Samara’s Reviews > Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life's Biggest Questions > Status Update

Ch2’s Q: What is wrong with the world the way it is?
Keller’s answer (summarized): We’re all looking for answers, for fulfillment, for things to build our lives on. However, we all struggle with looking for these answers in places that give us none and end up making us feel worse about ourselves and the world around us.

“Jesus is the only savior who will satisfy you, and if you fail him will forgive you.”

Seeing what he did and why he did it will turn our hearts away from the things that enslave us and toward him in worship. That is the gospel, and it is the same for skeptics, believers, insiders, outcasts, and everyone in between.

It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. It is because he died that we can be born again. And he did it gladly.

She found the living water because Jesus Christ said, “I thirst.”

If you build your life on your career, or your spouse, or your money, or your morality, and it fails, there is no hope for you. Do you know why? Because every other savior but Jesus Christ is not really a savior.
If your career fails, it won't forgive you. It can only punish you with self-loathing and shame. Jesus is the only savior who if you gain him will satisfy you, and if you fail him will forgive you.

And if there is a God, you owe him literally everything. If there is a God, you owe him far more than a morally decent life. He deserves to be at the center of your life.

Sin is looking to something else besides God for your salvation.

You don't earn or contribute anything to being born. It is a free gift of life. And so it is with the new birth. Salvation is by grace-there are no moral efforts that can carn or merit it. You must be born again.

“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god... to worship... is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” -David Foster Wallace

I think…most of us aren't able to recognize our soul thirst for what it is. As long as you think there is a pretty good chance that you will achieve some of your dreams, as long as you think you have a shot at success, you experience your inner emptiness as "drive" and your anxiety as "hope." And so you can remain almost completely oblivious to how deep your thirst actually is.