“But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” Acts 20:24
When the Holy Spirit enters our hearts at conversion, we discover that God has placed within us an inescapable sense of discontent with trivial living. There is something deep within every believer that militates against settling for simply an ordinary, comfortable, risk-free, no-dare existence. Oswald Sanders used to describe too many American believers as living in what he called “a fur lined rut.” Though life may be comfortable and safe on the outside, we cannot escape the rut of dissatisfaction which haunts us on the inside.
The Spirit within us is an eternal Spirit, and He refuses to be satisfied by a life trafficking in only temporal, finite pursuits. While our lives will always require significant involvement with temporal things and issues of this world; we can never find our deepest fulfillment in them. God has “set eternity” in our hearts (Ecc.3:11); and this God-shaped vacuum can only be filled by a God-sized purpose. This is spoken of so clearly through the prophet Isaiah:
“Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance.” Is.55:2.
When I was in college, a group of us held a worship service in a nursing home for all the residents who would come. In our group was a girl from Switzerland, who had become a Christian a few months before. She came from the second wealthiest family in Switzerland, had attended the finest of schools, and had experienced just about everything this world has to offer. That day she jumped into the work enthusiastically, helping get some of the more reclusive to come out of their rooms to the service, and loving well the people who were there. When the time was over and most of the people had gone back to their rooms, I saw her back in the corner of the room, with tears quietly streaming down her face. I went over to see what was wrong. “Kika”, I said, “What’s the matter? What went wrong?” I will never, ever forget her response. She looked up at me through her tears and said, “Dwight, I have never been so happy in all my life. I never knew such joy existed.”
Here was a young woman who had tasted just about everything this world offers for happiness. But it was in a nursing home on a cold, rainy, Sunday afternoon that she finally tasted what she was made for. For the first time she discovered that there is a depth of satisfaction and a fullness of joy that comes only through opening wide the floodgates of one’s life and allowing God’s living waters to pass through. As Paul put it, “But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” Acts 20:24 She had discovered the great paradox of soul-satisfaction. Refuse to coddle yourself, give yourself unreservedly to the call of God on your life; and a God-sized satisfaction will be waiting to greet you. May God grant that we all follow in Kika’s footsteps, and that we take the risk to come home to the joy we were made for.
Flashpoint: The life abandoned to allowing God to flow through it is a life which tastes delicacies this world is incapable of matching.
