If teen angst was a song Drivers’ License by Olivia Rodrigo would be it.

What do we do with brokenness and pain?
One of the worst things humans do is to run towards actions that heighten our pain rather than reduce it, We medicate, we fill our schedule with things, we engage in reckless behavior. All of it to trying to stop the pain of being rejected, abandoned, and hurt.

Why do we experience hurt? Couldn’t God just snap his fingers and fix it?
- Sometimes people make bad choices that hurt us.
- Sometimes the fallen state of the world wreaks havoc.
- Sometimes we make bad choices that hurt us.

Jesus never promised a pain free life.

John 16:33
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

It would have been easier to have everything fixed for us, but we really learn a lot when we are in crisis.

TitkTok this week, I saw a clip from TD Jakes:
"Everything I learned about God that mattered came through a crisis not a promotion, not an advancement, not a check in the mail, not the accolades of man, that doesn't teach you anything. Going through sickness and pain and chaos and trouble and heartbreak and disgrace and embarrassment and frustration and humiliation and depression and grief unbearable, that's where I really learned who he was."

Whenever you are in crisis, there are three things I really want you to focus on, and if Olivia Rodrigo would have focused on these things, perhaps the devastation wouldn’t have been so big.

1. God, only you complete me
When we hear this phrase, we almost always think about a person, and if you watched Jerry McGuire, you think of Dorothy. “Dorothy, you complete me.” “Shut up. You had me at hello.”

"Completing another person is a fantasy. The reality is love is meant to complement your great life, not create it.”
Deidre A. Prewitt, Marriage Counsellor and Therapist

Who REALLY completes you?
Colossians 1:15-23
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. 21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

The Message
15-18 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.
18-20 He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so expansive, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.
21-23 You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message.

If anything else could complete you, then why would you need Jesus?
If a noun can complete you, then doesn’t it stand to reason that a noun can destroy you? If you build your whole life around the notion that your good looks are what make you complete, who are you when they fade? Or if money is the motivator, what happens when you go broke, or worse, have all the money you can spend but the path behind you is a trail of brokenness because money was all that mattered?

Whatever that thing is that completes you, WHO ARE YOU if you lose it?

But when Jesus completes us, we are whole in this life and the next. We are lacking nothing.

What is it that completes you?
If it is Jesus, let’s go!
If it isn’t, then how’s that working out for you?

2. God, only you satisfy
Often times, satisfaction and reciprocation go hand in hand. You might hate your job, but you are satisfied when you get the check the job provides. You might feel disadvantaged in a relationship but certain benefits help bring satisfaction because there is at least some reciprocation. But what happens when there is no reciprocation, or you stop seeing the benefit you are getting from your engagement with that person? This is when relationships break down, be they emotional, work related, etc.

Success is finding satisfaction in giving a little more than you take. Christopher Reeve

That’s beautiful and is in large part true, but when something takes exponentially more than it gives, then what?

This is what we see in this song. This girl obviously loves this guy and that is clear in this line:
- And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone
Maybe this fella being so okay is a defense mechanism to keep him from despair! Maybe he really loved her but for whatever reason he couldn’t stay in the relationship. Or maybe he didn’t love her.

So what is she left with in this song? A broken heart, sure, but also routine trips to the places they were to try her best to keep what she loved alive. Maybe this is just a silly song about a teenage crush, or maybe we can really learn a lesson here.

I don’t know what is more heartbreaking, the fact that she is hurt, or the fact that she is still hung up on something that didn’t love her back. Something and not just someone. She wasn’t just in love with the dude, she was in love with the idea of him as well
.
Too easily we get our identity from things we love and that can be easy because those things we love provide a sense of security and affirmation. But sometimes we get in trouble because those things we love don’t always love us back so we are letting something that has no concern or care for us define us.

What is love, really? A feeling of deep affection? Love is an action based on a conscious decision to value others. When we love we make a conscious decision to value someone or something but what about when that person or thing doesn’t reciprocate? If we’ve made them our source that completes us, where we get our satisfaction, even our identity, we are lost. So she’s left with car rides and flashbacks to help her keep a grip on an idea that left her at least a week ago.

What am I saying here?

Be careful you don’t spend your life chasing something that will never love you back.

“Drivers License is a rallying cry for everyone who’s ever pined for someone who didn’t love them back.”

Too often we see this a a person and too little we see this as a thing. Expectations, ambition, I’ll Show You mindsets, sin. These will never love you back. The tradeoff for these is not satisfaction, its death. How? Expectations elevate a mindset over God’s thoughts about you. Ambition drives you recklessly into a future that isn’t God’s best. Living to prove something too often results in fulfilled prophecy. Sin simply begets death.

God has a better plan for you than a noun completing and satisfying you.

I can’t help but think of the woman at the well.

