Nothing Can Satisfy Your Soul Like Christ
You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
psalm 16:11
So much of my joy in life is found in my family, with my friends, and in my church. I love being with the people I love. I’m encouraged by them. They make me laugh. They bring me comfort.
If you’ve read my previous blog posts then you know how much I love music and books. And coffee. And chai…..
All of the things that I love the most are good and beautiful things. Gifts from God. He wants me to find joy and comfort in them.
But…
They are just echoes of one much, much greater.
And sometimes that’s hard for me to fathom.
How can anything bring me more joy than hanging out with my kids, laughing with my friends, being at my church?
Well, the One who created all of these things would obviously have to be so much better than them. So much more beautiful. So much more joyous, comforting, and creative.
Herman Bavinck, a Dutch theologian once said:
God, and God alone, is man’s highest good.
God is the greatest good. Nothing compares. Nothing.
And since he is the greatest good, nothing else can satisfy me like Him. I could spend ALL of my time with my people, reading my books, listening to my records, sitting by the ocean and I would still be missing what my soul needs most.
I could chase my dreams and have them all realized. I could become healthy and wealthy and have all the material things I could want. But I would still have a deep longing for God whether I acknowledged it or not.
James 1:17 says: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” God is so good and everything else is a derivative. An echo. All good things come from Him because he delights in giving us good things but we must remember that our joy ultimately depends on staying close to Him.
The entire world benefits when we show them that nothing satisfies us like Jesus and that he is our greatest treasure and highest good. Everyone is searching for true and lasting joy because everything in the world disappoints and is tragically temporary. We know something is wrong with this. Our marriages disappoint us. Even the good ones! Our kids disappoint us no matter how great they are or how much we love them. Our parents disappoint us, our jobs disappoint us, our hobbies, our looks, our friends, and on and on. And everything ends though we wish we could hold on to the people and things we love the most.
But not Jesus.
He doesn’t disappoint. He has no end. In him is fullness of joy.
He fulfills all of our needs. He’s the answer to all of our questions. He’s the culmination of our hope.
We were made to worship. We humans will always find someone or something to make our “center.” But unless that someone is Jesus, we will continue to thirst. We will continue to want. We will continue to search. And we will continue to settle for second rate versions at best. We will settle for our broken substitutes for God instead of going to the source of everything good.
So, I continue to enjoy my family, friends, tea, music and books while thanking and worshipping the Creator of all of it because he’s the source of all of my joy and the lover of my soul.
