Every NFL team actually has a chapel meeting before each game. Often, I was invited to join the players for the team meal after the chapel. Of course, their game day meal was a massive buffet, designed to help them power up for their grueling afternoon ahead. After one chapel, I had the privilege of visiting for some time with one of the players who had actually played in three Super Bowls and had been named Most Valuable Player in one of those. I said, "So you have three Super Bowl rings?" He said, "Yeah, but it's still not enough. I won't be happy until I've got a Super Bowl ring on all ten fingers!"
Here's a man who has won one of the most coveted prizes in professional sports - three times! But it's not enough. I remember hearing the story of one player who had just experienced the fulfillment of his lifelong dream to play on a national champion college football team. The morning after, his team and his name were all over the front pages, announcing they had won the championship. But he said he couldn't get over this deep feeling of depression that morning because, in his words, "my god had died." He had everything he had been living for. Now what?
John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in American history was asked once by a reporter, "How much money is enough money?" He smiled and he answered simply, "A little bit more." It's true, isn't it? Whatever we've looked for in our life, there never seems to be enough of it to satisfy our restless heart. If you're still climbing whatever is your "Mt. Happiness," you figure you're not satisfied because you're not there yet. But the people who are already at the top of that mountain are saying, "I'm here and I don't have it. Now what?"
Thousands of years ago, King Solomon, the richest and most sought after man of his time, reached this conclusion, recorded in the Bible in Ecclesiastes chapter 1, "There is nothing new under the sun ... I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind." That says it; chasing the wind. In Ecclesiastes 3:11, our word for today from the Word of God, Solomon puts his finger on why happiness is so elusive: He says, "God has set eternity in the hearts of men." See, we're made for something that will last forever, and nothing that doesn't last forever will ever fill the hole in our heart. We are, in fact, made for a personal relationship with God, the only One big enough to fill that hole because it was made for Him. The Bible describes our hearts as being "like the tossing sea, which cannot rest ... there is no peace..." (Isaiah 57:20-21)
But we haven't made our Creator the center of our lives. We've marginalized Him and minimized Him, pushing Him to the edges of our life, confining Him to a little compartment marked "religion." We're lonely for God. We're away from God; so far away that it took the death of God's only Son to bridge the gap between us. Our self-run lives (the Bible calls that sin) place us under the death penalty for all rebels against God. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead three days later, was to pay for every wrong thing you've ever done and to open the door to love and life that never ends; that eternity you were made for. The Bible bottom lines what Jesus did for you on the cross in these words: "The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him" (Isaiah 53:5). You can be, the Bible says, finally "complete in Him."
Is God enough?
“Whatever your chasing…if it isn’t Jesus..when you catch it…you still won’t be satisfied.” Lecrae
“True contentment does not come with the acquiring of things you want in life but recognizing what you already have.” John Harris
Ron Hutchcraft
Here's a man who has won one of the most coveted prizes in professional sports - three times! But it's not enough. I remember hearing the story of one player who had just experienced the fulfillment of his lifelong dream to play on a national champion college football team. The morning after, his team and his name were all over the front pages, announcing they had won the championship. But he said he couldn't get over this deep feeling of depression that morning because, in his words, "my god had died." He had everything he had been living for. Now what?
John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in American history was asked once by a reporter, "How much money is enough money?" He smiled and he answered simply, "A little bit more." It's true, isn't it? Whatever we've looked for in our life, there never seems to be enough of it to satisfy our restless heart. If you're still climbing whatever is your "Mt. Happiness," you figure you're not satisfied because you're not there yet. But the people who are already at the top of that mountain are saying, "I'm here and I don't have it. Now what?"
Thousands of years ago, King Solomon, the richest and most sought after man of his time, reached this conclusion, recorded in the Bible in Ecclesiastes chapter 1, "There is nothing new under the sun ... I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind." That says it; chasing the wind. In Ecclesiastes 3:11, our word for today from the Word of God, Solomon puts his finger on why happiness is so elusive: He says, "God has set eternity in the hearts of men." See, we're made for something that will last forever, and nothing that doesn't last forever will ever fill the hole in our heart. We are, in fact, made for a personal relationship with God, the only One big enough to fill that hole because it was made for Him. The Bible describes our hearts as being "like the tossing sea, which cannot rest ... there is no peace..." (Isaiah 57:20-21)
But we haven't made our Creator the center of our lives. We've marginalized Him and minimized Him, pushing Him to the edges of our life, confining Him to a little compartment marked "religion." We're lonely for God. We're away from God; so far away that it took the death of God's only Son to bridge the gap between us. Our self-run lives (the Bible calls that sin) place us under the death penalty for all rebels against God. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead three days later, was to pay for every wrong thing you've ever done and to open the door to love and life that never ends; that eternity you were made for. The Bible bottom lines what Jesus did for you on the cross in these words: "The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him" (Isaiah 53:5). You can be, the Bible says, finally "complete in Him."
Is God enough?
“Whatever your chasing…if it isn’t Jesus..when you catch it…you still won’t be satisfied.” Lecrae
“True contentment does not come with the acquiring of things you want in life but recognizing what you already have.” John Harris
Ron Hutchcraft