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God's Kingdom

The Christian’s Advantage to Lasting Fulfillment

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Reading time: 5 minutes

The secret to fulfillment is hunger. The stronger your desire, the greater your fulfillment. You can strengthen your desires by first being aware of them and then correctly prioritizing them.

You can starve for lack of a healthy desire. When you ache for the right stuff, you’ll be satisfied.

Do you realize you have more than one way to experience fulfillment?

When most people think of their desires, they focus on their immediate physical needs. But God also created you with emotional and spiritual desires, which provide a deeper level of satisfaction. Think of these desires as three stomachs, each with its distinct appetite or craving:

  1. Worldly Desires (food, sex, entertainment, etc.)
  2. Identity Desires (purpose, love, etc.)
  3. Kingdom Desires (glorifying God by living for Christ)

To experience contentment and satisfaction, you must learn how to manage your desires. You can’t rely on one stomach to the exclusion of the others. You’d starve. The secret to fulfillment is attending to all three desires with the right priority and balance.

After your worldly fulfillment reaches its capacity, move on to experiencing and fulfilling your identity desires. As your identity fulfillment reaches its capacity, move on to your kingdom desires.

Worldly Desires

Worldly desires are temporary physical wants or needs. They won’t be around in heaven, or they’ll function differently. Physical desires are like sugar. Sugar is highly desirable but fails to provide lasting nutrition.

Being satisfied, content, and fulfilled aren’t only possible, they’re also God’s will for you. However, gaining your heart’s desire doesn’t mean you can have every possession or pleasure you’ve ever wanted. Having every superficial want met in the way you want it isn’t possible. If you eat too much of the same food, your taste for the food will eventually become saturated.

Instant pleasure is different than lasting joy. Most things are wants, not needs. If you ache too long for the wrong things you might end up getting what you want.

Don’t make the things of life more important than God intended. If you don’t exercise self-control, you could end up getting what you want without fulfilling God’s purpose for your life. Some desires really are distractions and not worth the effort.

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:39 ESV

Identity Desires

Identity desires are like organic, whole foods. They fully nourish and fill you in ways that sugar can’t.

Meeting these desires should take priority over your worldly desires. When you focus on identity desires, you reach for the best things in life — the things that no one can steal.

Five longings God meets when you’re His child:

  1. Unconditional Love and Acceptance: God knows who you really are. He always sees you at your best, even when you’re at your worst. God is love.
  2. Persistent Hope: God has the plan to make life better. At some point in the future, life is guaranteed to be perfect and last forever.
  3. Imminent Purpose: God created you to play a critical role in accomplishing His plans. God wants your active participation. God has a specific purpose for your existence. In this respect, you’re indispensable. You aren’t optional or replaceable. You’re significant and important.
  4. Faithful Security: God is always with you. He will never abandon you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.
  5. Meaningful Connection: God participates in an interactive relationship with you. God wants a dialogue with you. God is your father.

God is responsible for meeting these needs. No other person is completely capable like God is. Cloud and Townsend say that relationships are God’s delivery system for all emotional needs. However, you can’t expect or insist any one particular person meets your needs.

You won’t be able to enjoy life unless your identity desires are being met. If you’re unsatisfied with work and life, this probably means a basic emotional need is unmet. When these needs go unmet, your hunger should drive you back to God.

Kingdom Desires

Kingdom Desires are fulfilled by spiritual food. While all healthy desires are from God, kingdom desires are an exceptional hunger for seeing God’s work completed.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

—John 4:31–34

You have an advantage as a Christian. You have a stomach (an appetite) for spiritual fulfillment. Humans won’t ever be completely satisfied until they experience a spiritual hunger only God can fill.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.

—Matthew 5:3, 6

If your identity desires are met, you should be able to pursue your kingdom desires. But this doesn’t mean you’ll naturally pursue kingdom desires unless you intentionally put them first. To appreciate spiritual fulfillment sometimes you must fast from worldly desires and look beyond identity desires.

God desires that you pursue Christlikeness and fulfill the great commission. When Paul explains contentment to Timothy, he mentions several examples of Christlike behavior: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.

—1 Timothy 6:6–11

Godliness is acting maturely like God. Contentment means you’re satisfied with what you have while pursuing God’s kingdom. Don’t give up the eternal in order to hold onto the temporary.

How fulfilled are you as a Christian? Do you see your advantage? Isn’t God amazing how He created you to have multiple appetites? What can you do right now to ensure you have a balanced desire diet?

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Suffer For The Right Reasons

Suffer For The Right Reasons

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Reading time: 4 minutes

God works out everything for the good of those who love Him. But in the midst of suffering, those words from Romans 8:28 can feel trite. God wants us not to repay evil for evil. The person that can achieve this will demonstrate that God is real (1 Peter 3:15). That’s because the ability to respond to evil with kindness can only come from God.

