Why We Crave and Crave - Yet Only One Thing Will Solve It

Thomas Manton:
'The soul is like a sponge, always thirsting, and seeking of something from without to be filled; a chaos of desires. Man was made to live in dependence. Now, of all portions in the world, there is none worth the having, but God himself; nothing else can make you completely blessed, and satisfy all the necessities, and all the capacities, of soul and body..."The Lord is my shepherd:" what then? "I shall not want" (Ps. 23:1).'
-via Banner of Truth Trust

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:26

I cry to you, O Lord;

I say, “You are my refuge,

my portion in the land of the living.”

Psalm 142:5

"You move us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You." Augustine, Confessions (Book I, Chapter 1)

Get Started on Experiencing Your Greatest Joy Forever

I'm addicted to sugar. I eat or drink way too much sugar every day. This is not a good thing, but my appetite still craves it. When I'm tired, or just want to take a break to relax, or when I'm looking at the menu, my body is telling me that sugar is an essential element for being satisfied.
 
What does this have to do with the image at the right? It's a bit of a testimony. Although my mind and body are convinced that sugar is necessary for me to enjoy my day, they're deceived. It's just not true. What's more, the things that really would make my body feel better and more energetic don't usually appeal to my appetite. My body isn't just mistaken about sugar; it's got the whole order of what's good for it and not so good flipped backwards.
 
I still remember the point in life where I discovered I was doing the same thing with my relationship with God. I had been worshiping God and learning the Bible and a lot about Christian faith and doctrine for years, but there was a point where I realized I was trying to be Christian but still find my satisfaction in the typical things most people think make for a good life: having a good marriage, enjoying time with friends, doing productive things, and hoping that the coming days of your life will be more and more successful and filled with fulfilling achievements as they go along. And like most people, I often felt empty and unsatisfied, and I would gravitate to things that promised immediate satisfaction. All of this got turned upside down when I read through John Piper's book Desiring God. For the first time, the central truth that being Christian meant treasuring God Himself as your greatest joy and pleasure was demonstrated for me.
 
Piper convinced me from the Bible and from quoting the experiences of dozens of Christians over the centuries like C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, Blaise Pascal, Augustine, George Muller, Charles Spurgeon, Hudson Taylor, and dozens of other missionaries, teachers, authors, and philosophers that the point of Christianity is to enjoy God and treasure Him above everything else. Just as important, he convinced me that this works. That may sound silly, but I know it is all too common for people to hear and be persuaded that we are supposed to love and enjoy God, but to have no idea how to do it and to find the effort disappointing. It isn't enough to be told you need to be satisfied by the experience of God Himself. We have to be shown that this really will satisfy us, so that we don't get discouraged and quit before we experience it. We also have to discover what it is about God that brings us joy.
 
This is primarily because, just like my sugar cravings, we are very used to finding comfort and satisfaction in small things that provide some immediate pleasure. We become dependent on that habit and cycle, so dependent that changing our habits to seek our satisfaction in something else at first feels like self-denial and a loss of pleasure. It has taken me a long time to find satisfaction in eating real fruit instead of sugary foods and drinks. I had to stick with it in order to change my tastes and appetite and to convince my body that this really was more satisfying. In the same way, it took time and patience in sitting and reading the Word of God alone and praying for God to make my soul delight in Him before I really began to experience it. I had to establish a new diet, and I had to feed myself by reading the Scriptures just for enjoyment and closeness to God, as well as praying just in order to be near God more often than praying to get needs met. The more I practiced this and consistently sought God Himself rather than turning to something lesser to get comfort, the more I received satisfaction and comfort from God. 

"One of our obstacles to enjoying God is that we don't really have a good idea of what that means."

I have shared much more about this journey on this blog under the tag Finding Joy. You can find a lot more detail there if you're interested. The main purpose of this post today is to illustrate that one of our obstacles to enjoying God is that we don't really have a good idea of what that means. This is where the book shown above may be a blessing. The Scriptures tell us over and over that what we will enjoy for all eternity is God's glory. Glory is often referred to as the reward in heaven, both beholding the glory of God and receiving glory ourselves. Yet we tend to have a very vague idea of what that means, and so we don't have a real vision of how that will satisfy us. We understand it must be good, but it is hard to have your appetite whetted for something you haven't tasted. God's Glory Alone: The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith and Life (David VanDrunen) is a book that promises to give us not just a taste, but a feast of glory. If you want to truly enjoy God, learn as much about His glory as you can. The more you train yourself to desire and look forward to that which will bring you your greatest possible joy, the more you will enjoy it now. I hope this book helps many Christians discover the depth and potency of being satisfied in God.
 
There is an excellent and detailed review of the book up at The Gospel Coalition. It sounds like some people may find more immediate application in the book if they start with the second section first. Read on and see for yourself! "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!" Psalm 34:8

Is Happiness a Vain and Worldly Thing or a Christian Thing?

