Where do you put your trust? Who, or what, do you run to when things are going bad, when loneliness strikes, when you’re feeling empty, or when you need answers to life’s tough questions?
We as a society do not run to God when we should. We often find ourselves searching for satisfaction, answers, and joy from friends, relationships, self-help books, and even material goods.
As I’ve been reading through Ezekiel the past couple of months, I’ve noticed a trend among the Israelites, God’s chosen people. They, too, had difficulty placing their trust first and foremost in God. As they sought alliances with neighboring nations and conformed to the people around them, they demonstrated a lack of trust and satisfaction in the God who brought them out of bondage and had displayed His faithfulness to them again and again. In the following passage, God points out their unfaithfulness to Him. Even though He accuses them of prostitution, bear in mind that this is also referring to the political alliances they were seeking, not just lustful satisfaction.
“Woe! Woe to you, declares the Sovereign Lord… You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians… So I stretched out my hand against you and reduced your territory. I gave you over to the greed of your enemies, the daughters of the Philistines… You engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians too, because you were insatiable; and even after that, you still were not satisfied. Then you increased your promiscuity to include Babylonia, a land of merchants, but even with this you were not satisfied.” (Ezekiel 16:23-24,26,27-29)
Despite how many times the Israelites ran elsewhere for security and satisfaction, they were never satisfied. The same holds true for us today. We can look to our friends or to the opposite sex or to material things to give us the happiness and solutions we desire, but all of these things never really do fill us up as we desire.
If we don’t stop yearning for creation rather than the Creator, there is no doubt that God will interfere and bring our unfaithfulness to an end. If you look at the Israelites and the punishment they received from God in the form of captivity and violence, you can easily argue that God wouldn’t go to that extreme with you, thus real change is not really required on your part. This is a lie.
In Ezekiel 30, we see something that God did in response to His people’s distrust of Him. He destroyed their idols. The very people that Israel was running to, the Egyptians, were threatened by God and eventually punished through captivity and strife. God didn’t just ask the Israelites to surrender what they were wrongly putting their hope in; he made sure they couldn’t hold on anymore by taking the object of their false security away. The same was done to the Assyrians, described in Ezekiel 31.
When we are running to other things than God, we cannot assume that God will not react. His love and grace is abounding, but His jealousy is also as unyielding as the grave (Song of Songs 8:6). This is not to scare you into surrender or repentance. This is to remind you that God is jealous for His children and He will run after you whether or not you keep running away. Just as He blocked the path of Hosea’s adulterous wife with thornbushes, walled her in so she could not find her way, and prevented her from chasing after her lovers (Hosea 2:6-7), God will be looking for a way to bring us back to Him.
We need to stop this never-ending search for things that will not satisfy our yearning. We can place all our trust in people and things who will ultimately let us down, or we can place all our trust in the One who never will leave us and promises us a water that will cause us to never thirst again (John 4:13).
This will look different for everyone. If you feel like you’re always striving for approval from the people around you, maybe it’s time you stop trying so hard to impress and instead let God tell you of your worth. If you are thinking that relationships will fix the emptiness you feel or make you more complete, perhaps you need to take those relationships off of that pedestal and devote your time to sitting at your true Lover’s feet.
What would trusting in the Lord with all of your heart look like in your life? I dare you to find out.
-Jessie Nyland