However, the right response doesn’t always mean continuing to allow someone to take advantage of you. There are times when it makes sense to move out of harm’s way and times when God calls us to suffer for His purposes.

Appropriate Suffering Advances God’s Kingdom

When God expects us to endure suffering, there is always a purpose with eternal consequences. Enduring hardship for the right reasons allows God’s purposes to come to fruition. Because of sin, we live in a world where doing the right thing often results in suffering:

  • we don’t feel better and might even feel worse
  • we don’t get what we want and might even feel miserable
  • our immediate living (on this earth) might seem unproductive (by this world’s definition)

Jesus has an extremely difficult teaching for us. God’s kingdom is more important than any happiness or satisfaction you can derive from this life.

There are many different paths people can walk on in life. But there is only one kind of path that takes you to a desirable destination. It is the path of suffering and growth. This path is undesirable because it is difficult to walk. Choosing this path is counter-intuitive. It’s the right path, but it will feel wrong because it’s impossible to walk it without suffering.

The other paths appear much more desirable and are much easier to walk. In fact, there may even lead to a long period of ease and pleasure. But there is a catch: the journey is easy, but the destination is undesirable. What good is an easy path if it only takes you to an accursed destination?

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Matthew 7:13-14 NIV

Needless Suffering Only Contributes to Evil

Hopefully, I have made the case that suffering is necessary and natural some of the time–when it is directly connected to keeping your faith in Jesus and your witness to Him.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Matthew 5:11-12 NIV

But there are probably even more ways we all suffer needlessly. There is no reason to allow suffering to continue in any of the following circumstances.

  • The suffering does not advance God’s purposes
  • The adversity only harms or confuses the person being hurt (such as when a child is abused). The person does not have the capacity to endure the suffering without loss of personal integrity.
  • Pure evil is causing the torment, so there is no way that tolerating it will soften a heart.

In any of these kinds of situations, do all that you can to prevent or stop the suffering. Don’t embrace pain if you don’t have to. God’s will is not to suffer needlessly. But it is God’s will that you walk the path that leads to life, which often involves some heartache to accomplish God’s kingdom work.

For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

1 Peter 3:17 NIV

Finally, remember that even though the right path has many difficulties and obstacles, it is still the only sane path (all other paths lead to destruction), and God guarantees that once you start on the path, you will reach the glorious destination (heaven).

The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all;

Psalm 34:19 NIV

Read more about avoiding needless suffering.
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Perspective Matters More Than You Think

Perspective Matters More Than You Think

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Jesus reveals the ultimate perspective on life with His statement “…seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33 ESV). A perspective is one view from one particular person. No one (except Jesus) can see life with absolute clarity. Everyone lives with lies–distortions in the lens of perspective.

Perspective Determines Life Direction

The Christian life is a state of mind–a battle for what is real. People can’t control what happens to them, but they can exercise their perspective like they would a muscle. Then can train to identify and believe what is true over what is false.

You might be thinking ignorance is bliss or what I don’t know can’t hurt me. But those are deceptive statements. What we don’t know has hurt us, is hurting us, and will hurt us. A blind person will have trouble avoiding hazards. When people don’t know they have cancer and believe they are healthy, it is all the more devastating when they must come face to face with the truth.

Your perspective on what life is makes all the difference in how your life will turn out. How would you feel if, while running a race, you find out you’ve been running in the wrong direction for most of it? Make no mistake, life is like a race. There is a finish line and there is only one way to get there. You must run your own race on the path God has set before you. It’s different from anyone else’s path, but God chose your path when He created you as you are.

The battle for seeing reality (what is true from God’s perspective) will never be over in this life. But you can continue to shift the balance from more deceived to more enlightened. In fact, that should be everyone’s primary purpose. But choosing the enlightened path is much harder than it looks.

Perspective Determines Eternity’s Direction

Everyone wants to be enlightened, but the path of wisdom runs in a different direction than the path of comfort in this immediate, material life. I don’t think there is any scripture that can better make this point than the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man from Luke 16.

“But Abraham said to him, ‘Son, remember that during your lifetime you had everything you wanted, and Lazarus had nothing. So now he is here being comforted, and you are in anguish. And besides, there is a great chasm separating us. No one can cross over to you from here, and no one can cross over to us from there.’

“Then the rich man said, ‘Please, Father Abraham, at least send him to my father’s home. For I have five brothers, and I want him to warn them so they don’t end up in this place of torment.’ “But Abraham said, ‘Moses and the prophets have warned them. Your brothers can read what they wrote.’

“The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham! But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’ “But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Luke 16:25-31 NLT

Are you able to see the differences in how Lazarus and the Rich Man perceive life both before and after death? If you can see it enough to choose God’s kingdom over your immediate comfort, then there is hope for you! If you can’t see it yet, consider reading Mark 10:17-27 for more inspiration.

