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PINIMAGEHe has put eternity into man’s heart. Ecclesiastes 3:11b
One of my biggest problems with shopping at Christmas time, beyond finding the time to do it, is the temptation to buy gifts for me to me.
Merry Christmas, Tammy!
I have a confession. I went out to buy a gift for a staff gift exchange, and it’s sitting on my desk in my office. Why put it in the pile of presents and have to fight to get it back when I could just skip all that stress and keep it? True story!
You know what I’m talking about. While shopping for Christmas, you can find all kinds of things you didn’t realize you needed. Things that would make life so much easier, better. Right? But after a short time, those absolute necessities become just things you’ve acquired. They get old.
I know myself!
And yet, I come up with the same result EVERY TIME. Things don’t make me contented and fill me with joy.
THINGS DON’T MAKE ME CONTENTED AND FILL ME WITH JOY.
Amusement? Maybe
Temporary ease/convenience? Sometimes
But nothing I have ever bought has truly satisfied me in the long run.
It’s taken me a very long time to begin to understand where my true joy and contentment lie. You’re saying, “This is where Tammy will interject that true contentment comes from God.”
Well, I wouldn’t say it exactly like that. I’d say, “True contentment comes from knowing and enjoying God.”
Over many years, I’ve slowly begun to understand how knowing and enjoying God go hand in hand. I’ll give you an example.
Since childhood, I thought, since God was holy and perfect, I must clean myself up before I could ever seriously expect Him to enjoy me. And if that were the case, it would be a really long time before I could enjoy Him. Sure, He saved me, and I have an eternal home with Him. But I had a job to do, an endless job. I had to show God how obedient and thankful I was for this gift.
What I found was that perfection was an unattainable standard. Hence, I didn’t enjoy my walk with God a lot of the time. Don’t get me wrong. There were moments where I felt God’s pleasure. But, usually, that was after a long streak of faithful quiet times and godly living. The tension was real, and, oddly enough, I didn’t see the error in it. I didn’t know God the way He wanted me to.
HOWEVER, as I continue to study God’s Word and learn more about who He really is, and by His power – I have been able to shed that endless quest to earn His favor and delight. My perception of God for a long time has been clouded by flawed human understanding. But steadily, the clouds are breaking.
God’s Word is food for my soul. His truth is my delight. He has done this work in me, and it continues. I’m grateful that He who began this work in me will be faithful to complete it. (Phil 1:6)
Can you believe that I’ve found the dilemma of a distorted view of God can be tied to impulsive Christmas buying?
Why?
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
C S Lewis
We weren’t made for this world. So nothing it offers can fill our deepest longing and deepest need.
The wisest man who ever lived, King Solomon said, He has put eternity into man’s heart. In other words, we long for things eternal. We were designed by God as eternal beings.
In every human soul is a God-given awareness that there is “something more” than this transient world. And with that awareness of eternity comes a hope that we can one day find a fulfillment not afforded by the “vanity” in this world.
Got Questions
John Piper puts it this way, “Man’s chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
Enjoy God?
Be satisfied in God?
We cannot be fully satisfied here because we were made for eternity?
That’s what I’m telling you today. Yes, friend, yes! Eternity with God.
Piper said of this gift, “The supreme demonstration of God’s love was the sending of his Son to die for our sins and to rise again so that sinners might have the right to approach God and might have the pleasure of his presence forever.“
Christmas is only days away. Maybe you suffer from “post-holiday blues” syndrome – an actual condition. Maybe you become nostalgic at Christmas time and long for yesteryear when times were simple and love was pure. Maybe you make unneeded purchases in an effort to fulfill a deeper need.
You don’t have to. Go to God. I remember a line from an old movie that oddly enough comes to my mind when I think of how best to describe my growing enjoyment of God.
“It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together, and I knew it…It was like coming home, only to no home I’d ever known.
Sam Baldwin, Sleepless in Seattle.
But how do I start enjoying God? I wish the answer was a simple 3 step process or a book. “Just read this, do these things, and all will be well” because we like the microwave results. However, like every relationship, knowing God takes time.
Don’t fret. Want to know what you can do?
Ask God to show you Who He is. I mean it. Ask Him. Ask Him right now.
He will answer your prayer! And He will give joy in knowing Him that can start today. You won’t have to wait to enjoy God. Even if it starts small, your joy will grow as you grow to know Him. That’s a promise.
So when you buy that next gift from you-to-you. Ask yourself, “Do I need this? Or am I attempting to fill a deeper longing in me?”
Gifts are not bad. Unwrapping a present will always be exciting to me. But I know the truth.
I know The Truth.
And I enjoy Him deeply.
As I close, I will share what I jotted in my journal just yesterday.
God is beyond my comprehension in beauty, power, love, and awe. He created me to enjoy all things through Him and because of Him, in Him, and for Him. My gravest mistake is to seek to enjoy anything apart from Him. That is because the most meaningful part is missing, the part that my heart truly longs for in my desperate search for meaning – God Himself.
