SATISFACTION
BREAD
2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Isaiah 55:2 (NIV)
10 Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless. Ecclesiastes 5:10 (NIV)
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Psalm 90:14 (NIV)
16 You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. Psalm 145:16 (NIV)
1 Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. 2 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits–3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, 5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. Psalm 103:1-5 (NIV)
8 Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, 9 for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things. Psalm 107:8-9 (NIV)
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. 3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. 4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. Psalm 63:2-5 (NIV)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” 11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:10-14 (NIV)
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35 (NIV)
37 On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7:37-38 (NIV)
10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10 (NIV)
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV)
BUTTER
“Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.” Abba Poemen
“God knew when He made us that we’d never find contentment outside of His perfection. Only Jesus can satisfy our hearts’ longing for perfection. But it takes a humility that is willing to forsake our pride and its many manifestations. We need a new paradigm for humility. Thankfully, we have one in Jesus. So, in humility and love, Jesus submitted to history’s greatest injustice when He humbled Himself ‘by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Philippians 2:8). Letting go of the ambitions, expectations, and standards my pride had erected hasn’t been easy. The serpent’s hiss is ever present, tempting me to doubt, become discontent, and believe the lie that God is not enough. While my daily battle with perfectionism seems as far from Eden as my messy bedroom is from Paradise, it’s the very same temptation. Will I trust God and His promises, power, wisdom, and love, or will I proudly turn to my own resources to manage my life? Will I believe He is enough?” Kim Hyland
“Because I love you, I’m asking you to guard your heart from anyone or anything that can steal you away from Me. Remember, My love, this world offers a counterfeit Life that will never fulfill you. What I create for you will satisfy your soul; what the enemy offers will satisfy your flesh for a while. However, in the end the world’s way leads to destruction. If your heart wanders and you are not equipped with My Word, you will be unable to discern the difference between real faith and counterfeit religion.” Sheri Rose Shepherd
“Do not miss out on the only majesty that will satisfy our souls—the one true God, who deserves our complete worship and submission.” Michael Youssef
“Desire only God, and your heart will be satisfied.” Augustine
“He who is a believer in Jesus finds enough in his Lord to satisfy him now, and to content him for evermore. The believer is not the man whose days are weary for want of comfort, and whose nights are long from absence of heart-cheering thought, for he finds in Christ such a spring of joy, such a fountain of consolation, that he is content and happy. Put him in a dungeon and he will find good company; place him in a barren wilderness, he will eat the bread of heaven; drive him away from friendship, he will meet the ‘friend that sticketh closer than a brother.’ Blast all his gourds, and he will find shadow beneath the Rock of Ages; sap the foundation of his earthly hopes, but his heart will still be fixed, trusting in the Lord. The heart is as insatiable as the grave till Jesus enters it, and then it is a cup full to overflowing. There is such a fullness in Christ that He alone is the believer’s all. The true saint is so completely satisfied with the all-sufficiency of Jesus that he thirsts no more – except it be for deeper draughts of the living fountain.” Charles H. Spurgeon
“I love Him because He first loved me. His goodness and mercy and compassion to me are new every day. And my assurance is lodged in these aspects of His character. My trust is in His love for me as His own. My serenity has as its basis an implicit, unshakable reliance on His ability to do the right thing, the best thing in any given situation. This to me is the supreme portrait of my Shepherd. Continually there flows out to me His goodness and His mercy, which even though I do not deserve them, come unremittingly from their source of supply – His own great heart of love.” Phillip Keller
“I thank You, Lord, that You have so set eternity within my heart that no earthly thing can ever satisfy me wholly.” John Baillie
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” C.S. Lewis
“Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer’s soul and they promote sanctification. We were not meant to live without spiritual exhilaration, and the Christian who goes for a long time without the experience of heart-warming will soon find himself tempted to have his emotions satisfied from earthly things and not, as he ought, from the Spirit of God. The soul is so constituted that it craves fulfillment from things outside itself and will embrace earthly joys for satisfaction when it cannot reach spiritual ones… The believer is in spiritual danger if he allows himself to go for any length of time without tasting the love of Christ and savoring the felt comforts of a Savior’s presence. When Christ ceases to fill the heart with satisfaction, our souls will go in silent search of other lovers… By the enjoyment of the love of Christ in the heart of a believer, we mean an experience of the “love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us” (Rom. 5:5)… because the Lord has made himself accessible to us in the means of grace, it is our duty and privilege to seek this experience from Him in these means till we are made the joyful partakers of it.” John Flavel (1630-1691)
“Amid all this chaos of a confused, sick society, Christ comes quietly as of old and invites us to come to Him. He invites us to follow Him. He invites us to put our confidence in Him. For He it is who best knows how we can be satisfied. He knows that the human heart, the human personality, the human soul with its amazing capacity for God can never be satisfied with a substitute. Only the Spirit and life of Christ Himself will satisfy the thirsting soul.” Phillip Keller
HEART SAVOR
• Christ alone can satisfy the needy soul. When we are filled with Him to overflowing (as the Scriptures state) we will not only not be needy but we will also have something so very worthwhile to share in our plenty. Those filled with Christ are the most winsome and wooing people to be around. They are not takers rather givers.
• When we are filled with the Spirit everything else in life is the proverbial cherry on top – nice but not necessary.
• The soul finds rest in God alone.
Beth Yoe's Sharing Bread 