Psalm 103:5 “[The Lord] satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
Everyone has desires. But all too often, those desires take the form of selfish and unhealthy obsessions. But what is behind our cravings? What is at the root of what human beings really want? Yearning for riches might be rooted in a desire for security and protection. Lust for status might be, underneath, a desire for meaning and significance. Hunger for illicit sex or drugs might be at root a desire for transcendence, elation, joy. None of these surface cravings can be truly satisfied; the pursuer remains unfulfilled. Craving money, status, sexual exploits, and psychedelics always ends in enslavement and ruin. But God promises to satisfy my deepest, truest desires with good things, beginning with a relationship with himself. God can truly satisfy my longings because he put those longings there in the first place.
My own life experience bears this out. In my career I finally found purpose and enjoyment when I stopped trying to climb the ladder and trying “be somebody” with title and power (and I pursued those things while foolishly justifying my ambitions as honorable for a Christian who wishes to influence others for Christ). Having rejected those ambitions as toxic and false, my career trajectory abruptly halted, my string of big salary increases ended, and my management chain ceased showing interest in me. But this set me free. In exchange, my health, marriage, and family life greatly improved. Peace and contentment invaded my heart. A great weight of frustration lifted from my work and I actually became a far better contributor in my job – though without formal recognition or, for a long time, financial growth. And I’ve probably touched more lives for Christ, though I’d been an active witness throughout my working life.
Though the ladder-climbing progression came to a full stop, and remains there, my career has actually developed further – in the real way a career should develop: by learning new and valuable skills, by multiplying contacts throughout the business community, and by more direct impact on top and bottom line results. The focus on analytics that I moved into when I stopped trying to grow my career has resulted in demand for my skills and experience, fresh ideas and innovations, and work I’m truly fond of. Indeed the Lord has satisfied my desires with good things and has made me feel like I’m half my age, bursting with creative ideas that keep coming. I’ve never enjoyed business work so much as when I finally stepped off the career ladder back in 2006. Yet it’s not because of status or power or me at all. It is because I know God is working in and through me.
Father, you have renewed my youth like an eagle soaring. Selfish pursuits and desires lead to enslavement, but your ways lead to freedom and true satisfaction. “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.” – Augustine