[edited transcript]
Satisfying Your Spiritual Hunger,
Quenching Your Spiritual Thirst
Ramesh Richard, PhD, ThD
www.rameshrichard.com
Greetings World! This message on the soul-hole is an attempt to uncover the hunger in your heart and the thirst in your soul for something that is permanent and free and lasts forever.
The Soul Hole. I'd like to call you the Soul Hole. It's perhaps the most profound phrase by which you can describe yourself. I invite you to give me a mind that's open and a heart that's ready. I would like to end your quest for spiritual food and your pursuit of spiritual drink. I want to dig deep down into your soul. Some of this digging may either be a superficial unraveling, or a deep enough digging to uncover the secrets you have kept hidden in your heart.
Have you noticed that what you see or hear is not necessarily the case? In fact, what you conclude from what you see and hear may not be the case at all. Some time ago, a German scientist dug down fifty meters to find some metal below the earth. The German Institute of Science and Technology promptly concluded that ancient Germans, 5,000 years ago, had a telephone network. The Russians were not impressed by this conclusion, so they asked their own scientists to dig down one hundred meters. They found some glass there, and the Russian Institute of Science and Technology decided that ancient Russians, 10,000 years ago, had a fiber-optic network. The Americans were not easily taken by this new finding either. They too had their scientists dig down two hundred meters and found . . . nothing. They promptly concluded that ancient Americans, 20,000 years ago, had a cellular mobile phone network!
The assumption I'm going to make is this: you'd like to dig deep down, examine your life and arrive at the appropriate conclusions, whether impressive or not. Is that a safe assumption on my part about you? If you honestly examine your life, you'll realize that there is a spiritual hunger and a thirst inside, that you'd like to see filled and quenched. The complexity of the problem points to a hole in your soul that keeps on leaking.
First, let me address some features of your soul hole. Are you silently, even secretly hungering and thirsting after things that cannot satisfy?
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You hunger and thirst for peace-internal peace-and you cannot find it. There are too many anxieties and fears in your life: fear of the future, fear of the unknown, fear of defeat, fear of failure, fear of bankruptcy, fear of a downward-spiraling working situation or fear of a broken relationship. There is also; fear of tomorrow, the fear of today, even the fear of yesterday and finally the fear of judgment. You wish you could possess a peace that the world cannot give. If this is your soul secret, keep reading or register on this Web site, and I'll give you a free and permanent solution. |
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You may carry a thirst for meaning-the meaning of life. You are not sure what life is about. This morning did you get up, and wonder why you exist? What you are doing here? Where you are going? Where did you come from? You go through the same motions and emotions, and one day you will die. You wonder what the next life looks like. If you wish you could find the meaning of life and perhaps even the key to the next life, you have a soul hole. Please keep reading or register on the Web site and we can further discuss the free and permanent offer of a solution. |
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You are hungering and thirsting for love. "Unconditional love." Love that has no strings attached, similar to the love you experienced during your first romance or early years of your marriage. Remember when love made your heart skip-not skip beats but actually skip steps? You wish that original love could be awakened. This would be marvelous. Instead you've turned into a crusty, selfish, hard person. That's because you have tried to stifle your hole in the soul and have the need to pursue love again. If seeking love is a part of your soul's secret, come to our Web site, and we'll give you a free and permanent solution. |
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You may be hungering and thirsting for forgiveness when the guilt lingers. Things that you have done in the past, or are choosing to do in the present haunt your conscience. You have managed to keep others from finding out about your secret life, but your heart bothers you and your mind condemns you. You have succeeded in suppressing guilt well inside your soul, but you wish you could start again or feel clean again. This is due to the hole in your soul. Come to our Web site if that guilt is part of your secret, and we'll give you a free and permanent solution. |
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You are hungry and thirsty for hope since life seems hopeless. The lights have gone out. The questions, the demands, and the needs of life seem confusing, and the options are making you wonder if hope is true and possible at all. This is one of the main questions all human beings ask: is there hope? What can I look forward to? These type of questions reveal a secret in your system-a soul hole that needs to be fixed and filled. Come to our Web site right now, and we'll give you a free and permanent solution. |
The hole in your soul is a stubborn secret which refuses to budge. The strategies you pursue are not going to really help you. Some time ago in Hong Kong, a tourist bought a hand-fan for relief from heat and humidity. She paid five U.S. dollars instead of the five Hong Kong dollars, which is about seven or eight times what local people paid. When she waved the fan in front of her face, it broke immediately. The woman immediately went back into the shop to exchange her broken fan. The shopkeeper said, "No, we cannot take goods that have already been sold." She was able to convince him to sell her a second fan for three dollars. Apparently he showed much reluctance in selling it for a much lower price. The tourist again began to wave the fan, and within minutes the second fan broke too. With anger, she marched back into the store and created an ugly tourist scene, and demanded another fan for free. The storekeeper asked, "Madam, how do you use your fan?" She demonstrated her cooling strategy. He then replied, "Ha-ha, that's not how we do it in Hong Kong. We hold the fan upright, straight in front of our face and wave our face at the fan." The soul hole shows up the stubborn secret reality of every strategy you try to fill it as deficient. You end up fooling yourself. At times, you wonder if you have been attempting the wrong strategies. As you shake your head in dismay, you realize you are sweating further as you lose more of life. Would you like your soul-hole fixed?
