“He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”

(C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

I don’t really know what it means to go without. I certainly don’t know what it means to have nothing. I’ve grown up at a time and in a place where my basic needs for food, water, a roof over my head, and clothes on my back have always been met. Even in the darkest of times, I’ve been surrounded by people who loved and cared for me.

I’ve had, and I’ve needed. I’ve gained, and I’ve lost. In moments of honesty, I know that the ‘good times’ didn’t leave me any more content or fulfilled than the bad times. Contentment and satisfaction were momentary and fleeting.

Desires satisfied gave way to the ache of new desires. Longings fulfilled were met with some degree of dissatisfaction, fear, or doubt. We are filled with an insatiable appetite for more. It is here that Lewis’ words resonate with poignancy.

If Lewis is right (which I believe he is), then why is God not enough for me?

I am a Christian. I am a pastor. I am a husband and a father. I have all my basic needs (and much more!) provided for on a daily basis. So, why is it that while living with so much relative ‘wealth,’ I still feel such lack and loneliness?

Lewis’ answer in his essay The Weight of Glory, is that our restless pursuit for more is because we are meant for more. That our deepest intuitions and longings primarily exist, not to lead us to any finite person or possession or passing pleasure but into the eternal and infinite presence of God.

Even as I write this, I realize how cliché that the last statement sounds. It sounds right and flows well but feels empty in experience. It is here that I’m confronted by the reality that I look to God to satisfy my desires, rather than looking to him to be the satisfaction of my desire. The fulfillment of my longing.

My deepest longings for love and belonging, for purpose and significance, for pleasure and happiness, can not be fulfilled by anything in this life. While that is something I’ve always professed as a follower of Jesus, it is not something I’ve really believed. At least, not in any robust sense of ‘belief,’ not in a way that has consistently informed my desires.

The more I sit with this, the more I realize that at the root of my sense of lack and loneliness is an ache to be loved and belong. Here I find the answer to my question. God is not enough for me because I struggle to believe I am enough for him.

I believe that God loves me, in a generic sense. I believe that he loves me amid the mass of humanity. But I struggle to believe that he loves me, that God sees me and seeks to intimately know and interact with me.

Whether for good or for ill, I don’t imagine God as being with me in my activities and behaviors. I don’t picture him affirming or cheering me on in my successes, or grieving with me over my sin and suffering. It’s not as if I feel the need to earn God’s love or curry his favor, but there is a sense of disconnection.

Even as a Christian of 30+ years and a pastor for nearly 20 years, I’m still learning to receive God’s love. The truth here is that every ache and every longing draws our attention to an area needing to be opened to the loving presence of God, in a way that no created being or thing can fulfill.

God has created us for friendship and vocation and marriage and parenting and numerous pleasures to enjoy; but such joys only find their fulness when grounded and enfolded in an intimate reception of God’s love for us, intimately, personally. It’s knowing that we are known in every way by God, so that in possessing Christ we possess everything, even if we possess nothing.

As Augustine famously wrote, “You have formed us for Yourself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.” (Confessions, Book 1)

This is a life-long journey of arriving, of being and becoming. I am a consummated bride and yet still a virgin waiting to receive my groom. It’s in the pain of longing and disappointment where I am awakened to my deepest need. If I resist reaching for my usual fixes (food; drink; sex; busyness; shopping; Netflix …) to assuage my desires and numb my disappointment, and instead open myself to the penetrating presence of the Spirit, to allow him to hear the aches of my soul and speak his love into my heart— maybe there I’ll find ‘rest,’ true contentment that transcends my situation (Philippians 4:11-12); to “taste and see that the LORD [alone] is good” enough to satisfy my deepest needs and longings (Psalm 34:8).