More Of You

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale.

Proverbs 18:11 (NIV)

Maybe you read this verse and others that warn us of the dangers that come with riches, and you skip over it because you are not rich. But it is our natural tendency to think that wealth would solve our problems or make us happy or give us security. Those who pine for wealth as if it would guarantee safety are in the same position as people who trust in the wealth they already have.

Whatever we think we need to make us feel safe and secure stands in the way of what God wants to do in our lives. Any possession or relationship —whether we have it or think we need it—anything we look to as the source for what only God can provide becomes an idol.

The problem slips in when we’re not paying attention. We begin to idolize something or someone, or the dream of that something or someone. We serve it. We meditate on it. We work for it. And if we get it, we find that it was not at all what we thought it promised to be.

Regardless of what you are clinging to or longing for, your desire is really for God himself. Nothing else satisfies. Everything else leaves you disillusioned and disappointed. Anything else empties you instead of filling you and cannot give you security.

When we think that the reason we pray is so that we can place our orders with the divine warehouse and expect timely delivery, then we are missing out on what God wants to give. This attitude is an extension of the idolizing that turns our hearts to the things we think God should give us and away from God himself. Contentment comes when we know that nothing but God will satisfy and that he will satisfy fully.

More of you. More of you.

At our first entrance into the school of waiting upon God, the heart is chiefly set upon the blessings which we wait for. God graciously uses our need and desire for help to educate us for something higher than we were thinking of. We were seeking gifts; He, the Giver, longs to give Himself and to satisfy the soul with His goodness.

Andrew Murray(1828–1917), South African pastor and author