OVERCOMING FEELINGS OF FUTILITY – PART 1

Solomon spoke for many people of his generation and our own when he wrote: [Everything is meaningless, says the Teacher, utterly meaningless! What do people get for all their hard work? Generations come and go, but nothing really changes. The sun rises and sets and hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south and north, here and there, twisting back and forth, getting nowhere. The rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows again to the sea. Everything is so weary and tiresome! No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.] -- Ecclesiastes 1:2-8. Leonard Woolf, literary editor of The Nation wrote: [I see clearly that I have achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human anthill during the past five to seven years would be exactly the same if I had played Ping-Pong instead of sitting on committees and writing books and memoranda. I have therefore to make a rather ignominious confession that I have in a long-life ground through between 150,000 and 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work.] Just the kind of people you want to invite to your next party? Both Solomon and Leonard Woolf sound like they have reached the point of despair where there is no return. They have decided that there really isn’t any meaning to life, any accomplishments they have made ring hollow, so what’s the use in even trying? Have you ever felt that way? What’s the use of even getting up in the morning? Why work when I know I’ll never get ahead? Why make such an effort raising my kids in the right way if they’re going to end up blowing it anyway? Or why try to live the faithful believer’s life since I always seem to fail at it? If you feel that way it’s obviously not a good thing, but I can tell you that you are in the company of many people in our generation, both believers and non-believers.

The dictionary defines futility in this way:

1 -- The quality of having no useful result; uselessness.

2 -- Lack of importance or purpose; frivolousness.

The fact of the matter is that most of us have felt this way at one time or another, but we usually get over it, but there are those people that find themselves living with feelings of futility day in and day out and it is something that needs to be overcome if they will ever live the fullness in Moshiach that they were designed for.

What Causes Feelings of Futility?

I have four of the most common causes I want to briefly share with you and then we can look at some practical steps to overcome. This list is hardly exhaustive, but it should help us get a basic understanding of the problem.

A -- Unfulfilled Dreams:
Maybe you thought when you became an adult you would rise to the top of the corporate ladder, be a sports star, have kids that were perfect or be a spiritual superstar. But at some point, and time you’ve come to the realization that life isn’t everything you thought it was going to be and you haven’t even reached stage 2 of your 10-point plan. And instead of dealing with life’s circumstances and the reality of the moment, you dwell on what might have been if you’d had the right lucky breaks, married a different spouse, or had made different decisions in the past. So now you find yourself living in the drudgery of the life that is, rather than the life you always wanted.

B -- Confusing Success with Significance:
A number of years ago after the England rugby team had won the World Cup; their Coach made this observation: [The overwhelming emotion in a few days, among the players on the England rugby team, was how empty that goal was. There must be something more.] Some of you have reached the goals you have set in life, but when you reached them, you discovered that success is fleeting, and a hollow feeling takes up residence within your soul. You have confused success with significance and rather than focusing on the accomplishments that really mean something; like being a good dad or mom, sticking to and living by the believer’s faith ethic or good conversation with friends, you have let the success syndrome keep you reaching for just a little bit more.

C -- Personal / Spiritual Failure:
All of us have experienced failure at some level, but some have experienced a deeper failure than others or one that is not popular or accepted by our culture. You might have been fired from your job, had a messed-up marriage, had kids that rebelled against your values or given into temptation and blown your faith testimony and credibility with others. And instead of accepting that some failure is good because it leads to growth or accepting the forgiveness that YHVH offers when we’ve turned away from Him, we begin to wonder if it’s any use at all trying to be who Elohiym wants us to be.

D -- Lack of a Support System:
A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need. -- Proverbs 17:17. Maybe you have read that verse and said [That’s true!] but the problem is that you don’t have that loyal friend to help you through the tough times of life – no one to encourage you, help dust you off and put you back on your feet. And so, you say: [What is the use in even trying? No one is there to help me.] Now, as I said, we could probably come up with some more reasons, but this is probably enough to get us started – anymore and you will all leave here depressed. But now that we’ve identified the problem what we really need are some…

Steps to Overcome:

If you are at this point in your life, you know how unhealthy it is for you and others around you, so what can you do about it? I have a list here of four steps that will help, but I’m not promising an automatic cure, it’s taken you some time to get this way and it is also going to take some time to change things back to normal.

1 – Renew Your Commitment:
If you are a Moshiach follower, at some point in your life you made a commitment to follow Yeshua Moshiach as Adonai. And whether you feel like it right now or not, you’ve got to renew that commitment and let YHVH know that you are willing to not only make the effort to overcome, but with His help you will overcome. Once king David had a horrible personal failure when he committed adultery, yet he prayed to YHVH in this way: [Restore to me the joy of Your Salvation and grant me a Willing Spirit, to sustain me. -- Psalms 51:12. Did David claim to be filled with joy when he prayed this prayer? No, he was absolutely miserable, so he asked Elohiym to restore the joy he had once known. Did he think he could do this on his own? No, he knew that he was weak, so he asked YHVH to sustain him on his journey back to wholeness. Part of the reason some of us are suffering from futility is because when we have been knocked down, we have relied completely on ourselves to bring us back up. And every time we try that, we will fail. We need to call on YHVH to restore us and to give us the strength we need to make it. [YHVH] renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honour to His Name. -- Psalms 23:3. Whether you are able to accept this as true or not at the present moment, Elohiym wants nothing more than to restore your joy and renew your strength and give you the power and ability to overcome. Please let down your guard, renew your commitment and allow Him to do a new work in your life.