How Intimacy with Jesus Satisfies "The Last Abyss of Our Nature"

Beloved Friends,

There's this thing the Lord is doing inside of me, that He's inviting me into, that I can't resist sharing with you today.

It's relatively simple... and yet the complexity of it, because the human heart and nature are complex, is astounding.

I'll try to explain it in a quick nutshell:

We were all created with longings... "abysses" in our nature that were ultimately meant to be filled and satisfied by Jesus.  A huge part of our sanctification process, once we've given our hearts to Him, is learning to know ourselves, to know our longings, and learning to allow those places inside of us to be filled and satisfied by Jesus instead of running to other sources to find fulfillment.

A quick list of examples of false sources of life (past and/or present) that I've found myself hanging onto instead of leaving those places in my heart open, hungry, longing, so that Jesus can come in and fulfill them:

**Few, if any, of these things are "bad" in and of themselves.  It's when our hearts turn to them instead of Jesus for life, peace, fulfillment, strength, etc... that they become sin.**

• Friends.  Relationships.
• Facebook.  Human affirmation... or just human (adult!) communication. (As a mom, this can be a big one.  Not that it's wrong to have communication with adults... but when it is what we turn to before turning to the Lord... it becomes a false source of life.)
• Food.  Pleasure.
• Entertainment.  Pop culture.  Novels.  Movies.  TV.  Etc.
• Pleasing people.  Human affirmation.  (I mentioned it before, but it's a big one for me and bears repeating.)
• "The need to be needed."  Finding illegal affirmation in being "the one" that others call when they're in crisis.  Eeeesh.  I so don't like that one.  It's something the Lord's been dealing with me on for a good decade or so.  I feel like it's mostly gone...mostly filled by Jesus now... but every now and then a new little pocket of it will pop up and I'll have to turn to Jesus over it... again.

The other day I found this quote by Oswald Chambers, from "My Utmost For His Highest," that describes with incredible accuracy the "settled-ness" and satisfaction and freedom from these compulsive behaviors that I feel like the Lord is wanting to accomplish inside of me.  Till the very "last abyss of [my] nature has been satisfied by Jesus."

On my kitchen cabinet.  My prayer and my reminder that He's after my whole heart...
that every longing would be satisfied in Him.

"When once we get intimate with Jesus, we are never lonely, we never need sympathy, we can pour out all the time without being pathetic.  The saint who is intimate with Jesus will never leave impressions of himself, but but only the impression that Jesus is having unhindered way, because the last abyss of his nature has been satisfied by Jesus.  The only impression left... is that of the strong, calm sanity that our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him."  
~(Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 7th.)

Amen... Lord, have your way in me... in all of the deepest places and darkest corners of my heart.

Would you join me, friend, in making this your prayer to Him this year?  He offers it to all of us - this complete satisfaction and filled-up-ness that's available only in Him... this strong, calm "sanity," which I would call perfect peace.   There's not a single one of us who know Him to whom this is out of reach.