Randy Alcorn has written the essay I have been waiting for someone to write. This is an important thing to get clear. We see so many people wrecking their lives and their souls by pursuing "happiness" in all the wrong places that we can become skeptical and critical of the idea of happiness itself.

Some Christians have dismissed happiness as a worldly and self-centered idea that is different from Christian joy and satisfaction. They try to explain Christian joy as something different and spiritual, and they treat happiness as a self-indulgent desire. This is very confusing to our hearts, especially to those who struggle for joy, because it makes us feel criticized for some of our legitimate efforts to be happy. And yet we cannot get away from them. As Christian philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal famously said: "All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end." (Pensées, #425).

This has been one of my first priorities in writing a blog, and I've tackled the search for joy a number of times from the very early posts to If You Struggle With Joy You're Not Alone and a string of posts here from 2013 on C.S. Lewis (including Don't Let Being Unhappy Make You Feel Guilty).

But for the present, I just encourage you to read Randy Alcorn's post. Here's a preview:

An ungrounded, dangerous separation of joy from happiness has infiltrated the Christian community. The following is typical of the artificial distinctions made by modern Christians:

Joy is something entirely different from happiness. Joy, in the Biblical context, is not an emotion. . . . There is a big difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is an emotion and temporary; joy is an attitude of the heart.

Judging from such articles (and there are hundreds more out there), you’d think the distinction between joy and happiness is biblical. It’s not.

John Piper writes, “If you have nice little categories for ‘joy is what Christians have’ and ‘happiness is what the world has,’ you can scrap those when you go to the Bible, because the Bible is indiscriminate in its uses of the language of happiness and joy and contentment and satisfaction.”

Here’s a sampling of the more than one hundred Bible verses in various translations that use joy and happiness together:

• For the Jews it was a time of happiness and joy, gladness and honor. (Esther 8:16, NIV)
• I will turn their mourning into joy. . . and bring happiness out of grief. (Jeremiah 31:13, HCSB)
• Give your father and mother joy! May she who gave you birth be happy. (Proverbs 23:25, NLT)

The relationship between joy and happiness in these passages refutes two common claims: (1) that the Bible doesn’t talk about happiness, and (2) that joy and happiness have contrasting meanings. In fact, the Bible overflows with accounts of God’s people being happy in him.

More...

How Can I Change the Fact that I Desire the Wrong Things?

The Church is founded on the Gospel of God's love for us, displayed through Jesus Christ giving Himself to remove our guilt and shame. The Christian community is together because we were all forgiven and rescued from guilt and judgment. This unites us into one people, and our lifelong goal is to help each other continue in the freedom and joy of this new life. The power to change your old habits and desires for the wrong things is embodied in the Gospel. One of the most important truths about Christianity is that the Gospel is not just the information that we can believe in the work of Jesus Christ, God's Son, and have forgiveness and salvation by accepting Him as our Lord. The Gospel is also the means by which we live every day as a Christian and overcome everything that wars against our souls. We begin with the Gospel, but we continue every day as individuals and as a community by living in the Gospel.

This is crucial, because it is not uncommon for Christians to find real discouragement and weariness as the years of life go on and they fight some of the same struggles with sin, doubt, fear, and temptation year after year. Many Christians have not been taught that the Gospel is the power that is meant to sustain them and refresh them day after day. They try to change themselves by force of will, or through guilting themselves and punishing themselves with shame when they make mistakes. God has a much better plan and solution for us than this. Milton Vincent gives a very illuminating but simple and accessible overview of this in his short book A Gospel Primer for Christians.

He wrote his book "as a correction to a costly mistake made by Christians who view the gospel as something that has fully served out its purpose the moment they believed in Jesus for salvation. Not knowing what to do with the gospel once they are saved, they lay it aside soon after conversion so they can move on to 'bigger and better' things (even Scriptural things). Of course, they don't think this is what they are doing at the time, yet after many years of floundering in defeat they can look back and see that this is exactly what they have done."

Instead, Christians need to see that "God did not give us His gospel just so we could embrace it and be converted. Actually, He offers it to us every day as a gift that keeps on giving to us everything we need for life and godliness." (A Gospel Primer, Milton Vincent, p. 5).

That sounds appealing, but the question most people have is "How?" How do we get daily benefits and refreshment out of the Gospel? How does it give us strength to live the Christian life as a liberating path of hope instead of an overwhelming list of rules to follow?

Vincent's book is precious because he spends the whole book answering this, and he ties everything he says to the Scriptures so we know this isn't just his creative idea, but God's genuine wisdom. He details how to keep your mind fixed on the joys of all that Christ has done for us and the unlimited blessings He has made our own through the Gospel, and how to keep your heart full of hope and encouragement instead of looking always at the size of your problems. Here is his description of how living in the Gospel changes our desires so that we truly want and enjoy what is good instead of being drawn to sin:

"On the most basic of levels, I desire fullness[.]"

