Lack of Passion or Lack of Satisfaction?
At Sephania (HS Bible Study) one of my girls asked a really good question that l even walked away challenged by; “Can you love Jesus and still (I’m paraphrasing) be disobedient?” Does your life reflex a love for Christ, or are you saying one thing but your life reflects something else? The conversation went in a lot of different directions, and we all came to the same conclusion, that yes you can love Jesus, and have a heart for God and make the wrong choice. I walked away not entirely satisfied with how we had to end the conversation…we had to go back into worship...but this morning I was reading, and came across something that I wish I would have read prior to small groups, because it pretty much answered the question.
This is the conclustion I came to: love for Jesus is not the problem, it’s a satisfaction problem. One of the girls asked another good question that I will try and use to illustrate this. She said: “can we be passionate about someone (romantically speaking) who you know is not God’s best for you and still be in love with Jesus?” The answer to that question is “yes,” but my question back would be why? Why would you want something, or be passionate about something that is not what God has in mind for you? I would have to say –it’s a satisfaction problem. You are looking to that relationship to satisfy you in some way, because you are not fully satisfied in Christ. Doesn’t mean you don’t love God, and want to serve him, but I would have to say that you are not allowing Christ is fill every place in your life with Him, or else you won’t desire something, or someone, who is contrary to God’s will for your life—If that makes since.
God showed me this by reminding me of the story of the women at the well in the Gospel of John. From this encounter we observe several things: An insatiable need or craving for too much of anything is symptomatic of unmet needs or what we call “empty places.” Salvation does not equal satisfaction. (You can be saved and still be dissatisfied). Satisfaction comes only when every empty place is filled with the fullness of Christ. While salvation comes to us as a gift of God, we find satisfaction in Him as we deliberately surrender all parts of our lives to Him. Christians who are supposed to be fully satisfied with Jesus often still harbor an unidentified emptiness or need. Our unwillingness to be truthful about our lack of satisfaction in the Christian life keeps us from asking the right questions. This quote from Beth Moore her books "Breaking Free" is what made me think of the conversations we had during small group last night.
“I served Him. I even loved Him (Jesus), however immature, but I still fought an emptiness that kept me looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places.”
Love is not only something God does; love is something God is. God would have to stop being in order to stop loving. Again, our temptation is to humanize God, because we are limited to understanding love as a verb. With God, love is first a noun. It’s what and who He is. My point is this: only the places we allow the love of God to fully penetrate will be satisfied and, and therefore, liberated. Nothing expresses this truth better than the divinely inspired words of the apostle Paul in Eph 3:13-19.
“14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”-emphasis mine-
In this passage the apostle taught what God deeply desires for us: to be satisfied to the measure of all the fullness of God (vs 19). The word filled is the Greek word pleroo, meaning “to make full, fill, particularly to fill a vessel or hollow place.” Remember these empty places? They probably cause us more havoc than almost anything in our lives! They grow from hardships, injustices, losses, and unmet needs, not to mention the hand of God, who carves out places only He can fill.
Remember our greatest desire according to Proverbs 19:22? God has what you need. He alone has unfailing love, and He wants to flood your life and mine with it. The fullness of God is not a one-time occurance like our salvation. Every day of our lives—to live victoriously—we must learn to pour out our hearts to God, confess sin daily so nothing will hinder Him, acknowledge every hollow place and invite Him to fill us fully! Then we need to continue to fan the flame of His love by reading Scripture, listening to edifying music, and praying often. We also need to avoid things that obviously quench His Spirit. When you make a daily practice of inviting His love to fill your hollow places and make sure you are not hindering the process, God will begin to satisfy you more than a double cheeseburger!
I practice what I am preaching almost every day. When I allow Christ is fill me up and satisfy all my longings with Himself this frees me from craving the approval of others and requiring others to fill my “cup.” Then, if someone takes the time to demonstrate love to me I am free to appreciate it and enjoy it, but I didn’t emotionally require it. The MINUTE I don’t allow Christ to be who fills me up I see evidence of it I my life almost immediately. I will be over sensitive, needy, clinging, cranky, selfish…etc you get the idea. I start looking to other things to fill me up. I didn’t stop loving Jesus, I just stopped allowing Him to fill me up. I begin to allow other people, or things, they can even be "good things like school, jobs, relationships, things not bad in and of themselves, but the problem lies in when I look to those things for satisfaction and not to the ONE who's well does not run dry. His love is everlasting and never ending!
See how the love of God brings freedom? Not only am I freed, I am able to free others from having to boost me up emotionally all the time! HALLELUJAH! Where the Spirit of the Lord’s lavish love is, there is freedom! Try it and see! If we’re not experiencing satisfaction in God, a hindrance exists and we want to identify it and ask God to remove it. Ordinarily, the primary hindrance to satisfaction in our lives is refusing Him access to our empty places. So if we are still hanging out with people we shouldn’t, dating someone we shouldn’t, doing things we know are sin, making excuses for it, you get the idea, doing things that we know are not God’s will for our lives…I would say It is not a love problem, but a satisfaction problem.
“For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride[a] to one husband—Christ. 3 But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent." 2 Cor 11:2-3 -emphasis mine-
My prayer is that we will take a honest look at ourselves; can we really say we are in love with Jesus, not just in strong like or fondness, but do we truly love Him? Not that we will walk perfectly but are our actions a reflection of one in love? John 14:21"Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” Then are we allowing Christ to fill us up, because if we truly love the Lord, and our actions, most of the time…ha-ha...reflect that then maybe we are looking to other things to fill us up. The enemy would love nothing more than to sway us from having a sincere and pure devotion to the Lord. Let’s have hearts checks today, and allow Christ to fill us up!!!