The first, and perhaps most important, step is to be able to see clearly. Then we can work on taking the appropriate actions. If we try to act before we understand, we can end up a long way down a path that leads to nowhere.

A comfortable life today provides no clue as to what eternity will be like.

More about gaining awareness of God’s Kingdom.
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Is Emotion an Obstacle or a Bridge?

Is Emotion an Obstacle or a Bridge?

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Does emotion hinder or does it help? To many people, emotion is a pointless burden. It seems to linger purposelessly forever like a plastic bottle in a landfill.

Obstacles impede progress. You must expend more effort to move beyond the obstacles in your path. Some obstacles cannot be removed by your effort alone.

Bridges on the other hand smooth the journey. Someone already cleared the path which makes your end goal possible and maybe easier. Although, some bridges are challenging to cross. The journey is strenuous, not because of the path, but because of what must be left behind.

Whether the emotion is a positive experience for you or a negative one, depends on your perspective. Rocks in your pack can be considered an affliction, but they could also be a blessing in disguise–they can help you grow stronger so you can move obstacles out of your way. What seems like an obstacle one day, might eventually come to be seen as a benefit.

Emotion is Like an Obstacle

Emotion is never bad; it’s only the messenger. We’re not supposed to shoot the messenger. But what is a person to do when the message is overwhelmingly negative? When emotion is immobilizing, it acts like an obstacle to progress. But it really is only a pivot point loaded with potential.

A person can lean into the negative message and become all the more discouraged. A person can also block out the message. Rough, calloused hands and fingertips are a sign of hard work. Your body forms a protective layer while you get work done.

In an emotionally risky environment, it’s natural to develop an insulative layer to protect your heart. Some negative environments you can avoid completely. And you should. But in other environments, you can’t.

Everyone is going to have some emotional callousness. Adam and Eve became overly defensive after the fall. Over-protection is a tendency we all have to work at overcoming.

You have an automatic defense system that sometimes malfunctions.

Sometimes your defensive system protects you so well that you don’t even know what it’s protecting. I’m lost; I don’t know who I am. At other times, you’re surprisingly vulnerable. Why am I flooded with emotion now?

Emotion is Like a Bridge

Because God exists, hope exists. No circumstance can determine the final outcome of your life. Because of God, emotion, even discouragement, can be productive.

Everything has a purpose–even negative feelings. You can’t avoid all risky environments because there’s no heaven on earth. So the best anyone can do is commit to crossing the emotional bridge.

Emotion can always become a bridge to a better place. That bridge can look like an obstacle, at first glance. Maybe you aren’t ready to leave behind what is comfortable, whether that be numbness or negativity. Maybe you aren’t ready to find out who you are deep down.

Crossing the bridge means embarking on a journey to becoming alive.

The obstacle to a better future is refusing to leave behind the past. You can only escape past and present pain by crossing the bridge of emotion. As you feel what you’ve experienced, it will carry you forward.

God didn’t make us to journey alone. We need traveling companions to help ease the pain of seeking true living that God has planned for us. Avoiding future pain is wise… unless that pain is needed to make you into a better person. Or perhaps the better way to put that is becoming a better person always involved confronting your pain.

If you’d like to better understand how difficult emotions can be blessings, try the book Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard.

Read about choosing healing instead of coping.
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Last Updated 2022/10/16

Coping Is Temporary But Healing Is Forever

Coping Is Temporary But Healing Is Forever

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Many people look for ways to cope with the pain they encounter. Coping is a good option in the short term but it’s a horrible option long term.

Coping Doesn’t Fix The Problem

Using coping skills is a good idea. Coping allows you to get through the day without becoming overwhelmed by the sensation of pain. But relying on coping as the solution is a mistake that only creates a bigger problem.

Coping numbs your pain. When you don’t feel your pain, you will feel relieved and maybe even hopeful. But coping, without a long-term solution, only produces a false sense of hope.

The world doesn’t have a solution to pain and suffering. Coping is its best attempt. Have you bought into its subtle message? The world tells us to focus on the pleasure we can experience today. Be greedy. As long as you feel good today, you don’t have to worry about tomorrow. You can’t do any better than maximizing your happiness each day.

But what if there is something even better than happiness that you’ll never experience if you follow the world’s advice?

Jesus said to not worry about tomorrow (Matthew 6:25-34). So a worry-free life is the right approach. However, Jesus’ advice is radically different than the world’s. The reason believers shouldn’t worry is exactly the opposite of non-believers. God guarantees that believers have a hopeful future and non-believers have a hopeless future.

The real problem is that everybody is going to die physically and in the meantime, life can be confusing and gut-wrenchingly painful. Even coping can’t shut out this reality completely.

A hopeless future is unbearable, so it makes some sense to avoid its pain. If you’re not going to choose to follow Jesus, then coping is your next best option. But it’s not a solution and doesn’t even come close to what God offers.

