Once you’ve tasted the goodness of mercy
And you’ve drunk from the fountain of grace
Seen the power of God’s forgiveness
Face to face
Once you’ve known the joy in His presence
Felt the love of His faithfulness
You’ll never be satisfied with anything less
–“Anything Less” by The Taylors
The world promises a lot of things to give you satisfaction. If you have just the right amount of money. The right mate. The right house. But no matter what we use to try to fill the void, there’s still an emptiness inside us.
A lot of times we think about this in terms of unbelievers. Lost souls who don’t recognize they need Jesus so they try to fill their lives with other things. But they’re not the only ones. We Christians do this too.
And I would know. Because I did it. Despite the fact I’ve been a Christian since I accepted Christ at 7 years old, I tried to fill a void with something other than Christ.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder why. I knew only Christ could satisfy my innermost longings. Knew the world would only leave me filling empty. And yet, for a time, I tried to seek fulfillment elsewhere.
With a relationship, of all things.
I thought if I was married, or at least engaged, I’d be happy. That I would be worth something. The complete opposite of what my parents told me. What other Christians told me. Yet I bought into the world’s lie that I was less of a person because I was single. So I tried to fix that. I chased an ideal and tried to expedite God’s timeline. And I ended up making a mess in the process.
Of course, when everything didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, I went to God. Didn’t take long for me to realize that I created this mess because I walked away from Him in the first place. I put the ideal of a relationship above God, and that’s when everything fell apart.
God told us not to worship any God before Him (Exodus 20:3; Exodus 34:14). We often think of graven images and idols, but I think this includes anything that takes precedence over Him. A relationship became my idol. I went after it with little care what God thought. And instead of trusting God, I took matters into my own hands and tried to force it. It took much too long for me to hear God telling me He wasn’t in it.
Even then I wasn’t 100% willing to give up on it. Then the choice was taken away from me, and I realized what I’d done.
Five years later, I’m still picking up the pieces. And God’s still teaching me things. But I can honestly say that even though I don’t fit where the world thinks I should, I’m satisfied. I’m satisfied because God is good. I’m satisfied because I restored the most important relationship I’ll ever have. And I’m satisfied because I have the comfort of knowing that even when I mess up, God loves me.
Would I still like a relationship? Of course. But I no longer think it will fix all my problems and get rid of my insecurity. I’ve realized the right relationship will encourage my walk with God instead of distracting me. And that’s something worth waiting for.
Besides, as I can attest to, no one’s perfect. A mortal man will eventually let me down. Expecting perfection of him is unfair and unrealistic. But God will never let me down. His Word says He will never leave me (Hebrews 13:5). That He will forgive me (1 John 1:9). That He loves me (John 3:16). And He’s taught me not to expect anything less from Him.
