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.

Why Is God So Hard to Find? (Part 2)

Continuing what I started in the last post, here are two more possible reasons God may seem distant or absent when He really is trying to help us:

3. It may be that we've started taking God for granted. Perhaps we've stopped putting the highest priority on seeking Him. We aren't rebelling against Him or living a double life, but we've just begun to be a bit casual about our spiritual life. We don't really feel like we need to read the Bible as often, or we let other things get in the way of church or fellowship much more than we used to. What can God do but remind us how much we need Him? If we've started to take the ability to draw water from the well for granted, then not being able to get it when we want it will restore our appreciation for how important it is in a hurry. If you have to dig down deep and toil to get the water flowing again, you will not soon take it for granted.

As a severe example of this, I have been struck by how often this theme was demonstrated in the Old Testament. God warned Israel over and over that when things started going well for them and they were prospering, they would begin to forget Him. And that's just what happened. As long as Israel was comfortable, they would often grow careless in their relationship with God. But if they were in danger and suffering, they quickly remembered Him and called upon Him. The same is true for us. We have to remember that we always need to be in close intimacy with God, just as the branches depend completely upon the vine for life. (John 15:1-9.)

4. One more possible explanation is that we just haven't taken sin seriously enough or fully appreciated God's call to holiness. We may have turned our backs on some serious sins because of our faith, and we may be actively resisting temptation, but perhaps there are areas in our hearts that we haven't confronted completely. For example, we may have worked hard against greed or lust, but failed to address the underlying problem of self-pity. As we seek God and struggle to find that deep communion with Him again, He may reveal to us areas where we aren't taking His call to holiness as seriously as we should. Holiness is a lifelong pursuit, but the fact that we will not complete it until we leave this life behind should not discourage us from pursuing it diligently.

The Scripture reminds us that we need to take this seriously every day: "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." (Hebrews 3:13.) Paul says: "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God." (2 Corinthians 7:1.) And although we find it difficult now, a deep struggle for our relationship with God is often necessary to cause us to take the life of faith seriously: "Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God." (1 Peter 4:1-2.) At the end, that's what we want: to live for and be satisfied with God. And God will graciously spur us on in order to get us there.

Why Is God So Hard to Find? (Part 1)

In the last post I explained why we need to keep on seeking God and not give up, even when we feel we're coming up empty. This post and the next one are meant to consider some of the reasons why God can seem so distant or absent. I compared this feeling in the last post with a well that is no longer giving water. But why would God stop refreshing us when we come to Him in need?

It would be one thing if you were stubbornly sinning, and trying to have a deep relationship with God without confessing that sin and turning away from it. That's an obvious problem. But I am assuming here that you've already searched your heart and there isn't any stubborn refusal to confess sin. You simply can't find a reason for why God suddenly seems distant or absent. You know you're not perfect, but you've been seeking Him and trying sincerely to follow Him. So what happened?

Here's some of what my experience and the Scriptures have taught me:

1. Perhaps, without knowing it, you've only been skimming the shallowness of the water, and there are deep wells below that which will refresh you beyond anything you've ever experienced. God may be saying: "I love you completely, and I will never give up on you. But this living at 75% of your fullness must stop. Dig deep and experience me fully so that you will live your life with freedom and boldness!" God knows you won't dig down and find the deep satisfaction waiting for you unless He leaves you no choice. As long as the shallow water is enough to get by on, we're likely to just skim it off and try to make it through the day. One way I've realized this in my life is in reading the Bible much more deeply and intensely than ever before. Where I might have read a passage four or five times, and thought I grasped it well enough, deep concentration and prayer have often revealed truth and wisdom in the words that I never saw before.

If reading the Bible or praying aren't fulfilling your need for God's spirit like they used to, and you double your efforts to press in and experience God, you often find self-awareness or knowledge of God you never had before. Some of the Scriptures that have impressed themselves on me during times like this have become the most precious words in the Bible to me. They encourage me more than just about anything else, and they often encourage me when nothing else will. Imagine if God stopped up your well and left you parched with thirst, so you would dig feverishly down and down, because He knew there was a magnificent ruby buried down there. When you find something as precious and valuable as those Scriptures have become to me, all the dryness and pain seem well worth it. Suddenly you find that God has so much more to give you to sustain you and bring you joy than you ever realized.

2. Another possibility is that God is preparing you for something much more important and more significant than you've ever experienced before. Instead of your relationship with God being off track, it may be that what you've been doing in your relationship with God has been precisely right, and thus you've matured and grown in your faith. Now you're prepared to handle something greater than you ever imagined. God doesn't call us to lounge about in His courts. He calls us to take up the battle against darkness and bring light to those still enslaved to sin. In order to meet the challenge, He knows you need to have access to a much greater store of faith and confidence than you ever had before. As Hebrews 12:7-11 describes, God is treating you as an heir and training you to stand firm in righteousness.

If You're Dry, Don't Give Up Digging

What do you do when your spiritual life is dry and parched? When you go to the Bible, or you go to prayer, and for some reason you're just not getting anything from it? What do you do when the source of your comfort and hope seems to have dried up just when you desperately need it?