Choose Healing Over Coping Whenever Possible

Everything you pursue, except eternal life through Jesus Christ, will leave you thirsty again. When you drink a glass of water, it only temporarily relieves your thirst. You will need more soon enough. But eternal life results from an endless supply of spiritual nourishment.

Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”

John 4:13-14 NLT

For Jesus’s truth to work for you, you need to be willing to give up feeling good all the time. If you’re feeling good while preoccupied with the pleasures of this life, you probably won’t develop a craving for Jesus water.

For those who follow Jesus, our best option is to face the pain now. We can face the pain because it grows our faith and allows healing. Facing the pain drives us to drink the water Jesus promises will satisfy us.

The bubbling spring is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit guides believers into all truth (John 16:13). The first step to receiving healing is to receive the truth.

Imagine you are walking in the wilderness. You are tired and hungry. You have a long way to go until you reach home. How do you feel?

How much difference would it make in your mood if you knew you were going to make it home sometime in the near future? In real life, the Holy Spirit is the one who whispers, “Keep going. You’re going to make it. Don’t give up!” Are you willing to receive this truth? If you can, the journey becomes easier mentally, even when it doesn’t become any easier physically.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:1-4 NLT

Read more about how people use addictions to cope.
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Pain Is A Fierce Enemy And A Pivotal Ally

Pain Is A Fierce Enemy And A Pivotal Ally

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Reading time: 4 minutes

Pain: We can’t live with it; We can’t live without it. Emotional pain is a strange beast. It’s both annoying and essential. We spend our lives ignoring it or coping with it or finding relief from it. But pain is also our greatest ally even if it is a necessary evil.

Fear of pain keeps us from harm. Pain keeps us on the road instead of driving into a ditch. Or if we do slip into a ditch, it keeps us from driving headlong into a tree. Or, if we hit a tree, it helps us brake or turn to lessen the impact.

Don’t Avoid Pain At All Costs

When pain becomes extreme, it can flip over and push a person toward death. People consider suicide when their anguish becomes unbearable. Whether you are aiming for the tree or avoiding the tree, the goal can be the same: avoid pain. But there is a difference: suicide attempts to end the pain at all costs.

You’ve heard the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” That’s exactly what suicide does. It’s overkill. We need the pain to warn us that something is wrong. But the suicidal person wrongly assumes there is no possible relief.

With God, there is always a path to healing. But the restorative journey isn’t always one that everyone is willing to take. If you’re stubborn enough to choose your way over God’s way, then you are more likely to end up off-road and into a tree.

If you’d like more help with unbearable pain, consider this helpful resource for stories to help you become hopeful.

Coping is helpful as a short-term solution. If you fall and cut your leg, any first-aid is a balm used to promote healing. It won’t help much without the body’s innate ability to fight infection and replace damaged skin.

The same is true spiritually. Whatever you can do to stop your pain doesn’t compare to what Jesus can do. Therefore, it’s important that you endure your discomfort long enough to complete the healing process.

A suicidal person places too high a premium on the short-term outlook. They look at their life through unrealistic expectations. For example, if you want to run a marathon (26.2 miles) in an hour, it’s not going to happen and you’ll stress yourself if you believe you can. If you keep trying and failing, you might drive yourself to suicide if you take the challenge too seriously. Most situations in life are not life-or-death.

How is your life going? Are you stuck in despair? Here are some options to consider:

  • Bring your expectations down to somewhere realistic.
  • Increase your resources such as time or energy.
  • If you want something to happen that isn’t happening, trust God that He knows it’s not the right time yet.
  • If something is happening that you don’t want, trust God with any loss you’re experiencing.

Don’t Embrace Pain At All Costs

If what you want is out of reach, adjust your goals to something more manageable so you can enjoy life in the present. If you can’t run a marathon at world-record speeds, then try running enough for your health and enjoyment.

Do what you must to reduce your level of emotional distress. You can’t put your life in its proper perspective when you are in excruciating pain. But try to endure it long enough so you can identify what is wrong and find a path forward. When you’re in pain, God is probably trying to teach you something.

If your desire is realistic and God-honoring, then it’s worth pursuing even if you must first fail many times to reach your goal. Sometimes the path to a hopeful, uplifting place means experiencing the bottom of a pit first. Keep in mind:

  • The pit isn’t bottomless.
  • If you can change your thinking (stop being so stubborn), you will probably find that path forward.

God doesn’t promise He will answer your prayers how you want them to be answered. Sometimes we must wait on Him for direction. Other times we must keep trying as best as we know how. The secret to reducing your pain is to enjoy the journey: enjoy the pursuit of something great more than requiring a specific result in a fixed time period.

Read more about the use and imagery of balms in the OT.
Read more about the benefits of pain.
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