By faith, we seek to please God because we love Him. Faith gives wings to love’s natural desire. Showing us not only that God can be pleased but how we may do so, faith gives true substance to love’s highest wish: the pleasure of our beloved God.
God holds every true treasure that our hearts yearn for, and He “can satisfy the last aching abyss of the human soul” (Oswald Chambers). His will is for us to seek Him sincerely and make our supplication to Him concerning every empty place within us.
As long as sin fractures our commitment to God, we won’t enjoy the fullness that can only come from perfect commitment. But if we seek God in trust and obedience, we’ll find a joy that, although incomplete for now, is nevertheless deep and true.
God has made “everything beautiful in its time.” The limited joy that so intrigues us now is a delightful hint of what lies ahead for those who diligently seek God. Having been given the ability to foretaste eternity, we are being drawn toward Him.
Hope has a purifying effect. If we’ve paid the price to know what matters the most to us, and if we’ve realized that the only thing worth having is God Himself, then our daily choices will be much easier. The joy of the Lord will be our strength.
If we could know only what our own physical senses have experienced, how impoverished our minds would be! Most of life’s crucial realities have to do with things that are unseen, and it is by faith that we apprehend these, the greatest of all truths.
The most powerful motive force in the world is a deeply felt appreciation for the forgiveness God mercifully makes available to us in His Son, Jesus Christ. We will truly love God only when we see something of the high price He has paid to love us.
To deny the obvious fact that our hearts long for God is to deny our Creator. Why don’t we see the depth of our need for God? How could something so important be so difficult to recognize? There are at least three reasons for our failure to see.
The decision to seek God with all of our heart can’t be made once-for-all and then forgotten. In every single moment of choice we must exercise our will one more time, deciding again and again to maintain integrity to what we know is most important.
If we fill God-created needs with anything less than God-designed fulfillments, the result is bound to be unsatisfying in the short run, and destructive to our character in the long run. Even when we get what we want, it will not be what we want.
