Long before Jerry Maguire uttered the words “You complete me,” we as the human race have had a penchant to search for fulfillment in anything but Jesus. We look to achievement, entertainment, wealth, glory, excitement, and people to fulfill us, to build us up, to make us feel valued and worthy of our role and place here on this planet.
While chasing excitement and building achievements can leave us in a whole mess of hurt, there is an epidemic I see among young girls, young adult women, and women of all ages and stages that is quietly but aggressively crumbling the foundations of our relationships.
Our need for men is killing our relationships with men.
In Genesis 2:18, God declares that Adam would be complemented by a helper.
The LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Life is richer with someone to share it with. It’s why most of us seek marriage. Even as strong, confident women in the Lord, many of us long for someone to share life with. That’s a natural yearning set in us as God molded dust and dirt to create man, and opened Adam’s ribs to create woman. We were created in perfection for the mutual benefit of one another. What a blessing to have a companion, a friend, a lover! God gives us the gift of someone to share our hopes and dreams with, our joys and sorrows. Someone to lean on in the dark of night and to jump for joy with in the light of victory.
But just because it was created by the Lord doesn’t mean we need it.
In the very next chapter of Genesis, we see the damage sin causes in our ability to enjoy life together by acknowledging the weight we apply to the relationship in the struggle with our sin:
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.Genesis 3:16 (NIV)
Sin in us creates an internal desire to be filled up by a man. The endless searching for the perfect boyfriend, the reducing of relationships to casual sex, the cultural obsession with how to turn his eye is the same creepy crawling of the snake that fooled Eve long ago. Girls, let us not be fooled.
The only man we need is Jesus Christ.
That first Adam, our boyfriends, our good friends, our fathers, our husbands, or any man were meant to be a complement in this life. They cannot fulfill our hearts, our minds, or our lives.
Jesus came into the world to fill it. His light breaks forth in the darkness of sin and death, sorrow and destruction. He is the light no darkness can overcome (John 1). When He is present in our lives through our Baptisms and His Spirit, we have all we need; the rest is just a bonus.
Because of this, the men in our lives do not have to hold the weight of our daunting expectations. That weight is a burden they cannot bear. When we seek for man to fill us, to make us feel good about ourselves and our lives, the pressure on the relationship is like a pop bottle closed too tightly. The struggle and pressure may be contained for a while with the lid, but either the pop explodes out when we open it, sopping our pants and notebooks in too-sweet stickiness, or all the air leaks out over time and you end up with flat pop, gross and a shadow of what it was originally.
The lovers in our life will never fully please us until we know the One who is the lover of our souls.
We know we are in need of salvation, as women and as people. We hurt. We want to trust. We long for someone who cares for us tenderly, who takes our broken pieces and makes us whole.
Jesus is our Savior. He is the Savior of your heart, of your soul, and of your very life.
Run to Him. He is already seeking you, chasing after you with His grace and affection. In His arms, we are free to enjoy the gift of human relationships with men. We appreciate the boundaries God has placed on those relationships, and the weight of fulfillment is lifted, making way for enjoyment in serving Him as Lord together.
The Gospel for you today: He is not your Savior. Jesus is.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.