My wife and I were in Montego Bay, Jamaica in the Caribbean where I was offered an expensive Swiss watch look-alike for $45. Upon examining the watch, I told the vendor that I could get the same watch in Lagos, Nigeria for $8. He immediately replied, "Sir, the watch you get in Lagos, Nigeria for $8 is a fake-fake. The one I am selling is a genuine-fake because it has the words 'Swiss Made' written on it. That watch is a fake-fake; this watch is a genuine-fake." The only difference between the two kinds of "fakes" is one being more expensive than the other!
If you type the phrase "the soul hole" on the search engine of your heart, you'll find dozens of pages and hundreds of entries talking about the failed strategies you have pursued in order to fill your soul hole. Let me expand on a couple of these fake-fake and genuine-fake strategies for you and examine them very briefly.
Fake-fake Strategy One
One fake-fake strategy is the pursuit of stuff-possessions and things. Stuff to drive with, stuff to live inside, old stuff or new stuff. The only thing that bothers you is that others would like to help themselves to your stuff while you're sleeping. Unfortunately, there's no security system that'll keep you from being stuffed into a coffin or a crematorium some day. Then all of your stuff will be sold off in estate sales, garage sales and antique markets where other people can buy your stuff to add to their stuff. Wealth and possessions and things are fake-fake strategies to fill the soul hole.
Fake-fake Strategy Two
Another fake-fake strategy is pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure consumes many, many people. We find pleasure from many sources-both good and bad, , sanctioned and unsanctioned, or right and wrong sources. The right sources for pleasure could be any object in God-made creation or man-made creativity. Wrong sources for pleasure are every where to be found. Filth that comes across the pages of your mind and the computer are tempting you to engage and indulge. The problem with the pleasure philosophy is that it provides the benefits right away but extracts a cost over the long term. In fact if you pursue pleasure as the guiding principle of your life, you need to be able to distinguish between price and cost. The price of pleasure is far less than the cost of pleasure, especially if you pick it up from the wrong sources. Pleasure is a fake-fake strategy in attempting to fill the soul hole.
Some time ago, two thieves planned, connived and executed a flawless robbery. They broke into a hotel in Oslo, Norway where the fine masterpieces of Edward Munch, the Father of Expressionism, were on display. Or so they thought. Seemingly a first-class robbery, the two made off with . . . worthless photocopies. An Oslo museum which once featured Edward Munch had been victimized earlier by thieves with the originals stolen and eventually destroyed. Upon hearing of that robbery, the hotel manager had replaced all his originals with worthless photocopies! Clearly, lost photocopies are worthless when the original is preserved. Your pursuits may resemble the activities of the hotel thieves as seen in your acquisition, your grabbing, and yes, your stealing. You plan, connive and execute so well, but your best work evaporates into vacuous, worthless nothings.
Genuine-Fake Strategy One
What about genuine-fake strategies? They are a little bit more sophisticated, expensive and intensive. Using knowledge as your means to fill the hole in your heart is a genuine fake strategy. There are all kinds of knowledge: general knowledge, philosophical knowledge, scientific knowledge, religious knowledge, technical knowledge and mystical knowledge. If you have a problem with knowledge, I have a problem with you. Someone once said, "The only people who have a problem with knowledge are college students. If you think the problem of knowledge is too expensive for you, try the cost of ignorance." However, knowledge is not good for results. It is necessary for process, but not sufficient to fill the hole in your soul. Philosophical knowledge, for instance, will give you the ability to ask the right questions, but it will not give you the right answers. Religious knowledge is like putting water into your car when you need petrol or gasoline. Scientific knowledge is good for experiments that are repeatable in controlled environments in empirically observable situations, but your soul hole defies science. What about mystical knowledge? In essence mysticism says you cannot recommend one solution to another person because every thing is so private and ends up being of no help to the rest of us. The limitations of knowledge is that it is good for process, but not adequate for result. What you wwant is necessary knowledge that can be sufficiently available to all, acceptable to all, applicable to all without cost, simply given and received. Knowledge, by itself, is a genuine-fake strategy for the hole in your soul.
