How Can I Help My Friends Stay Satisfied in God?
00:00:00.000 | In a recent tweet you wrote, "Christian relationships have this as their goal, to
00:00:10.040 | help each other stay satisfied in God." Pastor John, give us some practical ways
00:00:14.840 | for how we can do this in our ordinary lives. What does this look like for just
00:00:18.120 | an average Christian trying to help another average Christian stay satisfied
00:00:22.040 | in God? Right. Let me say first why I think that. 1 Corinthians 14, 26 I think
00:00:32.840 | says, "Let everything be done for building up." And two chapters later,
00:00:39.200 | chapter 16, it says, "Let everything be done in love." Now I think building up
00:00:45.400 | faith and doing everything for love is virtually the same as encouraging people
00:00:51.440 | to be satisfied in God, because I think faith is, in its essence, being satisfied
00:00:57.480 | with all that God is for us in Jesus. And loving somebody is helping them be in a
00:01:02.920 | situation where they will have the greatest benefit. And Romans 8, 28 says
00:01:07.200 | that all things work together for those who love God. And so I want to help them
00:01:11.520 | love God, because then everything's going to work together for their good. That's
00:01:15.040 | what love is, and loving God is being satisfied in God. So that's where that
00:01:18.880 | little statement comes from. So here's my how-to. People are satisfied with what
00:01:27.760 | they see and taste as satisfying. If they see something as satisfying, they're
00:01:34.760 | going to be satisfied in it, and therefore our job is to show God as
00:01:41.040 | satisfying. So we need to help people see and taste that God is more
00:01:49.000 | satisfying than their television, or their money, or their job, or their
00:01:54.560 | relationships. He's more satisfying. And we do that, I think, number one, by speaking
00:02:03.120 | the Word of God, or especially the promises of God into their lives. Here's
00:02:08.040 | an example. This morning at a prayer meeting, a friend named Dave, there's
00:02:12.800 | about a dozen of us there, a friend named Dave is getting on an airplane flying to
00:02:15.960 | India tonight to minister to pastors. He's an older guy, and it's a challenge
00:02:20.920 | to make that trip. And so we got around Dave, people prayed, and I closed it by
00:02:27.880 | saying, "Dave, fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed. I am your God. I will
00:02:36.040 | help you. I'll strengthen you. I'll hold you up with my righteous right hand. Amen."
00:02:42.400 | So I spoke God's--Isaiah 41 10--I spoke it to him, and I hope ringing in his mind
00:02:49.720 | right now is, "God's going to help me. God is strong for me. God doesn't want me to
00:02:54.760 | be dismayed." So I used the Word of God to try to satisfy him on God's promised
00:03:01.320 | help. And then the only other thing I think I would say is, we be satisfied
00:03:06.760 | around people. You don't just speak words of satisfaction into people, because if
00:03:11.560 | you're living a life of dissatisfaction in God, your whole life is going to
00:03:15.480 | contradict those words, and that has less effect. And so a life of joy shows
00:03:21.360 | that you're satisfied in God, and a life of service, sacrificial service, shows
00:03:26.960 | that you're satisfied in God. So we speak promises of God to reveal his all-
00:03:32.800 | satisfying goodness, and we enjoy his promises, thus manifesting in our own
00:03:40.400 | freedom from murmuring that he is satisfying, and then we give ourselves to
00:03:45.480 | people in a way that shows we don't need them to serve us, because God has
00:03:51.000 | served us so well, and we can now give ourselves to serving them. So it seems if
00:03:56.120 | we want to serve others to help them stay satisfied in God, the key to that is
00:03:59.840 | our own personal disciplines. Yeah, it does. It comes down to whether we taste
00:04:04.400 | and see that the Lord is good. I've said to the Church, I've said to
00:04:10.840 | pastors, I've said to my wife, "What I want from you, Noel, what I want from my staff
00:04:16.320 | is for you to be happy in Jesus. The greatest ministry you can have to me is
00:04:22.080 | for you to enjoy Christ." And so I think when we turn that around and say,
00:04:28.400 | "Now how can I be the greatest blessing to the people around me?" The
00:04:32.360 | answer is, get up in the morning, go to the Word of God, and like George Mueller
00:04:36.600 | said, "Get your heart happy in God before you meet other people." Thank you, Pastor
00:04:43.200 | John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Send your questions to us via
00:04:45.960 | email at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. Please include your first name in
00:04:49.680 | your hometown. Find thousands of other free resources from John Piper online at
00:04:53.400 | DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
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