Though saved, I am daily beset by a sinful flesh that always craves those things that are contrary to the Spirit. These fleshly lusts are vicious enemies, constantly waging war against the good of my soul. Yet they promise me fullness, and their promises are so deliciously sweet that I often find myself giving into them as if they were friends that have my best interests at heart.

On the most basic of levels, I desire fullness, and fleshly lusts seduce me by attaching themselves to this basic desire. They exploit the empty spaces in me, and they promise that fullness will be mine if I give in to their demands. When my soul sits empty and is aching for something to fill it, such deceptive promises are extremely difficult to resist.

Consequently, the key to mortifying fleshly lusts [killing them] is to eliminate the emptiness within me and replace it with fullness; and I accomplish this by feasting on the gospel. Indeed, it is in the gospel that I experience a God who glorifies Himself by filling me with His fullness. He is the One, Paul says, "who fills all in all." He is the One who "fill[s] all things" with the gifts He gives. And He lavishes gospel blessings upon me with the goal that I "be filled up to all the fullness of God." This is the God of the gospel, a God who is satisfied with nothing less than my experience of fullness in Him! The first command God spoke in the Garden was, "eat freely." And with similar insistence He says to me now, "be filled."

What happens to my appetites for sin when I am filled with the fullness of God in Christ? Jesus provides this answer: "He who continually comes to Me will never hunger or thirst again." Indeed, as I perpetually feast on Christ and all of His blessings found in the gospel, I find that my hunger for sin diminishes and the lies of lust simply lose their appeal. Hence, to the degree that I am full, I am free.

...Preaching the gospel to myself each day keeps before me the startling advocacy of God for my fullness, and it also serves as a means by which I feast anew on the fullness of provision that God has given to me in Christ. "Eat[ing] freely" of such provision keeps me occupied with God's blessings and also leaves me with a profoundly enjoyable sense of satisfaction in Jesus. And nothing so mortifies fleshly lusts like satisfaction in Him. (Gospel, pp. 45-47).

The Ultimate Fulfillment Is Greater Than We've Ever Dreamed

C.S. Lewis perceived that our inconsolable longing in this life will only be completely fulfilled when we are united to God in the next. He also identified another awesome dimension to our ultimate desire for fulfillment. What we really want is not merely to be satisfied, but to become part of the beauty and glory that draws us in even now:

"When I attempted, a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as 'the journey homeward to habitual self.' You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. ... A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.

"Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being 'noticed' by God. But this is almost the language of the New Testament. St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (1 Cor. 8:3). ... Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.

...

"At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in." (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

We All Have an Inconsolable Longing - For Now

In the last post, I said that C.S. Lewis spent a great deal of time thinking about our universal human longing for happiness. One of the greatest and most important things he ever wrote on this subject is a sermon entitled The Weight of Glory. Every Christian should read it. It is one of the most revealing commentaries written in modern times on desire, fulfillment, satisfaction, and what it really means to be created for eternal life in heaven. Here is how Lewis explains our inconsolable longing:

"Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object. ... In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. ... Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

We are always trying in this life to arrive – to get to a place where we feel really fulfilled and do not long for anything else. And that is just what we can’t do. Lewis recognized that because we were not made for this world, we have a natural and inborn longing for something better and deeper that will only be fulfilled in the next world. That doesn't mean we don't get foretastes of joy and happiness and fulfillment in this life. Lewis also recognized that we are given the good pleasures in this world (the music, the beauty, the happy relationships) to whet our appetites for the glories of the next. But this world is temporary, and limited, and we can't experience the fullness of everlasting joy that God has planned for His people in this perishable world. We have to be ready to put it away when the time comes to receive our true inheritance.

In fact, the more we try to be completely satisfied here in this life on earth, the further we put ourselves from complete satisfaction. Our only means of being fully satisfied is to seek with all our hearts to find our satisfaction completely in God, something we will not fully receive until our bodies are renewed and we join Him in eternity. While we are on earth, this experience will become an increasing fulfillment and satisfaction in God if we continue to pursue it. The eternal fountain of absolute joy does overflow into Creation, filling those who embrace Jesus as their Lord and Savior with streams of living water. But we aren't satisfied taking drinks from the overflow of the fountain forever. What we really want is to be plunged into joy endlessly, to never get thirsty again. In the next post, I'll share how Lewis depicted that glorious union.

Happiness Is Limited in This Life So You'll Enjoy It Forever

I want to make sure that I am clear in what I mean when I say God wants us to be happy. I do not at all mean that God promises we will be happy all of the time in this life, or that we will mostly have joy and very little pain. Joy is not a constant thing. If you have many seasons where you must struggle to find joy, you're normal. God does provide joy, and God is the only one you can rely on to provide everlasting joy. But He deliberately limits our experience of it in this life, and I think C.S. Lewis understood why.

