The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Are You Satisfied with God?

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

When was the last time you asked yourself, “Am I satisfied with God”? Today, Jeff addresses this question, and encourages us to examine our relationship with Christ daily through scripture and doctrine. Snippet from the Show “God thirsts that you would thirst for him.” - St. Augustine Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow for full shownotes!

You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show, episode 2.35. Are you satisfied with God? Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven show. It's good to be back with you again this week as we talk about issues that are facing life, discipleship, Bible reading, walking with Jesus, your family, and eternity. Hey, it's good to be with you. And I want to talk to you today about something that just kind of hit me. I mean, I wasn't even expecting it. And it was this issue of being satisfied with God. I was walking the other night out and where I'm at out in the woods and

Minnesota, there's two lakes are joined and there's like a bicycle path, a walk path between the two with a bridge that goes over the connection between the two lakes. And the sun was almost down and you could hear just the noise of the frogs and everything else and the beautiful stars and the moon was out. And I was just hit. I was just hit by the glory of God and his provision and and how beautiful creation is. And, you know, in light of everything that's going on in life right now and everything that we're struggling with as a country, as a world, not only on an individual basis, but on a political basis, global basis, I just had this moment of, I wanted to say to God,

and I did, Lord, I'm satisfied with you. I am satisfied with you. And I want to talk to you about that today. I wanted to take that experience out at the edge of the lake to you in this podcast by starting off by just asking you that simple question, are you satisfied with God? Are you really? Are you satisfied with God? You might want to take that and think about that throughout the day, you know, if you're done listening to this. Continue on and think about that because I started to realize in my life, you know, from time to time that on one hand, I may say that I may say that

I am so satisfied with God, and I am so full and enriched and filled with treasure, the treasure of God in my life. But then if you look at how I actually live and how I respond to people, how I deal with fear or the future within the confines of my own heart, I seem to live at times as though I wasn't satisfied with God. And I live as though there's something else outside of God that I want that I need and that I'm looking for. And in my head, I know that that's not true. I know that that's not true. And I want my heart to feel that. And this last week, I really had one of those moments of Lord, okay, I am totally yours. I'm abandoned to you.

But I do know what it's like at times to sort of circumvent God and look for something. something that I'm seeking, you know, in life, that you two song. Remember that? Still haven't found what I'm looking for. And once you're a disciple of Jesus and you said yes to Jesus, to follow him and to become like him, and to live the life of the kingdom in his plan of shared goodness, if all the sudden you realize I still haven't found what I'm looking for, it really means that we need to circle back and we need to seek the Lord. even more, because that is the relationship where you will find what you are looking for. And I started to also think about how, you know, there's so much talk in our culture today

about living your dream and fulfilling your destiny and planning for success, and self-realization, you know, and all these things that really focus on us. No wonder we are not satisfied. because if satisfaction comes from living my dream and satisfaction comes from fulfilling my destiny and my success and I'm self-actualized suddenly, you know, that I'm going to be happy, then I'm never going to be happy. You see, I was created by God, but even more than that, I was created for God. I was created for God.

And I'm never going to find the happiness that I am looking for in, anything outside of God. And I can't squeeze his story into my story. But I try doing that from time to time. Do you? Do you do that from time to time where your narrative, your life narrative, your story is the story? And, oh, God, I'm going to make room for him in my story. I've done that before. Maybe you have too. And that's when we start to feel empty in our lives when we try to squeeze his story into my story. But really, my life fits in his story. And that's where I'm going to find that joy and that purpose and that deep, deep certitude and that satisfaction of the soul. I sure do appreciate those mornings where you get up and you have a cup of tea and sitting there talking to Emily and we're

reading the Bible and there's just sort of a natural spiritual hum, you know, sort of a piece that I experience. And I know you have too. And it's something that we cherish, right? But we don't always live like that. I mean, the day gets on and we find ourselves in disputes or puzzles or, you know, hurdles in the way. And we still can be satisfied with God, even in that. If you look back at Genesis chapter 3 in the early part of the Bible, Genesis 3, you see that God provided for Adam and Eve some really tremendous, tremendous benefits. He said you can eat freely of any of the trees in the garden. But that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it,

for if you eat of it, you'll die. Now, that's worse than a bad day, isn't it? you'll die. And the enemy comes in and says, well, did God say? And Eve says, yeah, that's what he said. And you can't even touch the tree. And the enemy said, no, you won't die. You see, God knows that when you eat of it, you're going to become like God. So Eve looked at that tree and she saw three things in that tree that are not bad necessarily. She said that it was beautiful. It was good of the taste. And it was there to make one wise. Makes us wise. Now, What's not to like about something that's going to be beautiful and tasty and make you wise?

