Summary
Restlessness: What Are You Looking For?
Every human heart carries a restlessness it cannot silence on its own. Augustine named it plainly: "You made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Pascal described the same reality as a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person—one that no created thing can fill, only God made known through Jesus Christ. Whether dressed up in pop lyrics asking "Do you know where you're going to?" or in the wandering confession that "everybody's looking for something," the diagnosis is the same. We are searching, and the search is the symptom of a soul made for God.
That restlessness is exactly what Jesus addresses with His first recorded words in John's Gospel. In John 1:38, as two of John the Baptist's disciples begin to follow Him, Jesus turns and asks, "What are you looking for?" It is a piercing question—another way of saying, "What do you want?" Before He preaches a sermon or works a sign, the Lamb of God puts the question of the human heart into the open air. He asks it of Andrew and John. He asks it of every reader who comes after them.
The setting matters. John the Baptist, the prophesied forerunner, points to Jesus and exclaims, "Behold, the Lamb of God" John 1:36. For people shaped by Exodus 12 and the daily sacrifices of Leviticus, the title "Lamb" carried weight: blood on the doorposts, judgment passing over, sin covered. Hebrews 10 declares that where the priests' repeated sacrifices could never take sins away, Christ offered a single sacrifice for sins for all time and sat down at the right hand of God. The One who asks "What are you looking for?" is the same One who answers the question with His own blood.
The disciples' reply is telling. They do not ask for a doctrine, a program, or a strategy. They ask, "Rabbi, where are you staying?" They want to be with Him. Jesus says, "Come and see" John 1:39, and they remain with Him. In that simple exchange the pattern of Christian life is set: the restless heart finds its rest not in an idea about Jesus but in His presence, in abiding with Him. Andrew immediately goes to find his brother Simon and announces, "We have found the Messiah" John 1:41—the search has ended, and now it overflows into witness.
John's first chapter piles up titles to make the point unmistakable: Rabbi, Son of God, King of Israel, Son of Man, Messiah, Lamb of God. Each name says something the restless heart needs to hear. He is the Teacher who tells the truth, the King who reigns, the Son who reveals the Father, and the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Power, money, status, education, relationships—none of these can fill the void, because the void is shaped like Christ. As Restlessness - What Are You Looking For? puts it, the search is over when we rest in the Beloved. The question Jesus asks is also, in Him, the question Jesus answers.
Video citations
- Restlessness - What Are You Looking For? 1-18-26 — Would you open your Bibles, please, with me, to John the first chapter for our time in God's Word today, if you're using a Pew Edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that in the New…