5/12/2021 – Pastor Brian’s Blog –
Have you ever noticed that we spend a lot of our time and money trying to satisfy ourselves? Very often it ends up being a waste of time, because we find that what we thought would be satisfying is temporary at best. Who loves it when we try and “self-satisfy?” Companies like Best Buy, Apple, and Amazon. Don’t believe me? Check this out!
Best Buy’s revenue for the twelve months ending January 31, 2020 was $47.262 Billion. Apple’s total net sales amounted to $274.52 billion in their 2020 financial year. Amazon sales for all of 2020 rose to $386.1 billion and are expected to advance again this year.
Obviously, people spend a ton of money trying to “self-satisfy.” Let me try and help you comprehend (and I really can’t) how much $1 billion is. A billion seconds is 31.7 years. A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ. A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on the earth. A job that would pay you $1 million dollars A DAY, would take nearly three years to earn a billion dollars.
No matter how you look at it, $1 billion is a lot of money. When you talk Best Buy, Apple and Amazon sales, just multiply that $1 billion by their annual numbers! With so much money spent each year, are the results showing that we are satisfied? No. We still have many unhappy people. The same year that sales increased for these 3 companies, our country experienced an increase in suicide and drug & alcohol use. People walking out on personal commitments longing for more. People looking for new jobs, a newer car or bigger home, all the while thinking, “Surely this new thing will satisfy me.”
Now if you buy a new iPhone, or need a new computer or enjoy a big screen TV, it doesn’t make you a bad person. Judy and I own all 3 things and much more! It only becomes ‘bad’ when we try to satisfy our innermost needs with stuff. When we try to find our self-worth or base our dreams on getting more material things. It becomes bad because we will often walk away from these material things still lacking.
There is no doubt that each one of us were created with a void in our lives. Yet it isn’t a void that Best Buy, Apple, Amazon, BMW or anything else can fill. It is a void that only God can fill, because it is a void that God placed in each one of us. This void is called ‘eternity’ …
God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
God has created humans different from the rest of His creation. God created man in His own image, and because of that, each human being has within them a link to eternity. This explains why nobody (I mean nobody!) can have that God-given void satisfied with the temporal, no matter how wonderful it may look or sound, or how it may excite our senses.
That explains why God would send Jesus to die, so our void could be satisfied. Jesus said… The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)
I believe the point could be made that Satan wants to provide a false satisfaction for us. He wants us to believe that we can be our own “gods,” that WE can fill that void in our life. So Satan loves it when we use things to fill that void, knowing the whole time that it will steal, kill, and destroy the very full life that Jesus came to give.
Please don’t allow Satan to deceive you into thinking that you can improve on God’s plan, that you can short circuit God’s program and win. It is impossible and everyone who has tried, has failed. It is only as we turn from the temporal and focus on the eternal that we can truly find the very things we have been looking for all the time!
If you don’t believe me, than I would suggest that you consider the lives of Richard M. Schulze, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos, the founders of Best Buy, Apple, and Amazon, and see if their billions of dollars satisfied the long term longings and desires of their hearts.
My encouragement to you on this day is listen to God, who spoke through the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, and said…
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
Isaiah 55:1-3,6
I do not doubt that God may have brought you to my blog today because of the dissatisfaction in your life. Dissatisfaction does not need to be a terrible thing, if it leads us to the God who said… “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
