SEARCH for satisfaction where you will, and, apart from Christ, you will be doomed to certain disappointment. Ask the popular politician, or the successful merchant, or the gay pleasure-seeker, or the decorated hero, and each will tell you that full, unhungering satisfaction has never yet been reached.
No. Christ, and Christ only, can satisfy the heart of any man.
Knowing this, it is the devil’s constant aim to turn man’s attention to some other object. And not only does he seek to divert the conscience-stricken sinner, the unestablished believer is the object of like attention. Nor is even the most advanced Christian beyond the reach of his mischievous wiles. He has, alas! no better chance of gaining his evil end than when he finds a dissatisfied Christian. Such a one is just ready to his hand, though all unsuspectingly, for he would not be dissatisfied unless he had already been diverted by some kind of counter-attraction—something short of Christ.
When the partridge or the corn-crake is rearing its young, it is a very common occurrence in the country to witness the various wiles of a parent bird in seeking to divert the attention of anyone who intrudes too near her nestlings. Heedless of her own safety, she will flutter close to your feet and tumble over and over in her flight like a disabled bird, easily caught, and all to decoy you from the spot. She would prefer anything to your finding what she does not want you to find—her cherished brood. Follow her, slowly or quickly as it may best please you, and the little deceiver’s end is successfully gained.
So acts the Great Deceiver. He hates the very thought of Christ getting a pre-eminent place before the soul, and so he uses every effort to turn a troubled soul away from Him. And how many and how various are his devices! One soul will be set to find satisfaction in a reformed life; another to find it in some supposed inward experience. But the real truth is hidden, namely, that the right experiences, with any real transformation in life, are always dependent on the heart’s occupation with the right object—Christ.
Then in the case of older believers he seeks to beguile by still more subtle means. For example, undue occupation with their success in service, or with the thoughts of their brethren’s estimation, or of their non-estimation; or they may be sadly diverted, and this is all too common, by an enslaved and captivated loyalty to some prominent gift, as in Corinth. Indeed, to engage the heart with anything less than Christ is the enemy’s constant aim.
But all who are diverted from Christ, either in this way or in any other way, are doomed to certain disappointment.
Let us remember that the Holy Spirit is here to honor Christ and to turn the heart to Him! The well of living water within “springs up to everlasting life” —springs up to Christ, the never-failing Fountain. It is then, and then only, that we “thirst not,” and therefore to look for spiritual satisfaction anywhere else is folly.
But there is another side—the side of divine satisfaction when we appreciate what His love has wrought for us.
When some devoted mother has toiled hard and prepared a good meal for her family, and has spread her provision upon the table, what does she look for? Appreciation. What gives her satisfaction is that those for whom she prepared it are well satisfied; and the greater their appreciation, the deeper her own satisfaction.
Does not God, the Bestower of that unspeakable Gift, the Son of His bosom, expect us to be satisfied with the costly provision He has made? What less could He expect?
It is related of a certain British general, that as he lay dying on the field of battle after a victory that cost him his life, he said to someone near, “I hope England will be satisfied!”
Could the One Who satisfied and glorified God in dying for us, Who met our deadly foe and thoroughly vanquished him, expect anything less than that we should be satisfied both with the work He has clone and the love that was the secret of His doing it?
Oh, that the heart of every reader could say with the writer, “ABUNDANTLY SATISFIED!”
GEO. C.