AN APETTITE FOR GOD

The creation of an appetite for God alone also leads to a satisfaction in God alone. As God graces us with new and supernatural desiring craving, hungering, thirsting, and longing so He also graces us with a new and supernatural satisfaction, joy, delight, fulfillment, pleasure, happiness, and gladness. They go together.

Listen to the words of David who discovered such satisfaction in God that he proclaimed in Psalm 16:11, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Jesus spoke of conversion in such a way that the discovery of the pleasures and value of heaven “is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:44-46).

True Christianity is the creation of new desires and the fulfilment of those desires. God becomes both the object and fulfillment of our desires. Our whole new life is a life of desiring God and tasting God and enjoying God and satisfaction in God which leads to a deeper hunger for God and more satisfaction in God. This becomes the ongoing pattern and rhythm of our lives. We always want more of God and the more of Him we get, the more we want.

Bernard of Clairveux so aptly described his own experience of cravings and satisfaction:
“We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still; We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.” Another time he wrote:
“Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts Thou fount of life, Thou light of men from the best bliss that earth imparts we turn unfulfilled to Thee again.”

This appetite for God and the satisfaction that results in God are the most important ways we fulfill our creation purpose. The apostle Paul writes, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The Westminster Catechism begins “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” The lynch pin of my mentor John Piper’s theology is that “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.”

The truth of God’s creation of these new appetites and their new fulfilment's is both our greatest blessing and our greatest downfall. It is our greatest blessing because it shows that the worth and value of God is the source of our souls deepest satisfaction. But it is our greatest downfall because it often reveals to us that our desires and the fulfillment of those desires are often far below what God created and saved us for. Augustine described it this way from his own experience:

“I was astonished that though I now loved Thee…yet I did not press on to enjoy my God. Your beauty drove me to you, but soon I was dragged away by my own weight sinking with sorrow into those inferior things…as though I sensed the fragrance of the fare but was not yet able to eat it.”

Indwelling sin is what stands in the way of my desire for God and my satisfaction in God. God defines sin in this way through the prophet Jeremiah. "My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).

Here God pictures himself as a constant flowing fountain of refreshing life-giving water. The way to affirm the worth of a fountain like this is to be satisfied by its water, to enjoy its water, to keep coming back for more, and then point other people to the water that will satisfy their thirst, and never, never, never prefer any drink in the world over this water. That is what makes the fountain look valuable. That is how we glorify the worth and value God, the fountain of living water.

But in Jeremiah's day people tasted the fountain of God's grace and did not like it. So they gave their energies to finding better water, more sat­isfying water. Not only did God call this effort futile ("broken cisterns that can hold no water"), but he called it evil: "My people have committed two evils." They put God's perfections to the tongue of their souls and disliked what they tasted; then they turned and craved the suicidal cisterns of the world. That double insult to God is the very essence of what evil is.

Preferring the pleasures of self, possessions, money, power, achievement, fame, or sex over the pleasures of God is a great evil. The sins of Israel, like all of our sins, stood in the way of their satisfaction with God alone. Sin always opposes and perverts our pursuit of God. It opposes our pursuit by making other things look more desirable than God. And it perverts our pursuit by making us think that we are pursuing God when in fact we are in love with His gifts. Indeed it is the ultimate mean­ing of evil. Esteeming God less than anything is the essence of evil.

To be continued...