How hard are you to please?
What will finally make you happy?
What do you need to make you feel satisfied, content, blessed and happy?
Some people are implacable. No matter what they get, or who does what for them, they refuse to be satisfied. Some people seem to be born with a whinge in their mouth and bitterness in their heart.
Ministry of Disapproval
Have you ever met those people with the ‘ministry of disapproval’? They act as if they have divine calling to find fault, pick holes, see the bad side, be suspicious, hose down hopes, sour everything they touch and spoil life for those around them.
I jokingly call this the ‘ministry of disapproval’ in honour of some I have met who never have a nice thing to say and whose opinions are always sour.
People like that are impossible to please. They will never be happy. They will never rest in satisfaction, contentment or blessing.
What Will It Take?
The question is, what will it take to get you past your bad feelings? What will it take for you to become a happy, positive, enthusiastic, encouraging person? What do we have to give you for you to stop fighting with the world, resenting others, reacting to life, and spoiling other people’s happiness?
Most people don’t know what it will take to make them happy because all they know is to be controlled by negative feelings. Their ugly disposition is not a reaction to something that can be fixed, but their life-focus. It is as if their internal switch has been clicked to ‘ugly mood’ setting.
The Hopeless Case
Imagine someone who is given the most valuable things in the world and yet wants more! That’s almost impossible to imagine. Surely if you had all the money, fame, popularity, food, freedom, convenience, friends, power, or whatever that you want, you would be blissfully happy.
The reason it isn’t true is because, as others have said before me, “Happiness is not a destination, but a mode of traveling”! If you expect the delivery of some outcome to give you happiness you are deluded. If you cannot be happy with what you have, you will not remain happy, even when you have the things you hanker for. You are a hopeless case.
God or What?
The most dramatic evidence of people trapped in the hopeless case, is those who have God and all He can be to them, yet who want something else.
Can you imagine that? Imagine having God in your life. There is no greater force in all the universe. There is no greater expression of love in all the universe. There is no greater happiness in all the universe. There is no greater power in all the universe. To be intimately connected with God means you have everything the universe has to offer.
So, if someone has access to God and then looks elsewhere, what hope do they have to be happy? If someone thinks God is not enough, where in the world (or the universe) are they going to find anything better than God? If God is not enough, then the person is heading for ruin. They will soon be lost in disillusionment, frustration, unhappiness, despair, vanity (as in uselessness), and all that goes with such things.
Godliness with Contentment
The Bible tells us that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1Timothy 6:6).
Being satisfied with God is the greatest source of happiness and fulfilment we can attain. This is not the deadening of our senses, so we stop enjoying other things, but the filling of our senses with the purest and most potent inputs, so that all our capacity for sensation is overwhelmed and resolved.
When we are saturated with God’s presence our appetites are satiated. Jesus experienced this when he did God’s will. One day, after speaking to a woman God wanted to transform, the disciples came with the midday meal. Jesus was not hungry. He was completely satisfied by doing the will of God. He said, “My food is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” (John 4:34).
Your Frustration Quotient
Here’s a formula for you.
The degree to which God is everything to you is the degree to which you will be satisfied. The more you reject God in your life, living as if God is not enough for you, the more frustrated, driven, disillusioned, addicted, compulsive, bitter, insatiable, and unpleasant you will become.
And the same is true for those around you. If they live for something other than God and His claim on their life, they will face frustration and empty feelings. Mankind was made to be completed by relationship with God. When God fills our senses our senses are truly full.
When we try to fill our senses with earthly things, such as pleasures, friendships, experiences, gratification, indulgence and the like, we cheat our senses. We drain our life of that which is rich and filling, and chew on chaff that leaves us dry and un-nourished.
DIY Therapy
If you have the Ministry of Disapproval, or if you are unhappy with your lot, or if you are given to frustration and empty feelings, invest yourself in this powerful, self-help therapy.
Bring yourself into God’s presence and drink deeply from His well. Worship Him. Give yourself completely to Him, including your frustrations, agitations, addictions and sins. Yield yourself to His claim on your life and take time away from those empty things that consume your life (entertainment, friendships, indulgences, etc) and invest that time into seeking God, prayer, Bible reading, fellowship with enthusiastic Bible-believing Christians, acts and songs of worship, helping others and obeying God’s instructions, and see how much that changes you.
Stop thinking of God as “not enough” for you. Realise and act on the fact that your greatest satisfaction and happiness is not found in the things you have been living for, but will be found in the presence of God, right here on planet earth, in the days and years of your life.
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