Well, nothing. But if that's where you're trying to find your happiness and your satisfaction in life is from that which is beautiful and that which is tasty and that which makes you wise, and you're not going to be happy because you will have exchanged the creator for the creation. And the creation does not have the capacity to bring satisfaction, the type of satisfaction that you're looking for, and the type of satisfaction I'm looking for. Now, I do have a number of notes that I want to share with you in some scriptures, and I'm going to take you on a little bit of a survey, a little test here in a moment. I'm going to have that on the notes. So I do, this is one show where I would highly suggest you get the notes because I'm going to have a quiz here to see where you're at as far as being satisfied with God. And I have a number of really good scriptures that talk about this satisfaction in God, which I know is what you're looking for.

You're searching. You wouldn't be listening if you weren't searching. So let's just establish this. Jesus did not come to earth to make your dream come true or assist you in becoming all that you can be. That's not why he came to earth. He came to earth to share his life. He came to earth to share the life of the Trinity with you.

Let me grab my catechism here. I have a copy of the catechism back in my office and I have one here in the woods. And this one's not quite as worn as the other one. I use the other one a lot, but they both say the same thing. Listen to this. This is a beautiful paragraph from the Catechism. It's the first paragraph, and you know that's one of my favorites.

But it does speak, I think, a lot about this issue of being satisfied in happy and God. It says, God infinitely perfect and blessed in himself in a plan of sheer goodness, freely created man, to make him share in his own. blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men scattered and divided by sin into the unity of his family, the church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son as Redeemer and Savior. In his son and through him. He invites men to become in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children, and thus heirs of his

blessed life. I love that. That's in the prologue and paragraph one. Well marked up, I might add. But isn't that the truth? The truth isn't that Jesus came to make your dream come true. He came to share his blessed life because that's what he knows satisfies the soul. To be one with God, to walk with God, to be united with God as bride and bridegroom. That's what he has called us to. Life was lost. And what did Jesus? What did he do?

He died to restore us to God. The price of the cross was not for the success of your plans about life, but the plans of his. He knew that we were created for his plan of sheer goodness, not our modern plans of success. It's amazing how much time we spend and how much energy we spend in creating our vision and our life statement and so forth.

And it typically kind of centers around us, but he created us for himself. But after listening to modern teachers, you would think that Jesus was a vitamin pack given to us to push us over the line to success, you know, the finish line. But if we see satisfaction in life as something that we have to generate, then maybe it is simply a race for the finish line.

But if we're created to share in the life of Jesus or divinization to be satisfied with God, then we can only receive this satisfaction from him. And this satisfaction is not only temporal here in this life, but it is eternal. It's eternal. Let me take you on a little bit of a survey here, and I'm going to ask you to keep score. I'm going to ask you a series of questions, and on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most. It's the best. It's the most. So as I ask you each of these questions, and there's 20 of them, and you give yourself a ranking of 1, not so much, 10, 10, very much. Okay? It's a survey to test your satisfaction quotient, we shall say. Okay, number one, how satisfied are you with the creation of Earth? Sounds like a funny question, doesn't it? But are you

satisfied? Are you satisfied with God's creation? Did he do a good job? Number two, how satisfied are you with available oxygen? You know, you're saying, Jeff, you're being silly here. No, no, I'm serious. Are you satisfied with it? Is it good? Could you use more? Or, you know, or you drive through certain states and say, not so much? Number three, how satisfied are you with the Earth's ability to create food? Not too bad. How satisfied are you with the ability to see colors and distance? How satisfied are you in the ability to communicate with other humans? How satisfied are you with God's ability to give you peace. How satisfied are you with God to give you food?

A good question, isn't it? How satisfied are you with God's ability to give you food? How satisfied are you with the offer of eternal life? Pretty satisfied, not so much? You'll have to weigh that one. How satisfied are you with the offer of eternal life? How satisfied are you with God giving you a guardian angel? Pretty satisfied?

