God: Satisfying Our Desires with Good Things

November 18, 2012 by J. E. Dyer

Continued from Page 1

Limited health care options may soon become a reality for many Americans, as they have been in other nations for decades—but what if we can call on God for His help in this realm? If He wants his children to have all the medical care they need, can temporal governments thwart Him? If Christians continue to take seriously the ministry of providing health care to the needy across the globe, will God allow us to be denied the care we need?

I earnestly pray that the lives of ordinary people around the world do not have to descend into "the pit" in the coming years. But if they do, we have the promise of God that He will redeem those lives. Even more, He will crown us with love and compassion. We're so accustomed to being crowned with credit ratings and professional credentials that we have probably lost our sense of what it might feel like to be crowned with love and compassion. But we have the opportunity to find out—if we believe God means what He says.

We don't all have the same idea about what constitutes "good things": the kind we would like to be satisfied with. But that's okay. God made us individuals for a reason. Can He satisfy us all? Inventors would rather not be accountants, nor do entrepreneurs want to join a union work force. Some people like big houses and land; others prefer a smaller dwelling and the opportunity to travel. And that's all fine with God. He didn't create us to all be the same person and want (or despise) the same things. He doesn't see the missionary in Africa as "better" than the owner of a Ford dealership in Ottumwa, any more than He prefers the wealthy, seemingly perfect family over the impoverished household with a delinquent son.

I'm not sure Christians are much readier than today's secular ideologues to let God bless other people the way the other people prefer to be blessed. But that is one of the promises in Psalm 103. And what a liberating promise it is! God doesn't simply say that He'll give good things; He says He will satisfy our desires with good things. Not all things are good, of course, but God knows better than we do that we don't all desire the same good things. That's how He made us.

God created us to yield a world of variety, inspiration, progress, color, joy; a world in which people with many different gifts and personalities can be happy. Can the devices of men deface what God has made? Why not ask God, from just where we are right now, to satisfy our desires with good things, so that our youth is renewed like the eagle's? Why not ask that for those we love? If God is doing all the things recounted by David in Psalm 103, can we be beaten down and left to struggle in the pit? And if we stand, crowned with love and compassion, will we not be a beacon to others?

On Thanksgiving Day 2012, let us give thanks that our God is the Living God, the Lord God of Hosts—Yahweh Sabaoth—and His son, our savior Jesus Christ, is our brother and king. "But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him" (2 Cor. 2:14).

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About J. E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval intelligence officer and evangelical Christian. She retired in 2004 and blogs from the Inland Empire of southern California. She writes for Commentary's CONTENTIONS blog, Hot Air's Green Room, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

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