How To Find Satisfaction In God

HOW TO FIND SATISFACTION IN GOD

Isaiah 55:1-3

Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters;

And you who have no money come, buy and eat.

Come, buy wine and milk

Without money and without cost.

Why do you spend money for what is not bread,

And your wages for what does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,

And delight yourself in abundance.

Incline your ear and come to Me.

Listen, that you may live;

And I will make an everlasting covenant with you,

According to the faithful mercies shown to David. (Isaiah 55:1-3).

Satisfaction guaranteed! You hear that promise so often that it has become a byword. We love the idea of satisfaction. Yet are we ever really satisfied?

We talk about...

ƒÝ Customer satisfaction

ƒÝ Job satisfaction

ƒÝ The Rolling Stones bemoaned the fact that ¡§I can¡¦t get no satisfaction, and I try, and I try and I try and I try.¡¨

God WANTS us to be satisfied, but He wants us to be satisfied in that which is satisfactory. HE is the satisfactory One. As John Piper tells us, ¡§God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.¡¨

How can you find satisfaction? Real satisfaction in God?

1. YOU HAVE TO BE THIRSTY: Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters (Isaiah 55:1).

The first step to satisfaction is dissatisfaction. To be satisfied, you first have to be unsatisfied. To be filled, you first have to be empty. To have your thirst quenched, you first have to be thirsty.

This passage starts off with the most universal possible term. It is addressed to ¡§everyone.¡¨ It does not matter if you are rich or poor, black or white, male or female. This is something that is offered to all. Or is it? As I look at this passage, I am struck by the fact that there is indeed a requirement for those who would come. The requirement is that you must be thirsty.

Our problem is that we often do not recognize our thirst or, when we do, we look for the wrong sorts of things to fill it.

She was a woman who had been around and it showed, if not on her face, then in the deeper resources of her heart. It wasn¡¦t the years; it was the mileage. When it came to picking men, she had plenty of experience and all of it was bad. One relationship after another had ended in disaster.

Then one afternoon, she went down to the well to draw water and found a Galilean rabbi there. The last thing she wanted was to get into a religious discussion, but she was drawn in spite of herself when he began speaking to her about her need for living water -- a lasting, spiritual, never-ending source of spiritual water that would refresh her tired soul.

You know the story and you know that there came a point in the conversation where Jesus said to her, ¡§Go get your husband and birng him here.¡¨

I can feel her wince at the mention of the topic.

¡§Why did He have to go and mention that?¡¨

¡§I have no husband.¡¨

Why did Jesus go there? It was to show her need. It was to make her thirsty for that which only He could satisfy.

He does the same thing to us today. There are things that the Lord brings into our life that are designed to increase our thirst.

As a fire fighter, I know a bit about generating thirst. I¡¦ve been in some hot situations where the temperature was so high the you walked out and could hardly wait for a taste of cool, refreshing water.

Has the Lord been turning up the heat in your life lately? It might be that He is at work in your life to create a thirst for that which only He can satisfy.

2. YOU HAVE TO BE WITHOUT RESOURCES: And you who have no money come (Isaiah 55:1).

To be satisfied, you not only have to be dissatisfied, you also have to be unable to satisfy yourself with that which you have at hand.

Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3). Poverty is when you don¡¦t have something. It is the down side of the ¡§have¡¦s¡¨ and the ¡§have nots.¡¨ Of course, we know that poverty can be a bit relative. There are poor and there are very poor. This is not speaking of the one who is merely part of the lower middle class. It speaks to the one who is spiritually bankrupt and destitute.

It is only when you come to terms with the fact that you are spiritually bankrupt that you can even be saved. Salvation begins with the admission that you are unsaved. Redemption begins with the realization that you are a slave. It is only when you admit your spiritual poverty that God gives to you all of the riches that are in Christ Jesus.