Femi Osunnuyi: Thank you for this question, David. Let me start by answering this way, are you married?
David: Yes
Femi Osunnuyi: Do you love your wife?
David: Yes, I do
Femi Osunnuyi: Alright, describe this love
David: I’ll go to any length to make sure she is okay. I would do everything within my ability and power to make sure that she is satisfied or at the least, happy so she is not lacking because of something that I did not do
Femi Osunnuyi: David, that is a good attempt at answering the question but what you described are proofs that you love your wife, you have not described the love you have for her, you have not described what the love looks like itself. Do you want to try again, so I can know what that love feels like?
David: It is impossible to describe emotions without describing what the emotions lead to
Femi Osunnuyi: Yes David, I agree, and I’ll say it’s the same thing with satisfaction, that is, there are things that words fail us to really describe. To be honest, this is often the problem with people who question a lot of stuff about Christianity, we find that we don’t use the normal way we communicate in life to talk about things. For example, when we are talking about the satisfaction, we feel with food, if somebody says “describe the satisfaction from the food that you just ate and enjoyed” and you start to say, “well, when it went down my throat and into my stomach” and you continue to physically describe it using biology, it sounds ridiculous. You just can’t use words, but you just know that you know. So, David, there’s a sense, in which I can read from the things that you do that you love your wife, but I can’t actually touch it.
You see, I like to think of myself as somebody that can sing a little and my wife will bear me witness. Sometimes, I just like to sing to her and compose things for her, and when tell her “babes, do you know the way I love you? It’s so much that it hurts and overwhelms me, I don’t even know how to put it, see, the only thing that you can do to make me angry with you is if you say something bad about yourself. If you do that, I’ll be very angry with you because I love you so much”
Although, these ‘sweet talks’ don’t get me anywhere, she’ll just be like “what are you saying?” but this is how quite often, words fail us in describing things and when you get to the bible, trying to describe that particular thing that we are looking for even though we know what we are looking for, we just don’t know how to describe it. So, we eventually go into metaphors, that’s why Jesus, the master teacher uses the occasion of something that is tangible to express what he is saying to the Samaritan woman by the well, that is, you know the feeling of thirst, and you know you need water but what if you had such water that you would never thirst again, that’s a description and so, God is using the limitations of words to describe that full satisfaction because the bible is a written text.
However, we all have also experienced things in this life, you know, I’ve gone through tremendous suffering in a way that made me find God in a way that I don’t know how to describe it, like I am suffering but I am content; there is a nearness of God, and so this becomes like a foretaste of what is to come, and so, you can have a foretaste of the fullest satisfaction that is to come because we won’t experience it fully until the new heavens and new earth but you can be going through particular sufferings in this world and yet be content like Paul in the Bible who said I have learned the secret of contentment, I’m okay whether I am in abundance or I’m in little and that’s a picture of what we are going towards; God gives us foretaste of that satisfaction now.
Two chapters after the encounter with the Samaritan woman, Jesus later says if anyone is thirsty, let them come and drink out of me for the people who drink out of me, out of their own bellies will flow rivers of living water, and the interpretation was that he would give his Holy Spirit who is like him, so though we don’t have Jesus here now physically, but as Christians, we have what we call the Holy Spirit and inexplicably, sometimes the Holy spirit pours out the love of God in you and that settles it for you.
You know, one of the wonderful things about having kids is that you have had a terrible day and you come home and just see your child smile or ask you a silly question, and everything about your day just sort of seems alright, nothing has been solved but it just feels alright. Now, that’s what the Holy Spirit does it’s a tangible witness that God is really with us and yet these are foretastes but if we can only fully describe it when we have fully experienced it and we have not yet, we are going to.
Answered by Femi Osunnuyi is lead pastor of City Church, a gospel-centred urban church in the city of Lagos. Because of his passion for church planting and leadership development he also serves on the Lead Team of Acts29 and the Advisory Team of City to City Africa. He is happily married to Tosin and is father to Tofunmi and Timilehin.