The Satisfaction That Comes From God Podcast Episode

And I think Moses speaks the Psalm at the end of his life, after years of knowing God in a level that none of us will attain to, where I think he can look back and say, my God is all. He is good, and he is sufficient, and he is complete. Welcome friends to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. 

It’s great to have you along. Arlan and I are going to have a conversation. here today on a verse, which is first unique. I’m not sure we’ve ever had a podcast that’s really centered on one particular Scripture. We have woven in Scripture, hopefully, in all of the episodes. But in this particular episode, it’s going to be the launching to, I think, a terrific and a very surprising message about satisfaction.  

All right, Matt. I’m excited. So, the verse comes out of Psalms. It’s actually written by Moses. It’s one of Moses’s Psalms and it’s 90 verse 14 and it reads this way, oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy that we may rejoice and be glad So the subject here is satisfaction. So, let’s speak a little bit to satisfaction. 

This is something very near to everyone’s experience. This is something we’re all vested in. Give us some examples. Sure. Oh, I think it’s so true, Matt. I mean, we all have a desire to be filled, right? We all look into our lives, and we have needs. We have desires, we have things that we find to be lacking, and then we want those to be satisfied. 

Right. So, it can be anything from it’s a hot day and you’re thirsty and you want a good cup of cold water. Yeah. To just so many appetites. When you speak to an appetite, you’re speaking to a satisfaction of some level. Your appetite grows within you and says, I’m hungry. I need food. I need filling. There’s a craving. There’s that need, right? And then there is some way to satisfy that or some way to quench that. And it’s woven into our experience. We are always in pursuit of some level of satisfaction. You know, you might say, hey, are you satisfied in your job? 

That means something. It’s not a bad thing. We all get it. That example of satisfaction in a job, which is a good and a right thing, is an example of maybe not a physical appetite. Yeah, there are relational appetites, just how are we interacting with others, or do we feel lonely, or do we feel complete? 

You know, and then there’s emotional appetite. All that to say, satisfaction hits very nearly to all of our experience. If we’re not thoughtfully pursuing satisfaction, we are at least pursuing satisfaction without even knowing it. And here Arlan, is now, I think, what’s so fascinating. God’s going to take this core. 

Moses speaks to this core drive of man, satisfaction, and he’s going to, I think, provide four very surprising and refreshing truths about the satisfaction that comes from God. And so, the first two words says, oh, satisfy. We see here that satisfaction is the prize that Moses is after in this particular verse. 

And that might not come off as surprising, right? Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about? But it is surprising, isn’t it? And I think actually we’ve been talking about a little bit of a twist on that. I think often we are taught that the pursuit of satisfaction is what is the price. So, give me an example. 

So, it is about eating the meal, right? It is about the process of eating and the food and how good it is and the taste and all of that, that is the goal versus the fact that nourishment was met. Right. So, I think we could all ask this question to ourselves. Would you click a button and be filled without the meal? 

Right. If that was a possibility. We don’t really want to skip the pursuit. Unless it’s exercise. And then that takes us in a whole different direction, Matt. There’s probably a good reason why. And the adage, you’ll never be satisfied is true because really our culture doesn’t really want to satisfy. 

So, you know, what if the potato chip really satisfied me? Where would an advertiser be, right? Where were the marketer be if we were happy with that one pair of pants, right? And satisfied with less, right? And so, there are other aspects to consider and to think about in that realm, which is really powerful. 

Which raises just this question. I think incredible truth that God’s satisfaction, is the prize that we as believers are able to enter into. Which is exciting. And I think it speaks to, and I think it fits here, but I think it speaks to just a little bit of a fundamental understanding of God and who he is. 

And is He all that we need? Is he at a fundamental level, that completeness? And I think Moses speaks the Psalm at the end of his life, after years of knowing God in a level that none of us will attain to, where I think he can look back and say, my God is all. He is good, and he is sufficient, and he is complete. 

Notice what he says next. Oh, satisfy us early. So that’s a time proximity. The satisfaction that Moses calls out for is an early satisfaction. And that is surprising also. That doesn’t square necessarily with our experience of the way satisfaction should come. Yeah. Let me give you an example, I like to hold a carrot in front of my kids. 

If there is a task to be done or something to be achieved, that is one of the ways I approach it. And I’ll say, you know, hey, if we do this, oh, won’t it feel so good once that’s done, right? We can look back and then you’ll be able to play. The yard is mowed. The fence is painted. Yeah. And then you’ll be able to play, you know, or whatever it might be. 

And that’s not how God works. Well, sure. And we collapse, you know, in the chair at the end of the day, satisfied because of the work that’s been done prior. And that satisfaction really is at the end. And that’s so typical of a satisfaction of our experience, that satisfaction is at the at the ending, not at the beginning, but God’s satisfaction works differently. 

And Moses asks for it to happen early. What hope is there in that? I think there’s great hope in there that we can wake up, you know, at the beginning of the day, right? Full and complete again, because of God and who he is, that it isn’t about the checklist or the agenda or the task being done, or things that we do, or desires being met, and expectations being met in our lives. 

We start early with our understanding that God is satisfying me through himself and through who he is. And I think that casts a great vision, Arlan, for our own spiritual devotions, right? That we would, at the beginning, seek that satisfaction, find that satisfaction. And to your earlier point about the carrot, does that make me lazy? 

