inhale something into our spiritual lungs. We all worship something. We all pursue desires, idols or purposes that we live for. Some people live for football—like every Green Bay Packers fan. Ha. (Maybe even Vikings and dem Bears fans.) They live and die with the success or failure of their team game after game after game.
Other people worship food and alcohol.
Yet others make an idol out of the weekend, vacations to exotic locations, video games, binging on television series, pornography, work success, hunting or maybe even their children who they live their lives through.
Am I saying that these things are all bad? No, not necessarily. Possibly not even being a Packers fan. I’m only saying that if you inhale other things in this world as the primary focus of your life but never invite Jesus into the spiritual cells of your heart, you’re missing the whole reason for your existence.
How tragic to settle for less when you were made for more.
Without Jesus–the One who designed you–your existence and growth will be limited to the size of a one-story house as opposed to a skyscraper.
We are slaves who worship whatever we desire most.
Romans 6:16-17 says, “Do you not know that if you present yourself to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart.”
So, there are Two Things that must be addressed during your sojourn on this planet: Filling the emptiness in your soul, and jettisoning the residual badness you experience that naturally follows from sin and rebellion.
Designer Therapy for Life believes that life begins when you fill the emptiness with the Presence of Jesus. Once He’s on board the vessel of your life, you’re ready to set sail for an amazing life in this world and in the next.
His truth is your boat, His word your rudder, His will for your life the sextant, His Spirit the wind that fills your sails, and His peace the berth you retire to for R & R.
In addition to being the solution to the first thing, Jesus is also the answer to the second thing. He’s a two for one! We’ll check out the second thing more in BP14.
So, it turns out that Curly Washburn may have been half right after all.
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you ~ Augustine