What Does Satisfaction in God Mean?

I am absolutely convinced that what happened in my life to introduce me to lasting satisfaction and joy was the work of God. There is no other way to explain the radical change in my heart and mind that caused me to lose interest in sin and awakened me to find satisfaction in experiencing God. What I mean by "experiencing God" is a peace, fullness, and contentment that come from thinking about God, reading the Bible, praying, loving other people the way He taught us to, and enjoying hope because of all the promises God has made to us.

This amazing fullness and satisfaction is not something that can be directly compared to anything else in the world. It is superior in every way. But the pleasure we get from many things in life bears some resemblances. If you look at the most beautiful thing you know through a spyglass that is grimy and covered with dust on the end, and then look at it with a completely clean glass, you will have some idea of the difference. The pleasures of earth are a dim shadow cast by the pleasures of God - a foggy reflection.

For most of us, the strongest and most satisfying emotion we have experienced is love. What you feel for your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend, or for a child or a parent, is a good starting point for thinking about what experiencing satisfaction in God means. I think that might be one of the reasons He gave us these experiences, and why He uses marriage so often in the Bible to illustrate His relationship with His people. Being satisfied with God is a lot like love: you are happy just thinking about Him or remembering something He said to you (e.g. in the Bible), or joyful because you know Him and can come close to Him in prayer. But it's better. It's deeper, and it never ends because He is always available to you anywhere, at any time, forever.

Many people find it hard to believe they can feel this way about God. I used to be one of them. But something changed in my heart in an incredible way so that I started experiencing this very powerfully. My goal here is to explain how and why I believe this happened, and I will start laying that out after the next post.