SATISFACTION

God has created each of us with a thirst that only He can quench. French philosopher Pascal called it a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts that only He can fill. Or as Augustine put it, "Our souls are restless until they find their rest in Thee." Man is perpetually seeking. To whatever degree we don't know the unseen and eternal realm; we seek answers in the seen and temporal. We look for eternal answers among temporal things. But we discover that they cannot provide them.

Dan Stone

The Rest of the Gospel, One Press, 2000. p. 31.

We are programmed for failure if we're looking for ultimate answers in a non-ultimate realm, a realm that's partial, fragmented, incomplete. We end up worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. We can do that as believers. The total answer is a Person, Jesus Christ. It's part of God's program to make us dissatisfied with what the temporal realm offers, so that we might seek life in Him.

Dan Stone

The Rest of the Gospel, One Press, 2000, p. 31-32.

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within His followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world He came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of His eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards.

J. Campbell White

Teach me that if I do not live a life that satisfies Thee, I shall not have a life that satisfies myself.

Author Unknown

The Valley of Vision, ed. Arthur Bennett, 1975, p. 166, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.

The soul of man bears the image of God; so nothing can satisfy it but He whose image it bears. Our soul, says Augustine, was created as by God, so for God, and is therefore never quiet till it rest in God.

Thomas Gataker

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 286.

So now, take a man that hath all the fullness of the earth; because that his soul was never made for the fullness of the earth, therefore he is said to be empty; in the midst of all his fullness, the man is an empty man, because his heart is not full of that for which he was made, and that is Christ.

William Bridge

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 286.

The intrinsic drive to please the significant people in our lives reflects the fact that we were built to bring pleasure to someone outside of ourselves- God. The highest satisfaction of life is knowing in our spirits that He indeed is pleased with us.

Joseph Stowell

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing—not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends—is going to bring satisfaction to their aching hearts besides God. This conviction breeds a people who passionately long for God on Sunday morning. They are not confused about why they are here. They do not see songs and prayers and sermons as mere traditions or mere duties. They see them as means of getting to God or God getting to them for more of His fullness.

John Piper

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 239.

When people cast fear to the wind and spend themselves and risk their lives and fortune in the cause of God’s truth, and in love for other people, then God is revealed for who He really is: infinitely valuable and satisfying—so much so that His people don’t need the fleeting pleasures of sin in order to be content.

John Piper

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem Baptist Church, 2002, p. 120.

Quite simply, it is a fact of history that the church of Christ has not experienced any major nationwide revival under the conditions of advanced modernity. On the other hand, modernity undercuts true dependence on God's sovereign awakening by fostering the notion that we can effect revival by human means. On the other hand, modernity makes many people satisfied with privatized, individualistic, and subjective experiences that are pale counterfeits of true revival.

Os Guinness

Dining with the Devil, Baker, 1993, p. 20.

The message of the Bible provides the only answer to humanity's most pressing need: to know God himself. Having been created by God for God, the "self" can never be "self-satisfied." Yet, having lost sight of the God revealed in the Bible, all we can see is our self, with its futile drive to meet its own ever-changing but never satisfied cravings for the second-rate pleasures of this world.

Scott Hafemann

The God of Promise and the Life of Faith. Crossway Books, 2001, p. 20.

You may have wealth. It cannot profit long. You may have health. Decay will cause its flower to fade. You may have strength. It soon will totter to the grave. You may have honors. A breath will blast them. You may have flattering friends. They are but as a summer brook. These boasted joys often now cover an aching heart, but they never gave a grain of solid peace; they never healed a wounded conscience; they never won approving looks from God; they never crushed the sting of sin.

Henry Law

The soul's deepest thirst is for God Himself, who has made us so that we can never be satisfied without Him.

F.F. Bruce

On the one hand we long for God and on the other hand we run from Him. Accordingly, instead of seeking Him out to find lasting meaning, we turn to other things instead to try and satisfy that deep, spiritual thirst inside, only to discover it is like drinking salt water… We can never find success in these things under the sun because we were never meant to find lasting profit in them but only in God.

Melvin Tinker

Wisdom to Live By, Christian Focus Publications, 1998, p. 19. Used by Permission.

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.

Blaise Pascal

If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things that you don’t get that you don’t want.

Author Unknown

The straightest line between me and satisfaction in life is obedience to God.

Author Unknown

You have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.

Augustine

Quoted in: This We Believe, pg. 40, Zondervan, 2000.

Do you want to increase your hunger for the Lord? Try weaning yourself from the world's diet- be prepared for some withdrawal symptoms when you turn off the radio and the TV and eliminate unnecessary activities. Then begin feeding on the Word of God. At first, it may seem bland and boring; but in time, you will discover that it satisfies in a far deeper, richer way than those things you once thought were so filling.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

A Place of Quiet Rest, Moody, 2000, p. 130.

Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God's motives, but in understanding His character, in trusting in His promises, and in leaning on Him and resting in Him as the Sovereign who knows what He is doing and does all things well.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Is God Really in Control, Joni and Friends, 1987, p. 9, Used by Permission, www.joniandfriends.org.

The man or woman who does not know God demands an infinite satisfaction from other human beings which they cannot give, and in the case of the man, he becomes tyrannical and cruel. It springs from this one thing, the human heart must have satisfaction, but there is only one Being who can satisfy the last abyss of the human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Oswald Chambers

Christianity Today, v. 37, n. 11.

There is [in God] an inexhaustible fountain of blessings. Every kind of dainty is in inexhaustible plenty. Therefore ‘tis called a river of life, rivers of pleasure forevermore (Revelation 22:1). Here the soul manifests itself abundantly without danger of spending the provision. Therefore Christ says to His people, “Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved” (Song of Songs 5:1). There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting… At God’s right hand there are pleasures forevermore. There you may eat and drink, and always be satisfied and yet never be glutted. You may eat and drink abundantly and never be in danger of excess.

Jonathan Edwards

Extractions from His Private Diary.

God has set Eternity in our heart, and man's infinite capacity cannot be filled or satisfied with the things of time and sense.

F.B. Meyer

Our Daily Walk.

My satisfaction in Him is incomplete until expressed in praise of Him for satisfying me.

Sam Storms

The more you focus on yourself, the more distracted you will be from the proper path. The more you know Him and commune with Him, the more the Spirit will make you like Him. The more you are like Him, the better you will understand His utter sufficiency for all of life’s difficulties. And that is the only way to know real satisfaction.

John MacArthur

Religious Hedonism in Our Sufficiency in Christ, 1991, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. p. 157.

Because faith makes invisible things real, and visible things unreal, earthly dissatisfaction becomes the road to heavenly satisfaction.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Heaven: Your Real Home, Zondervan, www.Zondervan.com, 1995, p. 98. Used by Permission.

In spiritual things, when God has raised a desire, He always gratifies it; hence the longing is prophetic of the blessing. In no case is the desire of the living thing excited to produce distress, but in order that it may seek and find satisfaction.

C.H. Spurgeon
The Treasury of David, Psalm 145:16.

Of all that have tried the selfish experiment, let one come forth and say he has succeeded. He that has made gold his idol, has it satisfied him? He that has toiled in the field of ambition, has he been repaid? He that has ransacked every theater of sensual enjoyment, is he content? Can any answer in the affirmative? Not one!

Samuel Johnson

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give, because He would give the best, and man will not take it.

George Macdinald

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water…. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably, earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.

C.S. Lewis