Comfort or Satisfaction

Comfort or Satisfaction which do we seek?

Romans 8:13 Says that it is by the Spirit that we put to death the deeds of the flesh. You will notice the word Spirit here is one that is capitalized, signifying that it is the Holy Spirit of which Paul speaks. I take his statement to mean that in order to overcome the deeds, trials, and challenges we face in our flesh we must submit to and allow the Holy Spirit to put them to death. As I have been faced with many of the same fleshly challenges that all mankind faces in one form or another I can honestly say that I am in a place where I have never been before a place of victory over flesh, a place I believe no man can arrive at without the help and strength of the Lord. A place than can only be given to us as we submit to and allow the Holy Spirit to defeat our flesh. On the day after Thanksgiving in 2010 I began a fast purposed to overcoming the desires and temptations of my flesh, one dedicated to allowing Jesus to be my comfort, as opposed to my flesh. Many of us wrongfully allow food, drugs, alcohol people, sex, or other fleshly activities to become our comfort . When in reality our true comfort should come in and through our spirit . This comfort of which I speak can only come from the Spirit of the living God, this is a true and complete comfort, a comfort our souls crave. The challenge for so many of us is that we spend so much time and effort comforting our flesh and seeking gratification that we are never fully satisfied, we simply move from one form of gratification to another in search of comfort rather than satisfaction. This action simply causes us to crave more gratification and in doing so we fall deeper and deeper into bondage to our flesh all the while starving our spirit. If we seek comfort in anything we will find comfort to be a very temporary feeling often accompanied with far more detrimental and lasting consequences. For example, if we seek comfort in food we will find ourselves, overweight, suffering physically and emotionally, the guilt often driving us to a place of desperation again seeking only more comfort and driving us deeper and deeper into our desperation. The same could be said for any of the other comforts we seek in the flesh, money causes greed and the desire for more money, the desire for sexual gratification twists our thoughts of intimacy and so on and so on. However the true satisfaction we seek can only be found in the place of our spirit, and satisfaction is eternal, everlasting, and without negative consequence. Satisfaction brings joy, and peace, the fruits of satisfaction are never detrimental. The fruits of true satisfaction are peace, joy, love, grace, mercy, patience, kindness, it is the culmination of the fruits of true love found in first Corinthians Thirteen. When Paul is speaking of love he is describing the character of Jesus, the heart of God, the reality of what God truly desires for each of us to experience. This love can only be experienced to this level by those who have become satisfied in the spirit not comforted in the flesh.
As I have walked through the past ninety plus days of denying myself the comfort of the things that kept me from true satisfaction yes it has been at times extremely difficult, but never impossible. You see the Lord knew how difficult it would be, and He alone has given me the strength to make it through, He never left my side, even in those nights when I failed. Oh yes I fell, and yet His hand was there to pick me up, why? Because He loves me, and He knows that I am a man not a god, that I am flesh not spirit, and that I must have His help to make it through every day. This has been the greatest diet I have ever been on, you see the weight, the food, the eating wrong, those were never my problems they were simply the result of a man seeking comfort in the flesh as opposed to a man seeking satisfaction in the spirit. I pray that I never forget this lesson, today I feel as if I never could as long as I remain satisfied in Christ! For you see this is not a diet, it is no longer a fast, this is now a life dedicated to finding my comfort through the satisfaction of knowing God and denying the flesh that separates me from Him. Will you join me and others like me today, as we seek His will for us in our lives, in order that we might be whole?
Pastor Gene Burroughs
Shasta Lake Church
A place of New Beginnings