What have I set my heart on in an attempt to fill it up?
Our society and culture tell us that if we set our hearts on success, fame, pleasure, and influence, then we will have enough and will find joy, happiness, & fulfillment. But what if someone who had acquired all these things told you that it was all a lie? That these things still won’t be enough to fill you up?
Famous British author Malcolm Muggeridge stated:
“I may, I suppose, regard myself as a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets. That’s fame; I can fairly easily earn enough money to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Internal Revenue Service. That’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame [I] may partake of friendly diversions. That’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time. That’s fulfillment. Yet, I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by millions, add them all up together, and they are nothing, less than nothing. Indeed, a positive impediment measured against one drop of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.”
The truth is that all of the enthrallment and novelty that I can find in these things is not enough. Because “somewhere and sometime, human enthrallment finds its limit, as does human capacity. God alone is the perpetual novelty—providing wonder, truth, love, and security” (Ravi Zacharias).
So add up all the success that the world offers and it is of no comparison to knowing Christ. Paul found that same thing to be true and said all that he had gained he now counted as worthless garbage in comparison to knowing Christ.
So what should I do? Perhaps, I should try to follow the example of Ezra – “the good hand of his God was upon him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.” If I set my heart on God and practice and teach His Word to others, then I will fulfillment in life.
Because, “when man lives apart from God, chaos is the norm. When man lives with God, as revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the hungers of the mind and heart find their fulfillment” (Ravi Z).
Set your heart on God and you will find in Him the wonder of perpetual novelty.
“Christ is a substitute for everything, but nothing is a substitute for Christ.” (H.A. Ironside)