I have been helped and encouraged immensely by C.S. Lewis when I have been struggling to find joy and happiness (as you can see from the link). Lewis has made more sense out of why we long so much for satisfaction that seems elusive, and why we suffer so much, than just about anyone else outside the Scriptures. The only other Christian author that has helped me this much is John Piper, and I suspect that is in no small part because Piper himself has been richly helped by Lewis. Piper titled his biographical sketch of Lewis "Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul" (a title that will be explained by the next post). It summarizes well how much Lewis thought about joy and satisfaction and the longing to find them.

Lewis's conclusion about why happiness is limited in this life was simply this: God gives us as much happiness in life as is good for us, but not so much that we miss out on everlasting joy.

"The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacles to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home." C.S Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Or, as the Scriptures put it: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” 1 John 2:15-17.

And not only that, but their joy abides forever too.

Why Does God Delay Giving Us Joy?

I firmly believe God does want us to be happy. The way Jesus prays for His people in John 17, especially John 17:13, is a powerful example of that. John 15:11 is another. He is really focused on our joy being full. It appears to be one of the main priorities Jesus has as He is preparing to leave the world. So why is joy so hard for many people to find? If God wants us to have it, why do we have to seek for it in spite of so many obstacles, and why do some of us have to wait so long to find it? This is a painful question for so many people. It has been a painful question for me. The thoughts below have truly helped.

I argued here that the Bible has many examples of God telling us we ought to ask Him for good things that He has already said He wants to give to us. The riches of God's love and kindness to us are displayed much more powerfully when we ask Him for something in complete dependence and He faithfully gives us just what we need. It's one way of demonstrating to the world who He is: a loving heavenly Father who knows how to give good gifts to His children. (Matthew 7:7-11.) That's probably only one glimpse of what God uses prayer to do. What about the prayers for joy, for relief from pain, that God doesn't seem to answer? Why do we sometimes have to ask repeatedly? Why not grant it the first time we ask for it? Wouldn't that look more generous than making us wait?

God clearly has a much more complex purpose in prayer. C.S Lewis made the point that prayer is not about changing how God acts; prayer changes us. There is something happening inside of us as we pray, and especially as we wait for God to act. In fact, to put it fairly, God is acting all the time as we pray to Him. Even when we don't see signs that He is answering the prayers we lifted up, He has already been at work changing us through the relationship of prayer. The process of praying earnestly for God's help over a long period of time is doing something in our souls while we experience it.

When we feel we need something from God and He doesn't seem to give it, it often doesn't feel like a comfort that He is invisibly doing something else in our souls we can't feel yet. We are almost always focused on our immediate needs and wants. We don't have the benefit of God's far-sighted perspective on what will bring us the most happiness. God is not just seeking our immediate happiness. He is seeking a permanent and lasting happiness. In fact, the process of waiting may be a necessary tool that shapes us and trains us so that we actually can receive the joy God wants to give us. We aren't always ready to receive what we ask for - it might not even help us much if we got it when we first asked for it. A loving God would do more than just give us whatever we ask; He would make sure to change us so that we could actually enjoy it.

We easily forget that we are not whole yet. We are not at present the mature children of God that we one day will be. There is still a lot of work to be done to untangle the cords of sin and defiance and pride that are wound around our hearts and souls. There are glorious things God has promised to us, but we have to undergo the process of being healed and fixed and restored in order to appreciate them, and to avoid ruining them. J.D. Greear, in his book Gospel (p. 188), pointed out that waiting for God, and even being denied what we ask for, reveals things about what we really place our hope in and what we really treasure. Sometimes when we ask for joy or happiness, what we really mean by that is that we want certain things in our lives to work out a certain way because that's what we think we need to be happy. The process of waiting can lead to our discovering that we treasure other things more than God, or we trust them to satisfy us more than we trust God to do it. This discovery may be exactly what God uses to bring us to the greater joy of being satisfied in Him alone. J.D. Greear quotes Larry Crabb as saying: "You might never really know Jesus is all that you need until He is all that you have."

The pleasure of knowing God Himself is the only joy in the universe that will never let us down and never wear out. One of the clearest demonstrations of God's love is that when we are wrong about what we think we need to be happy, He doesn't give it to us, but instead helps fix us so we will learn what will really complete our happiness. If we are depending on other things to happen for us to be happy, even "good" things like being married, having unity in our church, or being free from pain, then those things control our joy. As J.D. Greear put it, "Whatever controls your joy is what you abide in." (Gospel, p. 188.) Abiding in anything other than God for joy is setting ourselves up for disappointment. Learning to abide in God alone for joy is a very difficult process for us, but if it guarantees that we will get that joy, and keep it forever, then the sooner we learn to do that the better. That is truly a loving answer to prayer.

