Does Jesus Really Satisfy?

"Praise the Lord, O my soul; 

all my inmost being, praise His holy name.

Praise the Lord, O my soul,

and forget not his benefits-

who forgives all your sins

and heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit 

and crowns you with love and compassion,

who satisfies your desires with good things."

Psalm 103:1-5

Jesus is completely and totally satisfying. This is a truth that I deeply, deeply believe in.

But I've also struggled with it and I don't think that I'm the only one.

Because the honest truth is that there have been many times in my life when I've desired other things- times when I've felt as though my relationship with Jesus hasn't been fulfilling enough. It's like I want Jesus but I also want ______ (you fill in the blank) and then my life will be great.

So I've struggled with how to reconcile this truth that I know to be real and my feelings that tell me Jesus isn't enough.

And here is what I've realized- Jesus does completely satisfy me. My soul could never long for anything more. But He did not come to satisfy my flesh and the desires of my flesh. In fact, Jesus wants to starve the desires of my flesh so that I can learn to rely solely on Him. // "You can never learn that Christ is all you need until Christ is all you have" -Corrie ten Boom 

In John 4 Jesus meets with the woman at the well. He tells the woman "everyone who drinks of this water [the well water] will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst." (John 4: 13).

I know that from this encounter with the King of kings that the woman at the well received the living water of eternal life (John 4:10) and was never thirsty again. But I would guess that the woman still had to drink water the next day, she was still physically thirsty again. Why? Because Jesus wasn't talking about satisfying her physical thirst, He was concerned with satisfying her soul.

In the same way, Jesus satisfies the desires of my heart, but he does not satisfy the desires of my flesh because they are not of Him. 

When I feel like Jesus isn't satisfying me, it is because I'm not focused on Jesus. Rather, I am focused on worldly things that are about glorifying myself and not glorifying Jesus.  Because here's the thing- It will never satisfy me to glorify myself. Why? Because we were made for the purpose of glorifying Jesus Christ and that is the most satisfying thing that I could ever do. And when we truly know who Jesus is, when we have an accurate picture of the Jesus that we serve, we literally can't help but glorify Him. Because when we discover who Jesus truly is there is no other response but to worship Him in awe and adoration.

So if Jesus isn't satisfying us enough it's only because we don't know him well enough. 

The extent to which I am satisfied in Him is the extent to which I know Him. Because the more I get to know Him, the less I thirst for other things of my flesh and of this world. The more that we get to know Jesus, the more we realize as Peter did, to whom else could we go? (John 6:68). 

So let's resolve to know Jesus more and more and more. And as we deepen our knowledge of who He is, the things of this world and the desires of our flesh will begin to fade until we can honestly say that we count it all as "loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil 3:8).

So the question isn't "Is Jesus enough for you?" instead the question is this: Do you know Jesus enough? 

"It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desires which He creates" -Amy Carmichael