Eight, nine, maybe ten? How satisfied are you with God's willingness to forgive you? Number 11. How satisfied are you with the ability given by God to forgive other people? Pretty handy tool, isn't it? Number 12, how satisfied are you with Jesus giving his mother to you? you about this one. How satisfied are you with a personal copy of his word, the Bible? He's given his Bible the Bible to you. How satisfied are you with that? Number 14, how satisfied are you

knowing that you can receive the Eucharist seven times a week, seven days a week? How satisfied are you that Jesus took your place on the cross so you wouldn't die eternally? Remember, it's 1 through 10. 10 is, oh, very satisfied. One, not so much. 16. How satisfied are you with the Holy Spirit who empowers us to do what Jesus created us to do? How satisfied are you knowing the devil has been defeated? Number 18, how satisfied are you that Jesus will never leave you or forsake you? How satisfied are you knowing that you have been invited to participate in God's plan of sheer goodness? And number 20, how satisfied are you to have been chosen by Jesus to be a disciple and walk with him?

Now, those are 20 questions that I was just thinking about prior to coming on with you today and asking myself those questions. In fact, I came up with a number of them as a result of sitting with my wife in prayer this morning and just asking the question, are you satisfied that he gave you his mom? Are you? Some people would say, very satisfied. Others, I haven't thought about it that much. Which might be the problem, right? We haven't thought about these things very much.

But the truth of the matter is that God has provided so much for us in which we can be satisfied and we can take comfort in. And I think a lot of times we look at the problems that we're facing and we turn on the evening news, or as in many people's cases, the hourly-by-minute news, and we become dissatisfied. And we want more.

And I think that the more we focus on the things of the world and those things which are beautiful, tasty, and make us wise, rather than giving the proper time to Jesus and really leaning into God and all that he is and his provision and all of his beauty and glory, then we're going to be dissatisfied if we do not do that, but simply focus on the world in front of us. I'm not saying we've got to be blind or ignorant or anything, but I think one of the reasons that we are dissatisfied is that we don't look upon him who satisfies. We don't

involve ourselves with that which satisfies. We don't give our minds and hearts to that which brings satisfaction into our life, but we look at things that bring dissatisfaction. We envy other people. We want what they have. We wish it was different if we only had more. You know, we can go on and on and we become dissatisfied when the truth of the matter is that God has given us everything to be satisfied. And if you're not going to be satisfied with God in this earth, can you imagine what heaven is going to be like? Now, in all seriousness, it's going to be better and it's going to be so full, but God has given us so much in this time here on earth. When I come back from the break, I've got some scriptures I'm going to share with you as we

continue on with this idea of, are you satisfied with God? And are you seeking God and pursuing that relationship with God, which results in tremendous deep satisfaction? You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. When you're a busy mom, it can seem like God comes in second place to everything else. As Catholics, we know that God should be at the center. of our lives. We know we should be planning around him instead of trying to plan him around our schedules. But it's so hard when you're juggling all the logistics. Back for a third year to help mothers put God at the center is a Catholic mother's planner. A planner designed by Catholic mothers

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slash plan around God. Are you satisfied with God? Kind of a funny question, isn't it? You can't bring yourself to say no, can you? You're not going to. There's no way that you're going to say, uh-uh, I'm not satisfied with God. I think that the real answer might be for all of us from time to time is I haven't thought about it. I'm not pursuing that. Thank you for reminding me, right?

There's a number of scriptures that are really good, and I'm going to put these in the show notes for you, and if you do not currently get the show notes, all you've got to do is type my name, Jeff Kavens. It's one word, Jeff Kavins, and you can text it to 33777. That's 3377, and I'll give you you not only that quiz this week, but I'll give you all the scriptures as well. And there's some good ones here. Okay, let's take a look at a few of them that deal with the satisfaction that God brings to our life. And by the way, before I read this, let me just say one thing, and that is this. The purpose of this podcast, the purpose of life, the purpose of you getting a Bible is not just so you can be satisfied, but it's that you can give God what he deserves and the glory that

that he deserves, and the praise that he deserves, and the recognition that he deserves about everything, and that results in tremendous satisfaction. I know. Psalm 107-9, for he satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul he fills with good things. If you're not experiencing a satisfaction from your relationship with God, one thing that you can pray for is a soul that would long for him. As St. Augustine once said, God thirsts that you would thirst for him. You see, this idea of longing and thirsting begins with God. He thirsts that you would thirst for him. He longs that you would long for him. And you can pray, Lord, Lord, change my heart. Give me a longing soul. Give me a hungry heart, oh God, where he satisfies the longing soul. And the hungry soul he fills with good things.

