I have a confession to make. I am not satisfied. I want something more. I want something better. I want something different. I cast a jealous eye towards others that have what I don’t have.
I delight myself in many things. Just to name a few – I delight myself in the food I eat, the things I buy, the TV I watch, the sports I play, the books I read, the work I do, the praise I receive from others, and the relationships I invest in.
Yet all of these things leave me wanting. There must be something more. These things may satisfy me for a short time, but eventually I find they are not enough. I go out for a night on the town and have a wonderful meal at the nicest restaurant I could find. That meal brings me great satisfaction. My belly is full. But when the morning comes, I am hungry again. No matter how great a meal the restaurant might have served or how much I might have paid for that meal, it could not bring me lasting satisfaction.
Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you he desires of your heart.”
Dissatisfaction is not necessarily a bad thing. Dissatisfaction points us to the Lord. Dissatisfaction will cause us to seek him. When we are disappointed at all the things we thought would satisfy us that didn’t, there will come a time when we have nowhere to turn but to Jesus. Hopefully, we do this sooner rather than later.
If you are finding yourself dissatisfied, consider the following.
1) Confess your misplaced delight. Where have you put your hopes and dreams? Are they placed in things that are temporary and fleeting? Ask for forgiveness for all the things you chased after that were not of God.
2) Practice a fast. The idea of a fast is to set aside something that you delight in such as food, that you might replace that delight with something more sustaining. Fasting from food may not necessarily be the most beneficial type of fast for you. Go back and consider where you have misplaced your delight.
3) Run after the Lord. Hebrews 12:1 says, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Fasting from earthly delights is not meant to burden us, but to free us, so that we might run uninhibited to Jesus and to experience his joy in a greater way. The more we delight ourselves in the things of this world, the less capacity we will have to delight ourselves in Jesus. The less we delight ourselves in Jesus, the more discontent we will find ourselves being.
