by Lara Cook
Do not love the
world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the
Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and
the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is
from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but
whoever does the will of God abides forever. 1 John 2:15-17
It seems that everywhere I look I see selfishness and excess but nowhere more than in my own home. We are a society of over indulgent people who thrive on excess and can never seem to get enough stuff. Gluttony, not only a sin of over eating, can take on many forms.
This past holiday season I began to clean out closets and
take inventory of all our stuff so I
could get rid of what we don’t need or use to make room for – you guessed it –
more stuff. It seemed as though I don’t
even have enough room to put all the stuff
we already have.
All this stuff –
all the gluttony - is to fill that
void. When we have a void in our lives, we may try to stuff everything but the
right thing into to get rid of that huge empty feeling. We may try clothes,
cars, houses, food, drugs, alcohol, but nothing can take away that feeling
except God. And the more we try to fill
it with something besides Him, the emptier we feel. We are constantly stuffing
things inside the hole but they are disappearing out the bottom like there is
nothing there. When one thing doesn’t
satisfy us we turn to another and we keep trying to find that one thing. But in the end we have a lot of stuff and still a big empty
feeling. Why, after trying so hard, do we
still feel empty and unhappy? We have tried to make ourselves happy in every
way except the one true way.
The answer is simple, yet hard to live by. The deepest hunger of my life cannot be
satisfied by anything other than God.
There are no people, things, sumptuous foods, substances, etc. that can
soothe and satisfy my longing like God can.
Although God does not condemn desire, He does warn us that desire for
the wrong things will never satisfy us and can even destroy us.
Things can not only leave us feeling empty and lacking, but
it can get to a point that you can almost feel diseased. Getting more things to make us happy is like
compounding the feeling instead of making it better. They sparkle and shine and
make us happy temporarily but then the time comes when they don’t satisfy us
anymore so we head off to another store to get something more. There is only
one fit for the emptiness in our lives, only one thing that truly satisfies
that hunger and thirst and we can chase everything else but until we turn to
the one true source we won’t be satisfied.
Turn to Him now. Quit spending
and eating and going and doing and just realize already that it is God that you
need dear friend, nothing else.
Scripture to Claim:
1) As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. 5)
Why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I
will praise him again — my Savior and 6my God!
Psalm 42:1;5-6a