Does that make me less productive? Because you could certainly see you know, an employer wants an uneasy employee until they’ve met their goals and then can be satisfied. But you know, then we read in Colossians about, do everything heartily as unto the Lord. This provides that perspective, that I am set free now to work heartily as unto the Lord because I work out of a desire. 

It pushes us away from the task and on to the relationship that we can have with God. So, as we continue reading. Oh, satisfy us early with thy mercy. Now we have what it is that’s satisfying, okay, and that is the mercy of God. I’m going to suggest, Arlan, that the third fascinating point about the satisfaction of God is that this satisfaction is realized, not earned. 

Does that make sense? Yeah. It’s counter experience. Exactly. And I’m mindful of a verse in Titus. I think it says, not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to your mercy, you have saved us and washed us and so on and so forth. And I think that’s an important aspect to realize that God’s mercy is the underpinning of our motivation or should be the underpinning of our motivation that then drives us into behaviors as opposed to those behaviors trying to motivate us to gain something. And it stands in complete contrast to how we win our satisfactions otherwise, right? I have to draw this next breath in order to be satisfied. 

I have to find a meal to eat to be satiated, right? I have to act in order to achieve a certain level or else I’m not going to be. And then again, from Moses’s perspective. This is a man who worked harder than anybody else. He reflected and found his satisfaction, not in those other things, but in this here, God satisfy me, allow me to come to a settling, satiated peace because your favor rests upon me. 

Let’s go to the fourth, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Now here’s the effect. The effect is joy. I’m going to suggest, Arlan, that the satisfaction of God, which stands in stark contrast to any other satisfaction that we can experience, is that his satisfaction endures while all other satisfactions die. 

All other satisfactions would end at some point, right? They would pass on and then you would leave yourself needing or find yourself wanting more or needing more. Which is the contrast to this endures and we can be glad all of our days. A good example of that, and I think we’ve all experienced this, ate a terrific meal and at the end of it thought, I can’t even imagine being hungry again. And yet, isn’t that crazy? Yet in two hours, three hours, four hours, all of a sudden, it’s as if we never even had the meal. It’s the same way in a lot of our satisfactions. Let’s take affirmation. You can be positively affirmed by somebody and feel so filled up and then whether it’s a day or a week or a month, depending on who you are and how your appetite works, you need affirmation again. 

And it’s almost as if you’ve never had it before. That’s how much you crave that satisfaction has expired. It is. And if we’re not careful, we can fall into the cyclical process. And often that’s a good check on ourselves. I think if we’re in this cyclical process of always needing more, or it’s never quite enough, it really speaks to what are we seeking our satisfaction in versus the God that at a fundamental level says, I am all you need. 

So, Arlan, paint the picture, the caricature of a person who really lives this, who grabs a hold of what Moses is saying here. What kind of individual is that? You know, Matt, I think it’s someone who’s very human. Someone who has needs, they have desires or things that they would like to see filled in their life, right? 

But they also have this steady confidence in knowing where that satisfaction of those needs and those desires comes from. So, there’s a settledness, there’s a peace, there’s a patience, there is a confidence in a God who alone is complete and satisfactory for all of our desires. I really like that caricature. 

I mean, you made it very local, very normal. This isn’t some superhuman. This is a person with passions and appetites like we all have, but it is that settled rest that we can have with God. One other example that comes to my mind, Matt, you know, if you think about the example that Jesus, or the story in John 4 of the woman at the well. 

A woman who came to Jesus, or Jesus came to her really, and had desires and needs that had not been satisfied. And she had sought them in a lot of places, multiple times over. Let’s first start at their meeting. They were both thirsty. Yeah, at the base level, right? That was the entry point into the conversation. 

Yeah. That story is all about satisfaction. It’s all about a common appetite. Jesus had one too. He was thirsty. She was thirsty. And then, as Jesus masterfully does, turns the conversation on its head and talks about what else are we seeking satisfaction in? Right. And he goes on and he reveals the needs that she has had, which have not been fulfilled in all the ways that she’s gone about it inappropriately over the years. 

Always pointing back to say there is one person that can truly satisfy and make it so that you thirst no more, right? The living water that thirsts no more. And presented himself as a wellspring springing up within a person. And you know what I love about that story, Matt, as I think about that story, when she realized that she didn’t just sit on the side and not move and say, okay, I’m done. 

I can just stay here until I die. Right. You know, what did she do? It says she left her water pot, right? That she didn’t need anymore. Right. And she ran and she told everyone she met. That excitement, that enthusiasm, she had found the answer and she wanted everyone to know about it. And I think there’s such a reflection back, should be such a reflection back to our lives. 

Yeah. Do we realize, you know, truly realize that we have found the truly satisfying need for all of our desires and all our satisfactions, the one thing that will truly fill us. And is that translated into that excitement, that enthusiasm, that activity, to go out and share that with everybody we meet. 

There are a thousand good news components of the gospel, but can we say one of those very welcome, compelling good news shards is that the gospel satisfies? And if people could get a hold of that, that is a message that, as they say, has legs, right? Amen. Amen, Matt. Thanks, Arlan. And thanks, each one, to our listeners who have come on and listened. 

We pray that the Word blesses you, and this particular verse, Psalm 90:14, has such a gem for us all.