Don't Let Being Unhappy Make You Feel Guilty

I am very conscious that what I said in the last post about the importance of seeking happiness can easily come across as making it sound like it's our fault if we're not happy. Telling someone who is very unhappy that he or she needs to be happy sounds insensitive and condemning, not to mention unhelpful. That isn't what I want to convey. The conviction that God encourages happiness and wants us to seek it should give us hope. The fact that we can't make it happen takes us back again to one of the keys to spiritual life: the things we need and the things we are supposed to do are impossible for us to accomplish by our own strength.

Being told you should be happy can't give you the ability to be happy when you're not. It often simply tends to make you feel worse. The only thing that can make you happy when you aren't is for God to act in your heart to give you joy. God uses many methods and means to do that, but the main way it happens is through prayer. Believing that God wants us to be happy and satisfied should give us hope that God wants to give that to us when we ask Him for it. It should make us bold in praying to God for happiness, joy, and freedom from anxiety or depression. We have every reason to eagerly trust that He will answer us because we know we are asking for something He already wants to give us.

The mystery of why God desires that we ask Him earnestly and prayerfully for things He already wants to do isn't something we will fully understand on this side of heaven. But it should be enough that the Scriptures tell us this is how He relates to us. We don't know how or why it works that way, but the important thing for us is that it does work. Jesus tells us God knows our needs before we seek them (Matthew 6:31-33), but He also tells us to ask God for our bread daily (Matthew 6:9-13). God desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:3-4), but Jesus also tells us to pray to God that He would send laborers out to the harvest to save souls (Luke 10:2). God has blessings to give us that He is waiting for us to ask Him for.

Perhaps the most helpful explanation of this I have heard is that God's goodness and faithfulness and generosity are displayed more clearly when we desperately ask Him for something and He gladly responds by giving it to us than they would be if He simply gave us everything we needed without our ever thinking about it.

The bottom line is that God has given us a message that He wants us to be happy. We can't make it happen by ourselves. But we can choose to seek it diligently in every possible way, chiefly by praying to Him that He would make it happen. And the fact that He has told us He wants us to have it is the guarantee that if we keep asking Him for it, He will do it.

Wanting to Be Happy Is a Virtue - and a Necessity

This perspective by C.S. Lewis has really ministered to me through a painful summer. Walter Hooper describes the virtue of Lewis's positive willingness to pursue his own happiness: "Lewis had his share – some would say more than his share – of worries. But, having done all in his power to solve them, he left the matter to God and got on with his work and pleasures. … Lewis really wanted and liked the happiness which the Divine Son died to give all men. …in a letter to his brother … he says, 'I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don’t.'" (Introduction to The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)

The world will give us plenty of reasons to be tempted by despair. We have to teach ourselves to unapologetically choose to be happy. Many people are sad, lonely, or depressed when they very much do not want to be. But it seems that not many of us feel the freedom to actively choose to cast away our anxieties and cares upon God and simply enjoy the life He has given us. (Phil. 4:6-7; 1 Peter 5:6-7.) It seems it is all too easy to succumb to sorrows and to become accustomed to being burdened by them, so much so that it almost feels unnatural and "guilty" to us to simply enjoy some free and unfettered happiness - as if we're somehow being selfish for having a carefree mind and unhindered joy. The Scriptures show that God Himself is supremely happy in being who He is and in the work He does. Then it follows that it is a quality of godliness to diligently seek to be as happy as we can in the ways God designed us to find our joy, however much we must work to get there. Happiness itself is a genuinely good thing of which God heartily approves.

If You Struggle With Joy, You're Not Alone

A central purpose in my writing this blog has been to encourage Christians who aren't experiencing satisfaction in their relationship with God and to share what has helped me. One of the greatest gifts I've received has been the ministry of John Piper, and one of the chief reasons that he has been a gift is the fact that he is open and humble about his own deep struggles with fighting for joy and satisfaction in God. John Piper is probably best known for writing Desiring God, which makes a compelling case from Scripture that God intends for Christians to be joyful and happy, and that this happiness and joy comes from enjoying God Himself as our treasure. But he has also written this, and for anyone who feels discouraged in trying to find joy or satisfaction, this book is a great kindness. (and you can read both books online for free)

John Piper is absolutely right that our greatest satisfaction and joy comes from God, but there are many difficulties and challenges in life that make it hard for us to enjoy God the way we ought to be able to. I thank God that Piper has also been blessed with the humility to talk transparently about how these struggles affect him, and how he fights through them. If you're not experiencing joy right now, don't lose heart. Seek the Lord and trust His promise that He will be found by those who seek Him, and take encouragement from other believers who share how they face their own battles.

[W]hoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Hebrews 11:6

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
May your hearts live forever!
Psalm 22:26

Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart... .
Psalm 119:2

Two of the Most Important Thoughts on Pleasure

Since I've been talking about letting go of our desires in order to find our deepest desire satisfied in God, this seems like the time to share these. Following are two of the most important quotes I have ever read outside the Bible on what pleasure is and why we get into so much trouble trying to find it in the wrong places. I hope they inspire you the same way they have me.

