If you feel empty, unsatisfied, you need to experience the love of God.
Recently my wife and I drove 30 minutes to a forest preserve and took a two-mile walk. The walk lasted through lunchtime, so afterward we decided to get lunch somewhere nearby. I checked the map in my phone, and we selected a Mexican restaurant. The restaurant was small and tucked into a corner of a struggling shopping center. The sign in the window said, “Authentic Mexican food.” By the time we sat down at a table and ordered, we were famished.
I ordered a chicken burrito, and we had guacamole and chips, jalapenos and pickled carrots before the main course arrived. The sign in the window was accurate, for the food was like homemade. Everything was fresh and delicious. My burrito was large, but I ate it all. When we eventually walked out of the restaurant, I felt mucho bueno. That meal literally was a happy meal.
The satisfaction loop
One’s soul goes through repeating cycles of hunger, eating, and satisfaction. The loops can be with food, with work and rest, prayer, intellectual learning, connection with friends and family. In all these areas we know what it’s like to experience deep satisfaction. Your soul says, Ahhhhhhh, that was good. I’m at peace. I’m full.
According to Psalm 63:3, the greatest satisfaction the soul can have comes from experiencing the love of God. It says, “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” It appears that the psalmist David was trying to find a comparison to say that God’s love brings ultimate satisfaction. He may have gone in his mind through a list of satisfying things: Your love is better than seeing a beautiful sunset. Your love is better than fresh grilled lamb. Your love is better than being intimate with my wife. Then he realized that experiencing God’s love is better than any of those things. In fact, it’s better than all of them put together. And the best way he could find to say that was, your love is better than life itself.
Full satisfaction in God’s love
God’s love is better than anything in life, than everything in life put together. It’s so great that it’s even better than being alive itself. Which is a paradox, of course, because you can’t experience God’s love without being alive. But just being alive is good and wonderful, when we are in our right mind, not complaining or depressed or afraid or misguided by other bad attitudes. When we are thinking clearly, we realize that just being alive is a great pleasure and gift.
We’ve all heard people who somehow sidestepped death from something like sickness or a car accident, and through that event they came to appreciate every day the gift of life, all by itself. Just being alive is deeply satisfying. So, the psalmist is saying God’s love is even better than that. Knowing God’s love is the most satisfying experience available to the human soul.
A prayer guide for thinking about God’s love
That’s one reason why for nearly a year I’ve been posting articles on that theme. That’s why as I now finish the theme, I plan to give in a forthcoming post a summary outline of the ground we have covered, with Scriptures and declarations you can make in prayer and meditation. So that as you keep calling these truths to mind, your hungry soul can say, Ahhhhhh.
God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). Your soul’s greatest satisfaction matches the fundamental nature of God. That’s not a coincidence. It’s one more example that confirms you were created by and for God.
Not you?
You might read this post and feel disappointed, however. You might feel that meditating prayerfully about God’s love doesn’t bring you that much pleasure and satisfaction. My counsel to you is, be patient and ask God to teach you about his love and to reveal it to you (Romans 5:1–5; Ephesians 3:14–19). Some people get hold of this easily, but for a host of reasons others don’t. If you persist in asking and seeking, you will have a dawning of God’s love in your soul and find the satisfaction you cannot have in any created thing.
Our way and God’s way
Our way: The fallen soul seeks ultimate satisfaction in created things, rather than God. Following this course is like a person who is adrift in the middle of the ocean in a lifeboat, desperately thirsty under a burning sun, all fresh water long gone, who finally reaches over the side and drinks salt water, which only exacerbates dehydration and kills the person who drinks it.
God’s way: God made us for himself, for divine love, and the soul is always thirsty and hungry until it learns to feast fully on the love of God.
Life principle: We do not automatically know how to experience God’s love continually. We must learn to love him and learn to comprehend his love.