Let's say you lived in a place where all your water came from an old-fashioned well with a bucket and pulley. Every time you needed water, you would go to the well and let down the bucket, and take it back up full of fresh water. But one day you go to the well and let down the bucket, and when it comes back up there's nothing in it. It's empty. You try again and again, jerking the rope and making sure the bucket is really going all the way to the bottom, but still nothing.

At this point, do you give up and go start digging another well? Probably not. Why? Because it took a lot of work to dig this well down deep, and you've been drawing good water from it for years. It makes a lot more sense to get down there to the source that you've always drawn from and to find out what the problem is. It may be that something got into the well and blocked it up, or it may be that you need to dig down deeper to restore a good flow of water.

This is the same problem we have sometimes in our faith. Where we used to find comfort and encouragement after 10 or 15 minutes of reading the Scriptures or prayer, all of a sudden we find that even pressing on for a half-hour doesn't seem to make a difference in how we feel. We still come away dry and disappointed. But the source of life is still there. The refreshing hope and encouragement you felt in the past came from God, and God is still waiting behind His Word and is still waiting to be found in prayer. He has promised that we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart. (Jeremiah 29:12-14.) He has promised to never leave you or forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5-6.) He never lies or changes His mind. And Jesus told us to keep on seeking God, for He will not delay long in answering our cries.

So keep on digging. Even when you're feeling dry, put your trust in the promises He made to us and keep on seeking Him. If a half-hour doesn't help, then find a way to make it an hour. If you don't find comfort on one day, keep on seeking Him the next day. Dry spells happen, and God always has a good reason for them (I'll talk about that in the next posts). Even so, they don't last if you keep on digging and seeking God to satisfy your thirst. God always intends every dry spell to lead to a closer, better relationship with Him:

For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

(2 Corinthians 1:8-10.)

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.

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.

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.

Does God Want Us To Be Satisfied?

God's desire for us is that we be satisfied in Him, not discouraged and thirsty: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4. Jesus said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" John 7:37-38. And elsewhere He said to the woman drawing water from a well, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:13-14. And in Revelation, which is placed last in the Bible because it deals with the end of all earthly things and the beginning of man's new life in heaven, God says "To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment." Revelation 21:6. In eternity with God no one will be thirsty.

Peter told the crowds in the temple in Jerusalem: "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus[.]" Acts 3:19-20. The Lord wants to refresh you. In fact, Jesus said this about the reason He came into the world: "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." John 10:10. In other words, when Christ came from God He brought to us the full life that we lacked. When we respond and come to Him, we are filled up - satisfied.

The Beginning of the Journey

I read C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" a couple of years after I first believed in God. It was a great blessing in my development as a Christian. Yet for many years after, I struggled to find contentment in my Christian life. My growth was slow and halting, and the evidence of grace in my life was at many times barely perceptible. In other words, I sinned a lot and wasn't too successful in staying away from it. Looking back, I can best describe those years by saying I was always thirsty. I was longing for something I didn't seem to have, and I wasn't satisfied in what I did have. This left me vulnerable to wounding and scarring from disappointment, depression, and sin – not to mention the effect on others.

I now count one of the greatest demonstrations of God's mercy in my life to be His delivering me from this long season of spiritual thirst by showing me how to find satisfaction entirely and completely in Christ. The difference is so dramatic and amazing that it will take many conversations to describe it accurately, but the bottom line is that I've found a fountain of life that truly satisfies when nothing else will. There are still times when I feel pain, discouragement, weariness, and temptation just like any other person does. But when I feel dry or thirsty, I now know where to go to get filled up. Instead of feeling like something's missing all the time, or running after other things that don't really solve the problem, I am learning to go directly to God and receive satisfaction from the source.

I can testify that this works: God does satisfy deeply, and the desire or need for things that are sin is weakened and much easier to defeat when you experience satisfaction in God. But there are many Christians who don't have this satisfaction, just as I didn't have it for years. There seem to be plenty of books, and good ones, that will introduce the new convert or the skeptic to the basics of Christianity. It is the middle ground between that and between truly living with a satisfaction in God that seems to be in need of more explanation and accessibility. Countless believers throughout the history of the Church have found their satisfaction in God and learned the secret of the contentment that Paul describes in Philippians 4:11-13. Yet experience has convinced me that many Christians are struggling in this middle ground and are finding it to be a very discouraging place.

You can't love anyone else without wanting them to experience as much happiness as you do. So my mandate for writing this blog is that other people would experience real satisfaction in Christ and learn how Christianity truly provides contentment. My goals are to wrestle openly and honestly with the things that make life hard for all of us, and the things that really hurt and disappoint us; to share the ideas and the truths that have blessed me and given me the most satisfying encouragement and fulfillment; to show how God has helped me understand my own suffering and my own sin, and how He has shown me reasons to be filled with joy and encouragement; and to share how I have found rest for my soul and satisfaction in my life by seeing God more clearly and learning to enjoy who He really is. Although I will delve deeply into the actual experiences that led me to satisfaction in Christ and show how I got there, I will also share other thoughts that seem worth contributing. Readers can click on the tag "Finding Joy" to just read the posts on finding satisfaction in Christ.

I don't have the answers to all of life's problems in my head, but Christ does have the answers – indeed, He is the answer. My prayer for what I write here is that my experiences will lead others to find satisfaction in God as well so that their struggles become secondary to the joy they receive from our Savior.


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