Psalm 103, it's a Psalm of David, says, bless the Lord, oh, my soul. And all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. And forget not all his benefits. Who forgives all your iniquity. Who heals all your diseases. Who redeems your life from the pit. Who crowns you with steadfast love. mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. Psalm 107 will give thanks to the Lord for he is good. For his steadfast love endures forever, let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north, and from the south. I like what that says,

let the redeemed of the Lord say so. You know, that, that's a a good one for you to remember because when I take these walks and I leave the cabin, I walk out by the lakes at night, I'm reminded of that text right there. You satisfied? Let the redeemed the Lord say so. You can just say it to the Lord as you worship him. Raise your hands at night under the stars and just say, I am satisfied in you. I am complete in you. I am redeemed. I am redeemed and I'm going to say so. You are awesome. You are powerful. You are the creator. My redeemer. Husband. Provider. You're my counsel. You're my physician. You are awesome. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Notice that it doesn't say let the redeemed of the Lord.

Think about it occasionally. It says, let him say so. Say it. Say what he is. and when your ear hears it, it's amazing because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Start confessing with your mouth that which God has stated as true. Psalm 374, I like this one, and I actually memorized this one back in my 20s. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to go out there and dance around by the lake in the moonlight. and God will give me the desire of my heart, which is a brand new Harley-Davidson. That's not what it's talking about here.

And that's not what the desire of my heart is, actually. But delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart, which is that deep peace and is that certitude and that rest that comes from walking with the Lord. Jesus once said, he said, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. In other words, it's like payday. It's, you know, my satisfaction, my food is to do the will of him who sent me. He said that in John chapter 4 in verse 34. And so I would ask myself, that question as I meditate on that text, is my food to do the will of him?

Is my satisfaction in life coming from that? doing the will of him who sent me to accomplish his work? Is that where my satisfaction comes? Or does my satisfaction come, albeit at a lower level, from doing those things that I think will fulfill my own dream and my own destiny? Or do you want to become who God created you to become? My food is to do the will of him who sent me. Hebrews 13-5, keep your life free from the love of money. Talk about something that will ruin your satisfaction. Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Or he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Now, you have two things going on there. One is you're told to keep your life free from the love of money.

Be content with what you have because he will never leave you nor for you. forsake you. That is the real treasure. Not money. Not all the things that you can accumulate, but the fact that he will never leave you and never forsake you. That's the treasure. Be satisfied. Will you say that with me one time real quick here? Just let's say it together. I will never leave you nor forsake you. That's treasure. Paul wrote to the Philippians and said, not that I am speaking of being need, but I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. Now, listen to this. This is so amazingly, theologically cool. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance, and

need. Paul says, I have learned that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I'm satisfied. I am so satisfied. Oh, that's so good. I love that. Ecclesiastes 510, He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. This is vanity. It's vanity. Inverbs 19, the fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied. He will not be visited by harm. So, the fear of the Lord, the person who has the fear of the Lord, the awe of God, that person is satisfied. And Psalm 107, for he satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul, he fills with good things.

Oh, there's so much more here. I'll give you one more. I got so much here. It's so good. So satisfying. Matthew 1128, this is one of the greatest texts of all time, probably one of the first three or four I ever memorized back when I was 18. Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden.

I'll give you rest. So if you're weary and heavy laden, what do you do? Just keep going after your dream, brother. Keep building your future. Your destiny is in your hand. No. No, no, no, no. No, no, no. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it now. No. Come to him. All who are weary and heavy laden,

he'll give you that satisfaction, that rest that you were created for. With long life, I will satisfy him and show him my salvation, scripture says. So wonderful things here, and I just want to encourage you today to just ask yourself throughout the rest of the day, am I satisfied with God? And get the notes. to the show, go over those questions and answer them. Are you really satisfied with the fact that he forgave you? Are you satisfied that he gave you the ability to forgive other people? Are you satisfied that you got a Bible? Let's learn to be satisfied in God. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, we love you. We praise you. We give you glory. Lord, help us this week to walk as

satisfied disciples. You are so good. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. look forward to seeing you next week. Love you.