Mike Novotny - How to Truly Satisfy Your Heart
I hate the morning. I'm not sure how God wired you, but I can stay up at night and read books and grow in my faith. But the morning it's just not my thing. My wife wakes up and she runs five miles and she reads her Bible and she gets dressed and looks beautiful, gets ready for the day before I'm halfway conscious. But there's one part about my mornings that I really love. It's the prayer that I pray every single day. Habits are amazing because my brain somehow remembers to do this before my eyes are barely open. Before I escaped the warmth of the sheets, I pray a single verse from the Bible almost every day.
And here's the verse Psalm 90:14 Moses wrote, I love that passage because of what we've been talking about this week. It's about joy. It's about gladness. It's about happiness and I love the wording. It says, satisfy us. Like God, I want today to be enough. That's what the word satisfy means. I don't want to feel empty. I don't want to need more. I want to have enough to be happy today. And I love that it doesn't say, satisfy me. It says, satisfy us. I think about my wife and I think about my daughters. I think about our church. And I think about my friends and I don't want them to be worried or anxious or empty, I want them to be satisfied, just like me, satisfy us.
And I love this line, in the morning. Like I don't want to wait till lunchtime to be happy God. I don't want to wait till just before work is over or the end of the day with my bedtime prayer. Like right now as I'm starting the day, I want to have enough. I want to be happy. And I want that gladness to be so great that I sing for joy. And I'm glad all of my days, it's an amazing prayer, huh? But did you catch the part I left out? Here's the best part, "Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love". The only way that the Bible knows to truly satisfy your heart is with something that doesn't fail. "His love endures forever," Psalm 136 said. "The eternal God is your refuge," Deuteronomy 33 said. "Rejoice in the Lord always because He is near," the apostle Paul said.
It's only when you tap into something unfailing, something eternal and guaranteed that you can really have happiness in the morning that doesn't let you go for the entire day. So sometimes when I'm sitting in bed, I think through my day and I ponder all the things that could fail me. Like maybe the hot water is used up in the shower and it fails. Maybe I'm running behind and I miss breakfast and it fails. Maybe the traffic is backed up or someone slides into my car in the Wisconsin winter and it fails. Maybe someone's mad at me at church and they send an email and that's how I start my day when I walk into the office and their kindness fails. Maybe my stomach hurts and my body fails. Maybe my head aches and it all fails.
A thousand things could go wrong in this world, except for this, satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love. And that's what I have this heart to heart with God. God, whatever happens today, you will love me. You've made a promise when Jesus died on the cross for my sins, that your love will endure forever. So in this moments of my day, when something is bound to fail help me not to remember what failed but the one thing that never will. And today I want to encourage you to pray that same prayer, whether you pray it in bed or pray it in the car, wherever you are God satisfy me right now with your unfailing love. Coming to remember how amazing it is to know that I'm loved by God Himself. That friends is the source of true satisfaction. That's how you can rejoice and be glad and sing for all of your days. Let's pray:
Our dear God, we would love it if nothing failed today, if our relationships and our health and our commute and our job and everything would be perfect. That'd be amazing God, but we know you haven't promised that. And we know after the fall into sin, life is rarely like that. And so we pray today for that rock, that refuge of your unfailing love. We pray it for ourselves, we pray it for our family and friends. We pray it for all of your people that you would satisfy us right now that we could be glad and be happy. God, you planted that desire in our heart, that all of us want to feel that way. And now you've given us the only way that it's possible, through your unfailing presence and love. I pray that you would open the eyes of our heart that we could see you and be satisfied with you. And I pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.
Well, we made it to the end of the week and I hope that these messages helped you learn how to be happy in the best way. I'd love in the comments section if you could share what was your biggest takeaway from these messages? What did God open your eyes to, or what passage really stuck in your hearts? Let's encourage each other with our takeaways as we really find the spiritual pursuit of happiness in the presence of God. Have a great week and we'll catch you next time.