Significance and Satisfaction

So, I didn't want to go to Bible study on Thursday ... and then I got there and saw the topic "Am I Alone?" and I wanted to run in the other direction.

Because I really didn't want anything else to tell me that I'm not alone, I'm never alone. I know that the Bible tells me that I am never alone, that God is with me, that, in fact, the Holy Spirit dwells in me - how could I ever be alone? And so I struggle with why I feel so alone all the time...

I don't understand the concept that God dwells in me ... I can't fathom what that means ... I often don't feel the comfort that should bring. But God is so concerned with fellowship and oneness. His whole nature speaks to community and being one. His design for marriage and family follows it. His desire for intimacy with man mirrors that covenantal relationship.

And scripture speaks strongly about that relationship and everything that we do to keep us from oneness and fellowship... we prostitute and whore ourselves away from God. That's shocking - or it should be. We do everything that we can to find our significance and our satisfaction in anything besides the living God, the one who dwells in us.

So, this is what I have been broken by at Bible study this week ... God has given us a holy desire or hunger for significance that is beautiful and wonderful when it is satisfied within the covenant relationship ... but what does God think when we say, "You're not enough for me? I'm going to find something else to satisfy ..."  This hunger to be significant can destroy us.

There is nothing or no one that can truly satisfy or bring significance apart from Christ, but I look to so many places and people and things to bring comfort, to bring worth. How that must break the heart of my Father. How that must sever the intimacy that I am so longing for and crying out for in my life.

And yet, here's the honesty . . . I don't know what to do with the fact that oftentimes these days, when I come to Christ, even when I spend hours in His presence, I still leave feeling so broken and alone - at peace and comforted, but . . . somehow unsatisfied.

And does the desire for relationship somehow become a search to be satisfied and significant?

Oh, that I might be satisfied in Christ alone and find my significance from the simple, and yet so complex fact that I am His child and He dwells in me.