"The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

("The Weight of Glory" from The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis, p. 25)

Now read Lewis's insight on how God can be in favor of pleasure, yet give us so many rules that seem to place limits on things we find pleasurable. We make ourselves miserable by pursuing pleasure clumsily instead of the way it was meant to be enjoyed (Note: Lewis wrote the following as the words a supervising demon might use in explaining the art of deceiving humans to a novice demon, hence the speaker refers to God as "the Enemy").

[Screwtape's advice on temptation:] "Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He had forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula."

(The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis, p. 44-45)

An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure - doesn't that grab you as a perfect description of how we stubbornly go about chasing after sins? It sure convicted me.

Our Fear of Letting Go of Our Pleasures

To sum up the last post, you were designed and created to find your satisfaction in God, because that is the only place a living being can experience real satisfaction. As long as you find something more desirable than knowing Him and experiencing Him - as long as you hold something back as more dear to you than God - you will never be content.

This is the part that most people get discouraged at. We are used to relying on lots of things in the world (romance, sex, money, vacations, friends, family, food, books, television, etc.) for comfort and pleasure. The idea that we must set all these aside and desire God more than any of them, and further that we are supposed to be satisfied entirely by God Himself, feels threatening. We aren't yet used to enjoying God and being satisfied with Him alone, and so we are anxious that this idea of desiring God above all things will mean that the desires we are used to will go unfulfilled and will be a disappointment to us. This is where we have to act in faith. "Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart." says Psalm 37:4. And God has promised us that "whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever." John 4:14. If we want that deep longing in our hearts that none of these other things have ever fully satisfied to be finally fulfilled, we must trust God that He means what He says. We must seek Him first and most deeply.

One of the great delights we will find is that when we are most satisfied with God, we can enjoy the other good things He has given us too. Some past things we must give up entirely, because they actually come between us and loving God - those are sin. But many things we can safely keep as long as we never let them become more dear to us than our experience of God. Not one of the things I listed at the beginning of the second paragraph is bad in itself. It is only bad when taken in a way that puts it before God or disobeys His teaching. The safest thing you can do if you want to keep enjoying a thing is to always make sure it is never more important to you than God. For if you have begun to desire it more than you desire God, then what can God do in His love for you but remove the thing that is distracting you from fulfillment?

On the other hand, when we make God the center of all our desire and affection, the other worthwhile things we enjoy are not robbed of their pleasure. They are actually made more enjoyable. The most mature Christians you see are not people that never have any fun. They find enjoyment and delight in many things - but they enjoy the Lord more. The things they love, they love for the Lord, with the Lord, and because of the Lord. They don't enjoy anything without enjoying it together with God. That is the way to be content in life.

Don't Settle for Half-Hearted Religion

Ray Ortlund shared a very short, powerful insight from his father at The Gospel Coalition blog that is right on point with the problem I addressed in my introduction to this blog. It's a good reminder that doing things only halfway usually keeps us from experiencing the pleasure and joy involved in whatever it is we're doing. That applies equally - or even more so - to living the Christian life.

There are really only two options in life for satisfaction and fulfillment: either go after God with all your heart, or be unfulfilled. Any illusion that there is a third way - some way that we can find contentment by doing some things God's way but other things our way - is a false hope. God's command is not that we abandon everything in this world that we enjoy. His command is simply that we learn to treasure Him more than anything else that we also enjoy. If we don't seek Him as the central source of our satisfaction, we won't find it in anything else. C.S. Lewis said it brilliantly: "It is not simply that God has arbitrarily made us such that He is our only good. Rather God is the only good of all creatures... If we will not learn to eat the only food that the universe grows-the only food that any possible universe ever can grow-then we must starve eternally." (The Problem of Pain, p. 47).

Why You Feel So Thirsty and Empty

Once you believe in Christ as Lord and Savior, reading your Bible every day is the gateway to satisfaction in God. I am not saying that missing a day here or there means you won't find joy. What I am saying is that if you only read your Bible once a week, or only when someone preaches to you, you're missing out on what keeps faith and joy alive. It's like trying to keep a plant alive without watering it.

I am convinced of this because that is exactly what my experience has been. More importantly, though, this is exactly what Jesus said about how much we need our Bibles. He told us that God's words are the food by which we will live: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4 (Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3); see also Luke 4:4). What He was saying is that we need God's Word the way we need food – to survive! And we need it as often as we need food – daily. He was teaching that God's Word will nourish, refresh, and sustain us just the way food does.

He also taught us that if we want eternal life, we must abide in Him, and that if we want Him to hear our prayers His words must abide in us. (John 15:1-11). That means they have to remain in us, and in order for that to happen we have to keep them close and keep them in our minds. "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17). In fact, it's so crucial to the Christian life that Jesus Himself is referred to as "the Word". (John 1:1).