This is the conclustion I came to: love for Jesus is not the problem, it’s a satisfaction problem. One of the girls asked another good question that I will try and use to illustrate this. She said: “can we be passionate about someone (romantically speaking) who you know is not God’s best for you and still be in love with Jesus?” The answer to that question is “yes,” but my question back would be why? Why would you want something, or be passionate about something that is not what God has in mind for you? I would have to say –it’s a satisfaction problem. You are looking to that relationship to satisfy you in some way, because you are not fully satisfied in Christ. Doesn’t mean you don’t love God, and want to serve him, but I would have to say that you are not allowing Christ is fill every place in your life with Him, or else you won’t desire something, or someone, who is contrary to God’s will for your life—If that makes since.
God showed me this by reminding me of the story of the women at the well in the Gospel of John. From this encounter we observe several things: An insatiable need or craving for too much of anything is symptomatic of unmet needs or what we call “empty places.” Salvation does not equal satisfaction. (You can be saved and still be dissatisfied). Satisfaction comes only when every empty place is filled with the fullness of Christ. While salvation comes to us as a gift of God, we find satisfaction in Him as we deliberately surrender all parts of our lives to Him. Christians who are supposed to be fully satisfied with Jesus often still harbor an unidentified emptiness or need. Our unwillingness to be truthful about our lack of satisfaction in the Christian life keeps us from asking the right questions. This quote from Beth Moore her books "Breaking Free" is what made me think of the conversations we had during small group last night.
“I served Him. I even loved Him (Jesus), however immature, but I still fought an emptiness that kept me looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places.”
Love is not only something God does; love is something God is. God would have to stop being in order to stop loving. Again, our temptation is to humanize God, because we are limited to understanding love as a verb. With God, love is first a noun. It’s what and who He is. My point is this: only the places we allow the love of God to fully penetrate will be satisfied and, and therefore, liberated. Nothing expresses this truth better than the divinely inspired words of the apostle Paul in Eph 3:13-19.
“14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”-emphasis mine-
In this passage the apostle taught what God deeply desires for us: to be satisfied to the measure of all the fullness of God (vs 19). The word filled is the Greek word pleroo, meaning “to make full, fill, particularly to fill a vessel or hollow place.” Remember these empty places? They probably cause us more havoc than almost anything in our lives! They grow from hardships, injustices, losses, and unmet needs, not to mention the hand of God, who carves out places only He can fill.
Remember our greatest desire according to Proverbs 19:22? God has what you need. He alone has unfailing love, and He wants to flood your life and mine with it. The fullness of God is not a one-time occurance like our salvation. Every day of our lives—to live victoriously—we must learn to pour out our hearts to God, confess sin daily so nothing will hinder Him, acknowledge every hollow place and invite Him to fill us fully! Then we need to continue to fan the flame of His love by reading Scripture, listening to edifying music, and praying often. We also need to avoid things that obviously quench His Spirit. When you make a daily practice of inviting His love to fill your hollow places and make sure you are not hindering the process, God will begin to satisfy you more than a double cheeseburger!
I practice what I am preaching almost every day. When I allow Christ is fill me up and satisfy all my longings with Himself this frees me from craving the approval of others and requiring others to fill my “cup.” Then, if someone takes the time to demonstrate love to me I am free to appreciate it and enjoy it, but I didn’t emotionally require it. The MINUTE I don’t allow Christ to be who fills me up I see evidence of it I my life almost immediately. I will be over sensitive, needy, clinging, cranky, selfish…etc you get the idea. I start looking to other things to fill me up. I didn’t stop loving Jesus, I just stopped allowing Him to fill me up. I begin to allow other people, or things, they can even be "good things like school, jobs, relationships, things not bad in and of themselves, but the problem lies in when I look to those things for satisfaction and not to the ONE who's well does not run dry. His love is everlasting and never ending!
See how the love of God brings freedom? Not only am I freed, I am able to free others from having to boost me up emotionally all the time! HALLELUJAH! Where the Spirit of the Lord’s lavish love is, there is freedom! Try it and see! If we’re not experiencing satisfaction in God, a hindrance exists and we want to identify it and ask God to remove it. Ordinarily, the primary hindrance to satisfaction in our lives is refusing Him access to our empty places. So if we are still hanging out with people we shouldn’t, dating someone we shouldn’t, doing things we know are sin, making excuses for it, you get the idea, doing things that we know are not God’s will for our lives…I would say It is not a love problem, but a satisfaction problem.
“For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride[a] to one husband—Christ. 3 But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent." 2 Cor 11:2-3 -emphasis mine-
My prayer is that we will take a honest look at ourselves; can we really say we are in love with Jesus, not just in strong like or fondness, but do we truly love Him? Not that we will walk perfectly but are our actions a reflection of one in love? John 14:21"Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” Then are we allowing Christ to fill us up, because if we truly love the Lord, and our actions, most of the time…ha-ha...reflect that then maybe we are looking to other things to fill us up. The enemy would love nothing more than to sway us from having a sincere and pure devotion to the Lord. Let’s have hearts checks today, and allow Christ to fill us up!!!
“Yes, my soul, find rest in God;
my hope comes from him.
6 Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.
7 My salvation and my honor depend on God[c];
he is my mighty rock, my refuge.
8 Trust in him at all times, you people;
pour out your hearts to him,
for God is our refuge.”:Ps 62:5-8
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