Recently God has been teaching me some very important lessons. Well, really one very important lesson – My satisfaction must be sought in Him and in Him alone. Now, I know this may not sound very profound. In fact many others far wiser and far more devout than me have said this for many years. Indeed, I have known this fact for myself for a long time, but I have not understood it to the degree that I do today. You see, knowing where my satisfaction should come from hasn’t convinced me to seek it there because I didn’t know where I was seeking my satisfaction and what the consequences of that seeking were. I think those things are clearer to me now, and as a result my resolve to seek my satisfaction in Christ is hightened.

I am one who seeks his satisfaction through other’s thoughts about himself. I look to others to see what they think of me and to find in their thoughts my importance and therefore my satisfaction. I want people to think that I am rather special, important, a cut above, significant, powerful; basically, I want people to think more highly of me than they ought. The problem with this is that they don’t. Where this becomes problematic is at the place where my pride begins to resent them for their lack of attention toward me. I begin to feel cold toward them. I get unexplainably angry with them and most often a great gulf grows between us. Ironically, they have no idea that they have caused me any offense. All they know is that I am different toward them and we are no longer close. All of this because I expected them to be the source of my satisfaction, which is abslutely unfair and impossible. They couldn’t help but fail me.

There is another side to this. When I am not looking for others to bring me satisfaction through the validation of my own greatness, I am looking to others to bring me satistaction with their validation of my right to pity myself. I look for them to agree with me that I am the victum; that I have been wronged and yet have done no wrong myself. This is just plain silliness, but it is still the reality. And again, they fail. To them my problems are not big enough or serious enough to ellicit the outrage that I want to see from them. Nor are they significant enough to move them to become my savior, my advocate, my helper (my have I got things out of wack). Well, that is how I seek satisfaction from others when I am indulging in self-pity, and their failure causes another breach in my trust in them and therefore in our relationship.

All of this is the result of pride. I actually think that my satisfaction in life is earned and thus owed to me either because I am great or because I am pitiful. Either way I deserve the attentions of others. Unfortunately they can never really bring me full satisfaction. Eventually they will fail me and we will be through. Pride has caused me to see the source of my satisfaction through the value others see in me and has therefore strained my relationships with others. I don’t want this, and so, I am convinced that I must seek my satisfaction elswhere. Somewhere where satisfaction can actually be given and that place is in Christ, abiding and resting in him, knowing that all my worth is found in my being in him and he in me, knowing that my being loved by him is a result of my being his creation and him loving what he created. I didn’t make myself, I didn’t make myself lovely. He made me, and in him he makes me lovely. It is all his grace that satisfies me perfectly and not my greatness or my pitifulness and the response of others to it.

I want to seek my satisfaction in Christ alone for two reasons. I know that it is only in him that I can find it perfectly and if I seek it anywhere else others will be hurt by my pursuit. I don’t believe I am unique in my pride or in my desire, so may he grant us wisdom to know how to find our satisifaction in him alone and resolve to seek it deligently.