This is a message God gives us again and again in the Bible. I wasted nearly ten years of my Christian life feeling empty and discouraged because I didn't listen to it. But I know now from experience that God simply means what He says: "Blessed is the man… [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither." (Psalm 1:1a; 2-3).

If you're feeling withered, God has given you the answer.

Don't Get Discouraged If You Don't Feel It

I want to make clear at the outset that this was a process. For example, I didn't just wake up one day and decide I really wanted to read my Bible every day, and then happily take to the habit. At first the changes were very small and slow, and it was all I could do to get myself to keep the ambition of reading some of the Bible almost every day. I would miss days and then try to catch up, and sometimes it felt like an obligation that I wasn't excited about taking time for. But I knew that the way I had been doing things before had left me disappointed and unhappy. I knew that my previous pattern of life had failed. So I was trusting God that there was something better for me if I devoted myself to reading the book He gave us.

I would say that for the first several months Bible reading often felt like doing homework. You learn interesting things, and sometimes you have a pleasant time, but often it feels like a chore to get out of the way. So if anyone has tried this or is trying it and has found it to be difficult to stick with, I can empathize. I've been there, but I also can testify that sticking with it caused something wonderful to happen for me that was well worth it. The Bible is full of promises that God will give wisdom, hope, and encouragement to those who read and listen to His Word. The more I read, the more I placed my trust in Him that something would happen in me if I kept at this habit. And I gradually found that I really wanted to read my Bible - in fact, I began to realize that I was generally happier and less overwhelmed during the day if I had made time to read my Bible that day. As I stuck with it, I could see the difference between days I read the Bible and days I didn't. My spiritual mindset was beginning to change.

How I Discovered Satisfaction in God

This post is basically the overview of what made me come alive and taste real satisfaction. The posts to come will expand on the outline here and show how it all played out. I was raised without any belief in God for nearly 19 years. Sometime I will share how God opened my eyes to see the truth about the spiritual life and convinced me that Christ is my Lord and my Savior. But in my first post here I emphasized that there was still something missing from the faith I was living. This post starts to lay out how I went from being a Christian who believed and prayed, but was disappointed and still caught up in desires for sin, to becoming a Christian who enjoys God and finds satisfaction in simply experiencing Him.

I can't give you a secret recipe that will automatically introduce you to satisfaction in God if you just take the steps in the right order, because finding satisfaction in God happens through developing a personal relationship with Him. It's not mechanical – it's a dynamic, living, spiritual experience of coming close to the Divine and learning to know and trust Him. You let Him quiet your mind and release your tension in prayer, you listen to Him, you tell Him what troubles you, you wait for Him to do things in your life and in your heart, and you learn by experience that He is faithful and gives you what you need. Truly knowing God and finding satisfaction in Him is not like following a map or trying to learn how to operate something. It is much more like falling in love and starting a new relationship.

Thankfully, a lot of people before us have developed this relationship and have left great advice on how they went about it. The relationship still depends uniquely on the interaction between the two people involved and how they relate to each other, but the experiences of others give us a good idea how to get started. Most importantly, a relationship with God is unique because He gives and invests far more than you do and He actually works spiritually inside you to change you. So it will differ somewhat for each person, but the things below were fundamental for me, and from reading widely through what other Christians over the centuries have experienced, I believe these things will be fundamental for most people in finding a steady satisfaction in God.

• I began reading my Bible every day.
• I was genuinely unhappy and dissatisfied with where I was spiritually and with
  the results of my own efforts to manage my life. I confessed that I had done a
  lousy job and that I was not keeping God's Word faithfully on my own. I wasn't
  succeeding in fighting the desire for sin, and I was sick of being trapped in a
  cycle of doing things I was ashamed of and then having remorse and guilt.
• I learned to consciously focus on admitting I could not do what I needed to do
  myself and putting my trust entirely in God to do it instead. I was learning
  that prayer doesn't just include asking God for what we think we need, but also
  includes asking God to change us and do in us what He desires to do. I learned
  that you don't keep God's commands by trying harder; you keep them by asking Him
  earnestly to make you obedient and trusting Him that He will do it.
• I truly desired to know God more and find satisfaction in Him – I was becoming
  convinced that we were meant to enjoy God Himself for who He is, not just for
  what we get from Him, and I wanted to learn how to do this.
• As I read the Bible daily, I was learning to trust God's Word and His promises
  instead of having my attitude shaped by how I felt or what I saw in my own life.
  I was learning to put aside my own expectations of what was possible or what was
  going to happen and believe that all things are possible with God instead.
• I began to trust God that I could really let go of the things I had been holding
  onto for comfort and pleasure, and that He would replace them with something
  better and more satisfying. I learned to practice turning to Him when I was
  tempted by sin, trusting that He would ultimately give me more satisfaction and
  pleasure than sin could – without any shame!
• I made my relationship with God and my time with Him my highest priority.

That Sounds A Lot Like a Conversion…

This is a short post, but includes a long list at the end.

