Are You Full Yet?

When my kids were little, I planned a trip to Arizona with the newest baby to visit my parents. Thinking my four-year-old might enjoy a trip to see Grandma and Grandpa, I invited him along.

I told him he could come if he wanted, or he could stay home and go to a friend’s house one night for a sleepover and a video.

My little four-year-old agonized over the decision. Which would be more fun: going on a plane to see grandma and grandpa or sleeping at a friends’ house and watching a video?

He finally chose the plane trip, but it was a tough decision.

Not only does this show how video-deprived my kids were, it also shows what a hard time we have making decisions. Especially when we want the best possible option for maximum fun and enjoyment.

The criteria we use for making decisions reveals a lot about what’s important to us. For my son, the key factor was fun. He was following in his mom’s footsteps because that's what I have a tendency to live for.

We're all tempted to live for things other than God, and we can see these temptations at work in the way we make decisions.

Just think about your own life. What do you base your decisions on? The answer to that question may show what you have a tendency to live for.

Here are a few possibilities:

1. What will be most fun?
2. What will be easiest?
3. What will be safest?
4. What’s fair?
5. What’s comfortable?
6. What will help me get the most work accomplished?
7. What will make people admire me?
8. What will make people like me?
9. What will make the least amount of people mad at me?
10. What is the Father’s will?

The problem with living for things other than God is that we never get enough to satisfy. If we choose the video, we’ll worry that the plane trip would have been more fun. If we choose the plane trip, we’ll wonder about that video.

God talks about this issue in Jeremiah 2:13 when He says this:

For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Fun as a life goal is a broken cistern that can hold no water. No matter how much we pour in, we’ll never get enough to fill us up.

The same holds true for a life focused on comfort, fair, safe, or skinny.

And the same holds true for a life focused on food.

When we live for things other than God, we’ll never get enough to satisfy. The more we pour into our needy bodies, the more we’ll need because the cistern is broken.

The best thing we can do if we really want to be happy is to go to the fountain of living waters.

Because He’s the only One who can truly fill us.

Thought for the day: What are you trying to fill yourself up with? Is it working?

Getting What We Want

And he came into the house of the Lord and worshiped. 2 Samuel 12:20

I’ve been reading 2 Samuel in my quiet times, and the thing that keeps hitting me is how submissive David is to God. And how human he is. It comforts me to know that God calls him a man after his own heart even though he messes up from time to time.

Take the time with Bathsheba and Uriah. As I was reading that story, I wondered if David was ever really convicted about his sin before Nathan came and talked to him. Do you suppose he was so used to getting what he wanted that he didn’t even recognize it was wrong to take another man’s wife and then have him killed to cover up his sin?

And do you suppose we have the same problem? Are we so used to getting what we want that we don’t even realize it’s wrong to make “getting whatever we want” a goal? I see that with eating. Most of the dieting articles in magazines focus on indulgence.

Take this headline: Eat whatever you want and lose weight! I don’t know about you, but if I ate whatever I wanted, I’d gain a hundred pounds. Surely there must be a glitch somewhere in that program.

Some articles take a different approach. They admit we can’t eat whatever we want, but instead they encourage us to indulge ourselves in other ways. Take a bubble bath. Go shopping. Watch a good movie.

There’s nothing wrong with doing those things, but we need to be careful of our focus. Does God really want us to live a life of indulgence? Look where indulgence got David.

And look where it gets us. In the physical realm it’s a weight gain, but that’s not all. Think of the emotional consequences of focusing our lives on getting what we want. Discontentment, boredom, resentment, depression, unhappiness—you name it. We’ll never get enough of what we want to be happy until we reach the point where what we want is God. That’s when joy kicks in.

David always comes back to that point. Look at verse 20 of 2 Samuel 12: And he came into the house of the Lord and worshiped.

David didn’t worship after he got what he wanted with Bathsheba. He didn’t worship after he got what he wanted with Uriah. No, he worshiped after he got what he didn’t want. He worshiped as soon as he heard the news that his baby died—the baby he had been pleading with God to spare for the previous six days.

Isn’t that mind boggling? David was so submitted to God by that point that he didn’t even hesitate. God didn’t give him what he wanted, but he worshiped Him anyway.

That’s the point I want to reach. Where everything I do is about God. Where I worship Him even when I don’t get what I want. First reaction.

I’ll know I’ve made progress when I no longer feel like I deserve to be indulged.

Two hours later (I guess I haven't made progress yet.)

Yes, I know, I'm commenting on my own blog. Pathetic, isn't it? I just have to tell you what God did this morning.

I was sitting down to write and I didn't feel like writing, so I said, "I know, I'll check my e-mails." The only problem was that I wasn't supposed to check my e-mails because I have a boundary of three times a day, and I'd already done my morning check. The only reason I wanted to check them again was to - you got it - indulge myself.

So I said to myself (after checking my e-mails and then truth journaling about it), "Okay, I'm supposed to go to God for help, not my e-mails." So I went back to the Bible, continuing to read on in 2 Samuel, not really thinking there would be anything that would apply to my situation in 2 Samuel.

And that's when it hit me. In chapter 19, David submits again - this time to Joab, and I realized, I need to submit to God - even if it's just for an hour of writing. That instead of checking my e-mails (which is what I felt like doing), I should be worshiping Him.

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

I found that to be true this morning.