Wednesday, July 28

i can't get no satisfaction...

"I can't get no... satisfaction... and I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried... I can't get NO (do, do, do).... No, no, no!"

Now that I got you singing... haha!

As most of you probably know me quite well, you will know that I am someone who likes to set goals for my personal life and I have lots of dreams and visions.  Every year my husband and I sit down and write out our goals for that coming year and the next five, ten, and fifty years... and then we revisit them every once in a while to make sure we are on track, etc.

Well, unfortunately, I have a dream which just doesn't seem to want to come to pass right now and it has been quite a few years of dreaming and praying and waiting... lots of waiting (sigh).  I also have a few other desires which in themselves seems quite big and impossible from where I am sitting right now but I know that God is a God of the impossible!

However, just the last few days God has been speaking to me about being satisfied with where I am at right now and being satisfied in Him.  Sometimes when I have a dream or a goal I become quite focussed on achieving it that I am looking so far ahead of myself and not enjoying what I am currently doing or where I am at in life right now.

Proverbs 19:23 'The fear of the Lord leads to life and he who has it will abide in satisfaction; He will not be visited with evil.'

Now, I'm not about to say that we shouldn't have goals because without any vision or purpose we will perish but perhaps my focus needs to change just slightly so that I am putting God first in every part of my life and I am not becoming distracted from Him with my own dreams and desires.  Not that my dreams and desires are not of God... because I know that they are... they are good Godly desires but He needs to be my first focus and not my dream.

In Psalm 95:6-11 it talks about the Israelites in the wilderness after they had been set free from Egypt and they were being distracted by other things around them instead of focussing on what God was giving them right then and there.  God was supplying every need for them... they should have been satisfied but they kept thinking about their past and their own desires.  Because of this God said that they would not enter His rest... they would not be satisfied.

Psalm 106:13-15 'They soon forgot His works; They did not wait for His counsel, But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness And tested God in the desert.  And He gave them their request, But sent leanness into their soul.'

Again it is talking about the Israelites in the wilderness and how even after God had done so much for them up until that point... like feeding them manner from Heaven, giving them water out of a rock, killing the Egyptians at the Red Sea... But still they kept forgetting about those amazing things that God had done and was doing for them and were distracted by what they wanted NOW!  They 'lusted exceedingly' and God ended up giving them their request.  BUT they were still dissatisfied... they had leanness in their souls!

Unless we put God first in everything that we do... in everything that we desire... in everything that we dream about... even though those dreams and goals my come to pass... we may not feel completely satisfied... we will not be completely fulfilled.  Our satisfaction needs to be in God and not in fulfilling our own dreams and desires, even if those dreams and desires are good.

God wants us to live an abundant and fulfilled life and the only way we can do that is by putting Him first... letting Him become our complete satisfaction.

If we never achieved anything else in life... never got given anything else that we wanted... never had any more dreams come to pass... would we feel completely satisfied?

Something very challenging for me to think about.... what about you?