The story is told about a pilot who always looked down intently on a certain valley in the Appalachians when the plane passed overhead. One day his co-pilot asked, “What’s so interesting about that spot?” The pilot replied, “See that stream? Well, when I was a kid I used to sit down there on a log and fish. Every time an airplane flew over, I would look up and wish I were flying... Now I look down and wish I were fishing.”
This seems to be a common theme in our world today—people searching for meaning, contentment, and satisfaction. The average person in our world today might not admit that they’re searching for meaning, but in reality they are. I think that’s why we have a lot of the issues we have in our world today. The gender revolution with homosexuality and transgender—it’s people searching for meaning. They are trying new or different lifestyles to bring them meaning. Some people search for meaning in their relationships—that’s why we have so many problems with marriages and divorce in our world today—people look for meaning in one thing and when it loses meaning they look for another. Some people look for meaning in their job, and they put an exceptional amount of time into their job and excelling at their work—because they’re trying to find meaning and satisfaction in those things. For children it could be school work or pleasing your parents—we try to find all kinds of satisfaction in all sorts of things in this life.
What about for believers in Jesus? What ought we to find satisfaction in? What should bring us joy and fullness? Even as believers we are not immune to the draw and pull o the world that allures us into finding our meaning in other things. I like what C. S. Lewis wrote:
He who has God and many other things has no more than he who has God alone. [C.S. Lewis]
Isn’t that such a true statement? What really ought to drive us as believers? It should be God! It should be finding our satisfaction and fulfillment in Him and Him alone! That should be our drive and our mission!
And as we come to our text today in II Timothy 4. I think Paul shares with us his own example of where he placed his focus and how he found satisfaction. In his last letter, as he sees the end of his life drawing near, he passes on to Timothy his protege some vital pieces of information for how he ended well in his spiritual life. And as we unpack this text today, we can learn too from Paul’s example. And so we’re going to look at our text this morning, it’s II Timothy 4:6-8 and from this text I want you to remember one key truth—it’s our big idea for this morning.
Big Idea: Emptiness is the path to fullness