Genuine-Fake Strategy Two
Morality is a genuine-fake strategy. Morality could be both positive-doing good works; and negative-refraining from doing bad things. I like positive morality. We need and want good works in order to address the many needs of the world. You should pursue good works because you can help your neighbor down the road, down the street, across the world and across the seas. However, good works are not good as an approach to fill the hole in your soul. Why? We don't know how many good works are needed to fix and fill the hole in the soul. Good works cannot secure the heart hole.
An Australian professor set a single condition to pass his course: His students had to make a perfect one-hundred on the final test, to merely pass. He distributed the dreaded exam and waited for the students to finish. A clever student turned in his paper along with one hundred dollars with a scribble, "One dollar per point." The professor returned the graded test the following week with the mark of 36 and $64 change. You see, a genuine-fake strategy may earn you a 99, but it's still not 100. A fake-fake strategy may earn you 36, but both 36 and 99 are failures. The question is rather clear: Is there a solution, a genuinely true solution, that can be offered to you to simply receive? Is there an answer key I can recommend to you that is uncomplicated and true, straightforward and right? With much delight, I can and I will.
You may not have heard the story of the good old barber in London. A florist came in for a haircut and when she was about to pay the barber, he said, "This week I'm doing community service. You don't have to pay." The next day there was a thank-you card with a dozen roses attached. A policeman came in for his haircut and when he was about to pay, the barber told him too, "No, you don't have to pay. This week I'm doing community service." The next day the policeman sent him a thank-you card with a dozen donuts. Next came an Indian software engineer who got his hair cut and as he was about to pay, the barber said, "No, this is my community service week. You do not have to pay." The next day the Indian software engineer sent in a thank-you card along with a dozen other Indian software engineers.
I certainly understand this engineer's thinking, because once you've received a favor, you want to point other people to this person who has done so much for you, free of cost, and at his own expense. That is exactly the kind of person I'm going to recommend to you as the solution to the hole in your soul. There is not cost to you, but is of great expense to him. I've cleared His offer with Him, and He is very, very willing to do community service for the entire world.
You can't fill the soul hole without fixing it first. You must have it repaired and mended before you fill it or it will develop a leak and everything that you put in there slowly and simply goes away. We have looked at some features of your soul hole and opened some secret boxes in your life. We alaso looked at some failures of your strategies-fake-fake and genuine-fake-and all of them failed to deliver. Let's now speak about solutions for the soul hole. Forgive the pun, but let me get to the bottom of the hole because you have holed yourself in. In fact, your hole is holding you hostage.
But I've got great news for you.
Your soul hole is really a God hole. Your soul hole is immense and God is immense. Your soul hole is infinite and God is infinite. Your soul hole is deep and God is deep. Your soul hole is personal and God is personal. Your soul hole is eternal and God is eternal. When God created humanity, He created us full and perfect, but we disqualified ourselves. We didn't meet His expectations of us. We broke His standards and our own principles. Therefore, God left a hole in our heart. The soul hole became true of every individual on the planet.
As you've read, we've tried to fill that hole with all sorts of stuff-good and bad-but all of them leak through. What we really need is someone who fits the hole in our soul, and fixes it, and then fills it. For this we have to go outside the human situation for all others in the human situation are in holey-situations! We've must go outside for help because one hole-bound person cannot help another hole-bound person. All of us are stuck in the hole. What we need is a solution from outside the human situation, but communicated inside our existence.
I do not want principles and platitudes from outside the human race, I've studied those major prescriptions for the human dilemma. One says, "You know, the reason you have a soul hole is because God wants you to have a soul hole and you are stuck with it." Another says, "The reason you have a soul hole is because of your sin and karma and you cannot be liberated from it." Yet another one says, "You have done too much bad in your life so you cannot fix the soul hole. Stay there" Still another one says "If you do enough good, you can fill the soul hole." How do we know how much good to do. Regrettably, there's the sad view that you simply have to be content and miserable in your soul hole. Your desire to solve the problem is the cause of your misery. Instead of dealing with frustration of trying to solve the problem for inside the human situation, I want an answer from the outside of the human situation to help me on this side.
That is where I have grand news for you. I want to share a claim, an astounding promise. Read this next sentence carefully.
He who comes to Me will never go hungry.
He who comes to Me will never be thirsty.
Can you imagine what is being promised? No one who comes to this person will ever go hungry! No one will ever go thirsty! Let us look at that promise briefly and unpack it phrase by phrase:
First, "He who" comes to me. Anybody can come. This message is for everybody. For somebody reading this message. For anybody who wants to come. This promise applies regardless of what your economic background in a nine class system: upper-upper, upper-middle, upper-lower, middle-upper, middle-middle, middle-lower, lower-upper, lower-middle, lower-lower. It doesn't matter what your sociological class is: high or low caste. It doesn't matter what your psychological background is: free or burdened. It does not matter what your skin color, your national heritage, your gender or your age is. You too can come because the invitation goes out to all. You are welcome. The promise begins with, "Everybody who comes. . . ; he who comes to Me."
