Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.
(Psalm 107:8,9)

ONE OF LIFE’S MOST IMPORTANT INSIGHTS IS THE UNDERSTANDING THAT WE WERE CREATED TO BE THE RECIPIENTS OF GOD’S GLORY AND GRACE. We are vessels. We are instruments. We are personal beings TO whom (and also THROUGH whom) God intends to communicate the benevolence of His own character. When we learn to see ourselves in this way — AS EXISTING FOR THE PURPOSE OF RECEIVING GOD’S GOODNESS — we’re then able to glorify Him in a higher way than we ever could have done in the past.

There is, as the old saying goes, a God-shaped hole in our hearts that only God can fill. Philip James Bailey said it this way: “Naught but God can satisfy the soul.” Most of us recognize that God is perfectly ABLE to fulfill our needs, just because He is our Creator. What we perhaps don’t recognize as well is that God is the ONLY adequate fulfillment of our needs. Having been made for this very purpose, if our hearts are not filled with Him, we can only die. Between life and death, there is no middle way.

It marks a huge step in the growth of any person when he or she learns the truth of Jesus’ statement, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). It’s also important, however, for us to see that what we’re to give is that which we’re intended to receive from God: His goodness. We were created not merely to be RECEPTACLES of God’s grace, but CHANNELS through which that grace would be conveyed to our fellow human beings.

Paul’s prayer for his Christian friends in Rome was typical of his wish for Christians everywhere else: “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). There is simply no higher request that we can make, at least insofar as our human needs are concerned. When we see that this is the meaning of life — to be filled with God ourselves, and then to communicate Him to others — we can begin to fulfill the “potential” for which we were made.

“It is the goodness of God, and a desire to communicate this good, that inspired creation. We are designed to receive God’s goodness” (William Law).

Gary Henry – Diligently Seeking God – July 4

He has made everything beautiful in its time.
Also He has put eternity in their hearts . . .
(Ecclesiastes 3:11)

THERE ARE SOME YEARNINGS THAT IT IS GOOD TO HAVE EVEN IF THE EMPTINESS OF THEIR UNFULFILLMENT IS HARD TO BEAR. Even if we use the word “pain” to describe the feeling of not having something that we need and desire, it is still a fact that pain can play a useful role in our spiritual lives. Young Samuel’s mother, Hannah, would have had many long years to yearn for her son after she devoted him to the Lord’s service at the tabernacle, but  still she could say, “My heart rejoices in the Lord” (1 Samuel 2:1).

The fact is, no one gets to have everything they desire in this world. And even if a person were to do so (Solomon probably came close), they would still have to confess to an aching emptiness that never completely goes away. The reason for that is simply that God has placed “eternity in [our] hearts.” He has given us needs that, to be quite honest, have no satisfaction in this world.

With regard to our unmet needs, the first mistake we make is to try to do the impossible and “have it all” in this world. It seems unnatural to us, if not unfair, for a person to have any need not met, and so we spend our lives trying to find something to stuff into every hole in our hearts. But that is a vain effort. God will see to it that we suffer some deprivation somewhere in our lives.

The second mistake we make is resisting, and maybe even resenting, the fact that some of our needs can’t be satisfied right now. Rather than making us better, as it should, our emptiness can make us bitter if we don’t discipline our thinking about it.

But someone says, “Oh, but God is all we need.” Well, yes and no. He may give us some things that compensate for what we don’t have, and He will certainly be all we need in ETERNITY. But for now, there’s no way around the pain of the needs that are not met.

Now here is the point: WE OUGHT TO BE CONTENT TO BE UNSATISFIED IN THIS WORLD! I know that sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. We can be glad we DON’T have all we need, because if we did, we’d soon forget about God. Unmet needs are powerful attention-getters, and with them God is trying to get our attention focused on eternity.

“I thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast so set eternity within my heart that no earthly thing can ever satisfy me wholly” (John Baille).

