Satisfied ONLY in Christ! Meditation 6 on the I.O.U.S.

The fourth and final verse John Piper uses as an aid to keep himself engaged with God's Word and Life through Christ is the "S" of the IOUS:

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days (Psalm 90:14).

Here is a call to engage God with divinely enabled pleasure. "Satisfy us." I don't want to learn just what you say--doctrine. Or, learn how to live, application. Both of these are vital and together form the basis of all Christian growth. To learn the truth and then to live it out comprises most of the believer's energies. Still, combined they are not precisely where the Christian should aim. Rather, Psalm 90:14 brings the two together--doctrine and application--and drives them to the land where God himself is my pleasure and to be in his presence results in my highest joy!

Why Pray This?
FIRST, because we sin. Because the essence of sin is the attempt to replace my satisfaction in Jesus Christ with . . . well . . . just about ANYTHING! Even church, or Bible, or kindness. But we also find ourselves finding happiness in lesser, God-denying things too like gossip, anger toward someone, pornography, or love of money. We pray because we desperately need God's help! And we have it. Praise the Lord we have an Advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the Righteous (1 John 2:1).

SECOND, we pray this because we want something better . . . much, much better! Probably the greatest of sins we commit with regularity (and don't realize it) is the sin of dull, puny expectations. When a believer does not KNOW what he is missing, it is easy to loiter around the back streets when a superior road belongs to him! God has saved us to a higher life, life IN Christ! This is the "light of life" (John 8:12). Don't underrate that Jesus came that we might have "life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10). An old and maybe unfamiliar hymn emphasizes this:

I'm pressing on the upward way;
New heights I'm gaining ev'ry day,
Still praying as I'm onward bound,
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

And for the tension of this world? Stanza 2:

My heart has no desire to stay
Where doubts arise and fears dismay.
Tho' some may dwell where these abound,
My prayer, my aim, is higher ground.

Now, that's the heart! "Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love . . ." Amen!

(Please see my post for Nov. 16th for the first of these meditations)

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