Next, we highlight the verb in 'he who "comes" to me. What does coming mean? Coming is just that, coming or arriving as you are-in your heart and soul-openly, honestly, without reservation, without payment, without pride, without ritual, and without religion.
Then we point out the object of your coming inHe who comes to "Me." Just coming, simply as you are-but coming on the terms of the One who is making the invitation. You can't come on your own terms for that guarantees a failure whether you get a 99 or a 36. You're also coming to Him alone. Not Him plus something else, or , somebody else. This coming is focused on "Me." I'll tell you who the "me" soon.
Finally, we consider the promise itself. He who comes to me, "will never go
hungry, will never be thirsty." Can you envision what this promise is offering? Your spiritual hunger will always be fully satisfied. Your spiritual thirst will always be fully quenched. In the original language of the speaker, this promise is made in in the strongest possible terms, "never, ever will you go hungry. Never, ever will you go thirsty."
Come with me to desert Algeria, the sand-laden area of Northern Africa where a traveler got lost. Without direction and being desperate, he frantically began to search for food and water. Tired and continuing to wander in the heat of the desert, he spied a tent about five hundred meters away and barely got there in a weak, slow walk. He pulled at the skirt of the tent and whispered, "Food, water, food, water."
Out came a Bedouin shepherd with his customary headgear and head rope and sympathetically replied, , "Sir, I'm not able to give you any food or water, but I've got a necktie for you as a gift." The traveler gasped for breath and in disappointment murmured, "I am looking for food and water and you are giving me a necktie." The Bedouin shepherd humbly said, "That is all I can give you. I do not carry food and water myself, but I know where you can get food and water-about two kilometers away. You will need this necktie in order to get that food and water." The traveler raised his voice in anger and muttered, "You fool! I need food and water. I'm dying, and you're giving me a necktie." The wanderer summoned as much energy as possible and crawled the next two kilometers to this other tent where he tugged at its skirt, and whimpered, "Food and water." Another Bedouin shepherd came out. In an uncharacteristic formal dress, black suit, white crisp shirt and a black bow tie he said , "You cannot be let in unless you wear a tie." "Sir, I need food and water." The tent owner remarked,, "That's the rule, my criterion. In fact, I've placed people all around two kilometers away giving people free ties who are stranded, needing food and water. If you had received a tie, I could have let you in. These are my terms to come into my tent for food and water."
The story may seem silly, sorry, stupid and sad. But the point of the story remains: you are looking for food and water, spiritually speaking, and you have tried many things to fill the hole in your soul. I am like the first Bedouin shepherd recommending you to understand and accept the terms of the Tent Owner who has plenty of food and water so no one will ever go hungry or thirsty. I cannot prevail on Him to change the rules, but I can show you what will qualify you for the solution. In fact, the first thing which qualifies you is your own understanding of your own disqualification-you don't deserve to get in. For you see, the person who made this promise, "Come to me and believe on me," was God-Jesus Himself. He came from outside the human situation into our human situation and presented the God who does indeed fits, fixes, and fills the hole in the human heart.
Here's a list of his claims and benefits for those who come to him:
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"I am the one who fits the hole in the soul, and if you're hungering for joy, I can give you my joy. I can fix the hole in your soul, and fill it, because I fit it perfectly." |
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If you are hungering and thirsting for peace, God--Jesus, says, "Come to Me. Believe in Me. I fit the hole in your soul. I can fix it. I can fill it with the peace that the world cannot give." |
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You are looking for meaning and direction in life. God-Jesus says, "I can be a shepherd directing you through the course of life. You cannot qualify yourself, but I can qualify you. I fit the hole in your soul because I died for you and I have risen from death for you. I have paid for everything that disqualifies you. I've passed the final exam for all human beings. I've received the 100 marks. I fit the hole in your soul. I can fix it and I can fill it." |
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You are looking for forgiveness. God-Jesus says, "I will forgive your sins. Who can forgive sins except God alone? I will forgive you." God fits the hole in your heart. He will fix it and fill it. |
If you would you like to come to Him, then believe on Him, believe His words. Receive His offer of Himself as the one who fits, fixes and can fill the spiritual hunger in your heart, and the spiritual thirst in your spirit. There are no charges. Come to Him and buy food without money. Why labor for that which will not satisfy? "Come to Me. Believe on Me," says Jesus "and you will never be spiritually hungry and spiritually thirsty again. I am the God who fits the hole in your soul. I will fix it, and then I will begin the process of filling it because the hole in your soul can be made whole again."
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