I’d like to share with you a devotional from a book that has meant a lot to me over the years. It is from “The Satisfied Heart”, by Ruth Myers and is put out by WaterBrook Press. This particular book is aimed for women, but I think guys can glean some meaning from it as well. Enjoy 🙂

He Can More than Satisfy Me (p. 38)
“This is real love,” we read in 1 John 4:10. “It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins” (NLT). This is real love. This is where we find the kind of love we most deeply need – not in human relationships, but in God. If we want real love, ideal love, perfect love, God’s heart is where to find it. It’s the only love big enough to meet the deep needs in your life and mine.

Indeed God can and will go beyond merely meeting those needs. “God is so vastly wonderful,” wrote A.W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God, “so utterly and completely delightful, that He can without anything other than Himself meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is.” These are words I return to again and again, for I’ve found them true. Down through the years, in a countless variety of circumstances in every season of life, God has proven to me that He can more than satisfy my heart – as I let Him.

The Lord can meet our every need because He is a God of perfect, overflowing love that has no limits. It’s hard to know where to start in describing God’s love. From beginning to end the Bible tells us how He feels about us. Many verses state specifically what His love is like. Also, in passage after passage we can discern this love through His actions or words, as we learn to look for clues – just as we do on the human level when we like someone and try to find out whether he or she likes us. In the Bible those clues are everywhere.

As a widow with 2 young children during the months and years that followed my husband’s death from cancer at age thirty-two, I became more diligent than ever in seeking to know God and experience His love in new ways. (Trials have a way of driving us onward like that, don’t they?) I bought a red notebook that I used only for recording truths about God. In the top corner on the front side of each sheet I wrote down some word or fact about God, something He would impress upon me through my times with Him: Refuge, Hiding Place, Power, Love, Strength, Bridegroom, Bread of Life, and so forth. On the front page for each topic I wrote out verses that the Holy Spirit had used to grip my heart. Then I could go back to them again and again for refreshment and praise and thanksgiving.

Some of the entries were a full verse, others just a phrase. I wrote each one in whatever Bible version I liked best for that particular passage and sometimes partly in one version, partly in another. I also memorized many of these rich verses.

Often a verse would impress me mentally but I wouldn’t yet feel it was truly mine. It had not yet deeply touched my heart. So I would record the reference on the back of the page. Then later I could dig deeper into it, letting the Spirit make it real to my heart. Also on the back of the page I added poems or quotes or devotional thoughts relating to the topic.

The notebook grew to be quite thick. In times when I really needed a dose of God’s love (or His peace or strength or whatever), I could open those pages and run back to Scriptures already full of meaning, truths He had spoken personally to me. And in those times of need they became lifesavers.

It helped so much to seek God diligently like this. I wish I could say that I’ve sought Him just as diligently every day and in every quiet time. I’ve gone through many times of dissatisfaction and unmet longings because I wasn’t letting Him satisfy me. Still He has been faithful to answer prayer, bringing me back to His personal love again and again and keeping it a major theme in my life.

One of the most helpful quotes I came across during those years as a widow was something written by Hudson Taylor, pioneer missionary to China. He was facing the death of his dearly beloved wife, Maria, and his children were all in school in faraway England. In this lonely time he found great refreshment through John 7:37, where Jesus invites anyone who is thirsty to come to Him and drink. “Who does not thirst?” Taylor wrote. “Who has not mind-thirsts or heart-thirsts, soul-thirsts or body thirsts? Well, no matter which, or whether I have them all, Come unto Me and… remain thirsty? Ah no! Come unto Me and drink!

“What?” Taylor continued. “Can Jesus meet my need? Yes, and more than meet it. No matter how intricate my path, how difficult my service; not matter how sad my bereavement, how far away my loved ones; no matter how helpless I am, how deep are my soul yearnings; Jesus can meet all – all, and more than meet.”

Amen to that.