Fighting For Satisfaction
Get stubborn. There is no chance of delighting ourselves in the Lord if we are not aggressive in our fight to do so.
The whole world pulls with its entire weight in the opposite direction of Christ. Other gospels declare their “good news” relentlessly. Everything around us tells us that the good life is something else, anything else besides Jesus. Weight loss, love, intimacy, attraction, dominance, power, safety, comfort, approval, each with a million and one different ways to get there. Entire companies and billions upon billions of dollars are focused solely on preying upon your insecurities, feeding twisted visions of the good life, and convincing you that their product is the way to get there. Your addiction is their profit. Your anxiety is their gain. Your insecurity is their livelihood.
Our every effort must go into knowing and being close to Christ. What we see, listen to, say, read, watch, engage with in our free time, all of it must be exhaustingly spent on God. This may feel like burying our heads in the sand, foolish Christians ignoring the world around them and seeing only what they want to see, while actually remaining in constant peril and serving no purpose in the “real world.” But what we see is not the real world, and our heads are not being buried in the sand, but kept above the clouds in heaven. We do not ignore the world around us, but we become infatuated with God, who in turn gives us the eyes to see the world as it truly is; greatly valuable and utterly damaged. This is not a rescinding of social responsibility, but living from our rightful place at the right hand of God, where everything sits under our feet because of the victory of Jesus. Only from there can we properly see the world and bless it with the heavenly blessings given to us by Christ Jesus. Everything we do apart from this position is done in our own strength, lacking the power of God, and is akin to pouring gasoline on a fire while believing with all of our hearts that we are putting it out. We pat ourselves on the back for our great service to humankind, while in reality we are burning the world to ashes.
God help us.
Help us to turn from the exhaustion that comes from the endless frustration of pursuing satisfaction anywhere else, and help us to exhaust ourselves in the only pursuit that matters, the pursuit of You.
Help us in every moment of our life to choose that which points us to you, despising all else.
Help us to keep you on our lips, in our thoughts, filling our hearts.
Help us to choose the company of others who will not let us off the hook when we fail to pursue you, but will lovingly encourage and point us back to you.
Help us to scorn every excuse and reason and distraction and “barrier” that keeps us from zealously following you.
Help us to LOVE your Word, delight in prayer, enjoy discipline, crave God-obsessed community, and cherish every step we take that conforms to your footprint, even as it leads us to self-denial, suffering, and death.
Help us to keep our head above the clouds.