Some people would say that this sounds a lot like the difference between having faith and not having it at all. But I believe there were many signs to demonstrate that I truly believed in Christ and had faith before this happened. It seems to me that I was a genuine Christian, but I was also stuck in a shallow state of sanctification that I needed to be pulled out of. I have known other Christians who seem to have been through the same process or are still struggling with it. It is important for Christians to think about when faith actually begins and how we can know if we are truly alive in Christ or just deceiving ourselves like the Pharisees who persecuted Jesus and the Early Church. You need to be sure that you really know God, not just some imitation you have created for yourself to justify your way of life or make you feel important. But for the moment my purpose here is to encourage those who already believe in Christ who are nevertheless still struggling with satisfaction and yearning to experience the abundant life that Christ promised.

I also want those who may read this who don't believe Christ is their Savior to see just how extraordinary and powerful the pleasures of knowing God can be. If what you read is moving you, then I encourage you to take a Bible and literally ask God out loud to show you whether Christ is the answer. As you listen for Him, read the passages below and see what happens in your heart and mind. No one can explain quite how faith happens - it's a spiritual thing - but this is the way many people have found confidence to believe that Jesus Christ is who He says He is.

"but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear." Isaiah 59:2

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus… ." Romans 3:23-24

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Romans 5:1

"but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Romans 5:8

"if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." John 3:16-18

"But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." John 1:12-13

"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us. …" 1 John 3:16

"For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus… ." 1 Timothy 2:5

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 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. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 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. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."
Colossians 1:13-20

"For 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'" Romans 10:13

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

"yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified." Galatians 2:16

"'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' And they said, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.' And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house." Acts 16:30-32

"these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." John 20:31 (which means there is more to see if you keep on reading!)

Scripture quotes courtesy of this excellent online Bible website: ESV Bible Online

I also recommend: Bible Gateway (many, many different versions can be searched)

What Does Satisfaction in God Mean?

I am absolutely convinced that what happened in my life to introduce me to lasting satisfaction and joy was the work of God. There is no other way to explain the radical change in my heart and mind that caused me to lose interest in sin and awakened me to find satisfaction in experiencing God. What I mean by "experiencing God" is a peace, fullness, and contentment that come from thinking about God, reading the Bible, praying, loving other people the way He taught us to, and enjoying hope because of all the promises God has made to us.

This amazing fullness and satisfaction is not something that can be directly compared to anything else in the world. It is superior in every way. But the pleasure we get from many things in life bears some resemblances. If you look at the most beautiful thing you know through a spyglass that is grimy and covered with dust on the end, and then look at it with a completely clean glass, you will have some idea of the difference. The pleasures of earth are a dim shadow cast by the pleasures of God - a foggy reflection.

For most of us, the strongest and most satisfying emotion we have experienced is love. What you feel for your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend, or for a child or a parent, is a good starting point for thinking about what experiencing satisfaction in God means. I think that might be one of the reasons He gave us these experiences, and why He uses marriage so often in the Bible to illustrate His relationship with His people. Being satisfied with God is a lot like love: you are happy just thinking about Him or remembering something He said to you (e.g. in the Bible), or joyful because you know Him and can come close to Him in prayer. But it's better. It's deeper, and it never ends because He is always available to you anywhere, at any time, forever.

Many people find it hard to believe they can feel this way about God. I used to be one of them. But something changed in my heart in an incredible way so that I started experiencing this very powerfully. My goal here is to explain how and why I believe this happened, and I will start laying that out after the next post.

So Why Should I Keep Reading... ?

If you don't believe in the Christian religion, then my last post may have left you thinking there's nothing here that will be of use to you. You're wrong. Part of what I will do on this blog is explain how I changed from being dissatisfied with life - disappointed by all the pleasures we try to satisfy ourselves with - into a person who has found satisfaction and contentment. I'm talking about the kind of satisfaction that is fulfilling enough that you don't feel like you need to go chasing after anything else. Even if you don't believe Jesus is helpful to you, I am certain you want to be satisfied and fulfill the deepest desires in your heart. It hurts to feel empty and to be disappointed. So take a listen to what happened to me, because you just might find that the results are worth trying for.

A second reason to keep reading is that you might be surprised by what happens. Right now, you might feel like you've heard enough about Jesus from other people and that nothing new is going to make a difference to you. But when I talk about what happened in my life, I'm going to share how the Bible made a difference in my happiness. The Bible also says that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (In other words, through the Bible – Romans 10:17). It also says that the people in the church in Galatia in the 1st century received the Spirit of God by "hearing with faith" (Galatians 3:5). So I have some confidence that if a person listens to what God has to say and listens to what God has done for me, something might change in the way he or she thinks about God and the Bible. It's a pretty safe challenge: if there's nothing to what I'm saying, then you probably won't change your mind. But if what I'm saying is true, then God has been at work here and reading onward might open a door for you to a place you are longing to go.