John 4:7-15
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Maybe her name was Olivia Rodrigo and she’d just gotten her drivers’ license as well. Or maybe she was like us sometimes. We chase so hard after things that we think will satisfy, things that won’t love us back, things that won’t make conscious decisions to value us. And rather they take advantage of us, use us, hurt us, and leave us

MY POINT: We have to be willing to walk away from things that are taking life and embrace the only thing that brings life.

I don’t care how good a relationship you have, only Jesus satisfies the depths of your soul. Your job or title, money or possessions, they don’t give life. Your clinging to hurt and pain, unwillingness to forgive or let go, your defense mechanisms, you think they are helping you, protecting you, loving you, but they aren’t! They are using you, hurting you, holding you back.

What Olivia Rodrigo needed wasn’t a drivers license. What she needed was someone to stop her and say, listen, I know you’re hurting, but you are worth more than pining over something that couldn’t see the value in you! I know we weren’t perfect but you’ve never felt this way for someone? If there is one thing I have learned about Jesus is it that whatever love I have felt and experienced here on this earth, it pales in comparison to how much he really loves me.

Here’s my plea today:
Turn around. Drive home. Forgive. Let go. Move forward.
How? It has to start with embracing the only love that satisfies - Jesus
and by embracing the truth that only he completes you.

Let me pull one more lyric from the song:
And all my friends are tired
Of hearing how much I miss you,
but I kinda feel sorry for them
'Cause they'll never know you the way that I do

What if they did know him? What if they weren’t surprised that she was doubting herself, questioning her own value, comparing herself to others (that blonde girl), having her insecurity exposed. What if they weren’t surprised by his unfaithfulness?

Her singular focus on what she thought completed her, satisfied her, blinded her to the truth the others’ may have already known about.

Can you relate?

God, only you complete me
God, only you satisfy

3. God, only you are faithful
Faithful - stedfast in allegiance and affection.

Why this point? I could have gone a few ways here.
When we find ourselves in a scenario like I’ve described today, we really need faithfulness from God.
His faithfulness steadies us in times of chaos.
2 Thessalonians 3:3
But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.

God’s faithfulness often comes in two forms:
- Through himself through his Word, the leading of the Holy Spirit, or his voice,
- Through godly people in your life

Through Himself:
- The Word
When you don’t know what to do, where to go, how to respond, when you feel lost and confused and abandoned and devalued, the Word will always remind you of who he says you are, and will provide a path for you moving forward. Like last week we mentioned that is cuts even to divide the bone and marrow. This means the word can get in a really isolate, expose, and deal with issues that are not his will for you. You NEED this!

- The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit will remind you of your sonship, of his love for you, and he will guide you into all truths, and as 2 Peter 1:3 says, His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.

- His voice
One word changes everything and sometimes that comes through the written word, sometimes through the unction of the Holy Spirit, but sometimes it is that still small voice.

Godly people
You can never be who God created you to be in isolation.

Proverbs 18:1
Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.
- The isolated seeks his own desire. This is like Terri Clark's "I Just Want To Be Mad For A While." When you are hurting and broken, isolation soothes your flesh because it gives your feelings a place to stir and ferment, and that process heightens every negative emotion you are feeling in that moment.
- He breaks out against all sound judgement. Isolation ignores the very thing God is providing for you to remember no matter the circumstance, no matter the pain, God is present, he loves you, and he is faithful.

How does this song change if she had a godly friend in the passenger seat?

How does your life change if you had a godly friend in your passenger seat?

What if her friend told her during the whole trip:
I know you are sad, I get it.
But you are so valuable to God.
You are valuable to me as my friend.
I hate he couldn’t see in you the beauty God created in you.
You are so focused on what we can’t see in him that you’ve forgotten what is in you.
God made you, not this guy.
God has a plan for you, not this guy.
And while I know it hurts having someone reject you and say they don’t love you, to leave you, I just want to remind you of how faithful God is
I want to remind you how loved you are and how much you mean to us, and even to God.
He knew this was going to happen.
Maybe he is wanting to use this to remind you of his faithfulness and even to clear the way so you can walk out the plan he had for you all along.
I’m here. God is here.
He’s faithful and you are not alone.

Maybe you needed to hear those words more than she did...

So where do we go from here?

We acknowledge the hurt.
We confess our part in it.
We embrace God’s truth, that only he comforts, satisfies
We lean into God’s faithfulness through him and godly friends.
We release our pain back to the Cross, knowing Jesus has a plan.
We forgive, others AND ourselves, and move forward.

This is a silly teenie bopper song but it highlights a pretty serious scenario.

I’m not saying ignore your hurt and just get over it.
I am saying that whatever your chasing right now, wishing it was different, whatever you have loved but never loved you back, whatever convinced you it would complete you and satisfy you, it is time to embrace the truth:

It was never good for you to begin with.

Here’s your chance to start anew.
Here’s your opportunity to embrace God’s plan for your life.
Here’s your moment to stop chasing what was never meant to be and embrace the complete, faithful, satisfaction that you can only find in Him.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?