UNSATISFIED AND LONGING FOR MORE? SEEK GOD

When you take a look at the shelves of your local bookstore or the posts here on LinkedIn:

You’ll find countless resources on how to become a more effective, successful person in the world of work. Forgetting that we are unsettled by an ordained curse in Genesis 3.

"...cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life." - Genesis 3:17

At the very core of the curse is the act of rebellion against God. Adam and Eve were not satisfied with what their Father had given them and deemed it necessary to follow their own interests.

They chose to look outside of their relationship with God for fulfilment, instead of trusting that he would satisfy their every need. In doing so, they broke relationship with him.

I want to quickly submit to you that I believe that we are cursed also by our desire to find satisfaction, identity and meaning in our children and work, rather than our relationship with God.

Male and female, it seems that we are endlessly striving to make a name for ourselves, whether that would be in reaching the top of the corporate ladder, or parenting the next Albert Einstein.

People typically aspire to be the absolute best at what we do, which in and of itself is a noble pursuit. Our problems begin to arise when we seek to measure our intrinsic value by our successes and failures.

Contrary to what we’ve been told, we are not what we do. It has never defined the essence of who we are, and it never can. We have been created by a loving God to bring glory to his name in all the circumstances of our lives.

And often the very circumstances that bring him the most glory are the times of our greatest failure, times when we give up trying to work in our own power and instead allow his power to be made perfect in our weakness.

We often find ourselves dissatisfied with the path that God has ordained for us, which leads us to pursue our own agenda. Instead of taking our confusion and dissatisfaction to the one who knows us best, we are tempted to look outside of our relationship with God to find answers to our failures and disappointments.

We toil, not against actual thorns and thistles, but against “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things [that] come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful” (Mark 4:19).

We seek the forbidden fruit of this world that will never satisfy, while God waits for us to come and walk with him in the cool of the day. He can meet our every need, if only we would let him.

I invite you to let God!