Is God your source? Test yourselves. What do you run to when things get tough? When trials arise who or what do you seek for comfort or hope? So often we find refuge in the things of this world, atleast I do. It’s so easy to let other things fill us up when we are in need of comfort, joy, peace, hope, or love. There’s a huge problem with this though. Anything that we seek as a functional source of any of these things is temporary, other than God. They will all fail you. You will turn to them and they might provide temporary satisfaction, but it’s only a matter of time before you are let down. If you keep running to the same things for comfort or peace in times of distress, you will be left longing for more. This is a very dangerous place to be in. Feeling dissatisfied, you will find yourself saying, doing, or thinking things you never thought you would in order to receive the comfort that you are searching for. Ironically, this leads to more dissatisfaction, which in turn leads to more seeking. Before we know it, we’ve begun idolizing these things that we turn to as a replacement for God, but the problem is, they aren’t truly a replacement.
Can Idols bring you joy? Yes.
Can they bring you peace? Yes.
Provide you with hope? Yes.
Comfort? Yes.
But for how long? How long until the idol fails you and you are left feeling dissatisfied, hopeless, and lost? There is hope though. An endless hope. A hope that will never leave you, or fail you. A hope that promises to eternally satisfy, and will. In order to receive eternal comfort, we must place our hope in an eternal comforter. In order to receive infinite joy, we must find our joy in an infinite joy giver. God is the only thing willing or able to provide us with the comfort, joy, peace, hope, and love that we all long for. We must strive to make Him our source of all these things. The more we seek Him, the more we find that He is true to this promise. The more we run to Him, the deeper we fall in love with Him, and the more passionate we become about making Him known. When we are hurting, discontent, or even just bored, the things that we run to are indicative of where we are finding our comfort. We must choose God, even when we don’t necessarily feel like it. By choosing Him, we are denying our flesh, putting to death the desires of our sinful nature, and declaring Him to be Lord over all of our life. Seek to find refuge in Him, I promise you won’t be let down.
(Side note: While writing this post, I began thinking about some things that I wanted to add, but they would cause things to go in a different direction than I originally intended. I’ll make this into a 2 part post and will incorporate these ideas into the next one.)
Great thoughts and commentary. Kyle. I enjoyed reading them very much!