Tuesday, February 14, 2012
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I won't be going to a Lady Gaga concert soon, but tons of people have and will. To some, that headline-generating singer is just another cultural side show. But at least for now, the entertainer known for her bizarre outfits and her wild performances is an A-list celebrity and a cultural icon.
And it's all too easy to forget she's a person. Like all of us, a person with a story. She's starting to tell some of that story. As I read part of it yesterday, I honestly felt sad. For all of her stratospheric success in the spotlight, there's apparently a lot of hurt offstage.
In a Vanity Fair interview, Lady Gaga says, "If I'm supposed to end up like some crazy casualty, then that's my destiny...I love show business. I need it. It's like breath! When the spotlight goes off, I don't know quite what to do with myself."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Sad Success."
I thought, "Man, that's not just Lady Gaga. The 'spotlight' eventually goes off for all of us. And when it does, it exposes the hollowness inside." The "spotlight" that's "like breath"? Well, that could be a relationship that made you feel valued, or maybe a job - a position that gave you a sense of worth, children who needed you and validated you, an arena of accomplishment that gave you some recognition.
But every spotlight eventually goes off and leaves you with whoever you were and whatever you had before there was a spotlight. As one former Olympian said, "If you don't know who you are before you win the gold, you won't know after the gold is in your hand."
In the interview, Lady Gaga went on to talk about another sadness that many know all too well - disappointing relationships. She said, "I have never felt truly cherished by a lover. I have an inability to know what happiness feels like with a man. It starts out good, and then they hate me. I had a man say to me, 'You will die alone in a house bigger than you know, with all your money and hit records, and you will die alone.'"
That's brutal stuff. Of course, you don't have to have a big house, or big money, or a big name to know how empty a relationship can leave you feeling. Because it was supposed to answer your loneliness and satisfy your heart. But even the best of relationships turns out to be good, but not good enough; not to fill the hole in your heart.
Our word for today from the Word of God, John 4:13-14. They tell us that this is where Jesus comes in. He met a woman at a desert well. Her restless heart had never found rest in her serial relationships with men. Jesus told her that whoever kept trying to satisfy their thirst from human "wells," He called them, would always be "thirsty again." "But those who drink the water I give him," He said, "will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life." What you cannot find at the top of the mountain, what you cannot find in the depths of a relationship, can be found in the love of Jesus Christ.
For 2,000 years, Jesus has been the sustaining fulfillment for millions of us when life's spotlights go off. He's been the one love that's cherished us like no other, to the point of laying down His life so we wouldn't have to die for our sins. Until we commit ourselves to this God who gave His life for us and then rose from the grave to be alive to come into our life, our hearts are, in the Bible's words, "like the tossing sea which cannot rest...there is no peace" (Isaiah 57:20-21).
You tired of that? You tired of the restlessness? You tired of empty? You tired of disappointing? It's time for you to walk into the love you were made for; the love that sent Jesus Christ to a cross for every wrong thing you've ever done. Today, reach out and embrace Him. Grab Him! Go to our website would you? It's called YoursForLife.net, and there we'll walk you through beginning your personal relationship with Him.
There's good news! At the point when we are feeling the aching hole in our heart, we're one step away from the only One who can fill it.