Gary Henry – Reaching Forward – July 4

“After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:22-24).

EVEN THOUGH OUR SURROUNDINGS IN THIS WORLD HAVE BEEN MARRED BY SIN, GOD HAS MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR US TO “WALK” WITH HIM. We can yield our decisions and our deeds to Him in such a way that we actually become “companions” of the very God who created us. The possibility of such a thing suggests some important truths about God Himself, does it not?

For one thing, it is remarkable that God offers to every single one of us the possibility of walking with Him. No matter how any of us have wrecked our pasts, God is willing for us to walk with Him the rest of the way home, if we’ll accept His pardon on His terms. This privilege is not limited to those born into any certain class of humanity, nor does it require any special intellectual powers. Walking with God just means that we faithfully follow whatever truth becomes clear to us. “What we need in religion is not new light, but new sight; not new paths, but new strength to walk in the old ones; not new duties, but new strength from on high to fulfill those that are plain to us” (Tyron Edwards).

But if there can be such a thing as walking with God, there must also be such a thing as NOT walking with Him. If, for example, the lifestyle of Enoch’s degraded contemporaries constituted just as much a walk with God as that of Enoch himself, then the statement “Enoch walked with God” would mean very little. But surely this is not a meaningless statement. We are being told that Enoch made certain choices concerning God and that these choices had their consequence in a “walk” that would have been impossible otherwise. To realize this is to be sobered in our thinking.

Neither the FREEDOM of walking with God nor the DESTINATION can be ours without radical repentance and redirection of our hearts. “Father, set me free in the glory of thy will, so that I will only as thou willest. Thy will be at once thy perfection and mine. Thou alone art deliverance — absolute safety from every cause and kind of trouble that ever existed, anywhere now exists, or ever can exist in thy universe” (George MacDonald).

“When we walk with God, we get where He is going” (Anonymous).

Gary Henry – Diligently Seeking God – July 3

“See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15,16).

THERE NEEDS TO BE A HEALTHY SENSE OF URGENCY IN OUR LIVES. With regard to that which the Lord wants us to do in His work individually, there is not an unlimited amount of time in which to do that work. Each of us has a “window of opportunity,” and after that is gone, we will give account for our stewardship of the time given us. We urgently need to “redeem the time,” as Paul put it.

Granted, there is such a thing as an UNHEALTHY urgency. Most of us are familiar with what that’s like. It’s the driven, compulsive, frantic mentality of competitors in the “rat race.” But that is not the way to redeem the time. In fact, nothing is more unproductive.

Jesus showed that it is possible to be very busy and not fall into the “driven” way of thinking. At our busiest, few of us will match the Lord’s activity, yet in the act of being busy, Jesus always had a calm, deliberate way about Him. He knew how to “hasten leisurely,” to work steadily, and even urgently, without losing the peace that was at the center of His being. Jesus knew that He had a “schedule” to meet, and He met it. At the end, He could say, “It is finished” (John 19:30). As His disciples, we need to redeem the time and be able, one day, to say that we have finished our work.

A few days ago, I received an email from Ken Craig, a great friend who does full-time secular work but also manages to do as much work in the Lord as anybody I know. In an earlier email to him, I had mentioned being busy (forgetting to whom I was talking), and he wrote back, “I am in Shanghai, China right now on business, with meetings all day and three-hour Chinese dinners every evening. I had a glorious trip to India in April and had just recovered from that. . . . I should be back on Sunday . . . Keep on keeping on. We will rest on the other side.” Ken is not about to miss the window of opportunity that the Lord has given him.

As Gerry Sandusky, another great friend, says, “Heaven is pictured as a place of rest, and I intend to be tired when I get there.” Like Ken, Gerry understands that now is the time for work, a time to spend and be spent. There’ll be time enough for rest later.

“We have all eternity to celebrate our victories, but only one short hour before sunset in which to win them” (Robert Moffat).

Gary Henry – Reaching Forward – July 3