How to be Satisfied Without Chips and Salsa...

You’re sitting there with your friends, having conversations about nothing at all, playing out your best real life version of a Seinfeld episode while you chow down on the “free” chips and salsa. The whole time, you take in the smell of everybody else’s food around you from other tables wondering when you will finally be blessed to have “Combination #14” in front of you, so that your hunger that you’ve been dealing with since who-knows-how-long  will finally be satisfied, and you can get back to being your happy-go-lucky self again.Right before you chew your hand off, after running out of chips, here it comes, in all its cheesy, beefy, peppery glory, all wrapped in a few tortillas! Conversation grows silent while everyone stuffs their face with the same ingredients you are, only put together in a different order and called another name. After five short minutes pass, forks hit the plate. Everyone you’re with leans back and has to loosen their belt. In trying to satisfy our hunger, we forgot about the 2 baskets of chips and the larger-than-normal water we each had before the real food came out. Satisfaction has turned into regret, and we vow to never eat Mexican again! ...actually just a week or two.We were blinded by the hunger that we had going into that restaurant to a point that we would do just about anything to satisfy it! Now we are left with regret, a check to pay, and a miserable night while we go home stuffed with a volatile concoction that tastes oh-so-good (at the time).We are all looking to be satisfied, and not just a physical hunger sense. Our motivation to be satisfied mentally, physically, and most of all spiritually is what drives our decisions on a daily basis. Two things that we are constantly looking for are pleasure/happiness and or a way to get away from a pain that we may be facing. Either way we are looking to be satisfied in these two categories, and this drives our every decision.Where we, as Christians, are to look different from unbelievers is how we go about finding that pleasure/happiness and also the way we move away from the pain we may be facing. Some go about this by self-gratification, whether it’s buying new clothes or finding a new boyfriend/girlfriend every two weeks, they are being satisfied. Some go about finding this by drowning their pain in alcohol or numbing their pain with drugs, whatever way satisfies their need to get away or retreat from it. After either of these, many times we find ourselves in worse shape than where we started.However, Philippians 1:27 tells us that “above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ.”  We, as believers, are to live differently than those of this world. Why? We aren’t citizens of this world in the first place! So why do we intend on finding satisfaction through things of this world, especially if we are warned so many times in Scripture to steer clear of being of the world? We forget that we have the One who created the world to provide all the things we need, including satisfaction.Matthew 5:6 tells us that “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” It’s not about us at all, actually. It’s not about gratifying ourselves, or finding any part of pleasure on our own; nor is it being able to forget pain or make it go away through things of this world that will bring us satisfaction. Satisfaction comes from our willingness to turn our minds and our hearts to Jesus in an attempt to be righteous like he is, and through this God provides us with his satisfaction that cannot be surpassed.So don’t get stuck wanting to loosen your belt, and stuck with a check that is too much to pay! Rather, I pray that you satisfy yourself with something that lasts longer than the first basket of chips, and look to the creator instead of the created.  Are you satisfied