How we strive to satisfy our soul's desires! We feel a need and try to fill that need or emptiness ourselves: go shopping, buy new "toys", work harder, gain more prestige, perhaps pursue a new relationship. When we become aware of an emptiness, we feel it must be filled and we run around trying many things or ways to satisfy. But the truth is we're looking in the wrong direction and we're missing the true reason for our emptiness. Temporary, earthly things can never satisfy the need that can only be filled by our eternal God. Everything else may feel like a quick fix but the depth of our need can only be addressed by God.
God placed within us our need for him. We may spend our life running after love, things, fame, prestige, money, etc, thinking that's all it will take to satisfy, only to find the emptiness still there. We see it all around us in people's lives spinning out of control, or in a desperate striving that never stops. When is enough enough?
Only the one who created us, our deepest innermost parts, can answer and fill our deepest needs. It's simple, really, and we can make it so complicated! Be still and know that I am God (Ps. 46:10). Or, as in the NASB version, Cease striving and know that I am God. Stop this endless rat race like the hamster on its little wheel. Cease striving. KNOW that he is God.
God's goodness is enough. HE is enough. He is the sufficiency for all our needs and it is enough. God's goodness is abundantly more than we can ever ask for or imagine (Eph. 3:19); there is no limit and no end to the love, mercy, grace and goodness of our God. The searching, running around, restlessness, striving, and constant reaching stops here, in the presence and fullness of our Lord. In Ephesians 1:3, we read that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. How astonishing that is! Every - not some - every spiritual blessing. Nothing is left out or held back. What an amazingly good and generous Father we have.
He promises to satisfy every weary, worn out, beaten-down soul and to replenish every languishing, weak, neglected, disheartened soul. Look around. These soul-weary people are everywhere. You can see it in their eyes, their posture, their very presence. You might even catch a glimpse when you look in the mirror. Our God is waiting, calling, reaching out to each one of us, saying: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28 NIV). He promises us his peace - not the peace the world can offer but the peace of God which passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7). He promises us love; not the weak, watered-down, conditional love of this world but the love that knows no limits, is tender, compassionate and the love that will never leave us or forsake us. His is the love that can never be taken away by anything: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 38-39)
God's promises are true, they are forever. Read these words again and take them to heart - take God at his word:
And my people shall be satisfied with my goodness declares the Lord. For I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish. (Jeremiah 31:14b, 25)
No comments:
Post a Comment