To Encourage You

Psalm 107:9 “For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.”

Are you satisfied?  Do you have a full life?  A satisfied and full life is not the same thing as a busy life.  Most of us are busy with work, family and friends, and various responsibilities.  And when we aren’t busy with responsibilities, perhaps our lives are further filled with the pursuit of our favorite hobbies.  Perhaps our lives can be characterized as “never a dull moment.”  Whatever the case, the Bible tells us that physical things can never satisfy the soul.  Whatever the pursuits in life, we often find that to gain the same level of satisfaction with them, we have to have more or bigger of whatever it is. 

Goal-oriented people are good at setting a direction for their lives.  However, when they reach that goal, the sense of accomplishment rarely lasts.  More than likely, we must soon move to whatever the next goal is – always striving, seeking, pursuing.  The Scripture above calls this “the longing soul.”  People find that whatever physical satisfaction they gain from something, they will always “thirst again” as Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.  Similarly, a thirsty soul, may find satisfaction in some sense, for a time, but there is no ultimate satisfaction apart from a relationship with our Creator.

We were created for a relationship with the one who made us, and until that relationship is realized through faith in Christ, the soul will never be truly satisfied.  Jesus promised the Samaritan woman that “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  Such is the peace, hope, love and joy that fills the believer’s soul when he or she turns to Christ for the water of life. 

The believer finds that not only is he or she blessed with these soul-satisfying things, but the blessings are so great that they constantly overflow into the lives of others around them.  Like the prodigal son who finally came to himself in his great hunger, God wants us to know that even the servants in His household always have “more than enough (Luke 15:17).”  Like physical hunger, which is actually a gift from God that makes a person aware of their need for food, spiritual hunger is a gift of the Father to make us aware or the great need of our soul for those things that only He can give us. 

So if God has graciously touched you with such hunger of soul, turn to Him, for He alone can satisfy you.  It’s this wonderful truth that is the message of the wonderful words of Psalm 107:9.