June 28, 2026 | Wandering Appetites

Wandering Appetites | Ecclesiastes 6:3-9

Ecclesiastes 6:3–9

If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place?

All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind. (ESV)

Jed Gillis’ sermon on Ecclesiastes 6:3–9, “Wandering Appetites,” shows how easily the human soul chases satisfaction in things that cannot finally satisfy. Solomon points out that even a long life, many blessings, wisdom, work, money, relationships, safety, or achievement cannot give lasting rest when the soul keeps wandering toward “just a little bit more.” Rather than pursuing control, God calls His people to pursue what is good, to see and enjoy the gifts He has already given, and to bring every restless appetite back to Christ, the only one who can truly satisfy the soul. 

Transcript of Wandering Appetites | Ecclesiastes 6:3-9

Satisfaction

Ecclesiastes chapter 6. This morning we're gonna be talking about satisfaction, which is a little bit of a, a strange idea. It gets sung about. Maybe some of you remember a Rolling Stones song about that.

But it's funny, I remember I was thinking back to different times when I've experienced satisfaction or haven't experienced satisfaction, depending on the situation. One time, my wife and I decided we were going to do a, what's called the raw diet, which is as bad as that sounds, if you want to know. And the idea is you do a week of kind of a cleansing diet, and you only eat things that you can, you know, safely eat raw, and I don't think sushi was intended to be included in that.

So you eat a whole lot of salads, you eat a lot of vegetables, you eat a lot of fruits. And I remember distinctly about the, the... It didn't take me long. About the second day, I had a plate, and it's mounded with salad. And I'm eating, and I'm chewing, and I'm chewing, and eventually I just get tired of chewing. I'm not satisfied. I don't feel full. I didn't particularly enjoy it. I just decided it was no longer worth moving my jaw.

And we can relate to that kind of experience. The flip side, sometimes you've had food and it was just so good. One time my wife and I, when, when Judah, my almost 14-year-old, was about one and a half with some friends, and it was one of those... Actually, he might have been younger than that. I don't remember. We went on a hike with some friends, and it was supposed to be, I think, a two-mile hike. That was the plan. Now, it was basically straight down and then straight back up, so like, okay, fine. I'm young. I can carry him on my back. I put him on my back in a backpack. We get down. Unfortunately, we missed the part where it loops back, so that two-mile hike, which was intended to be let's get back to the car, was a six-and-a-half mile hike by the time we figured out where we were and got back.

I was starving. I don't remember being that hungry after walking with him on my back, mostly on my back the whole time. We got out, and we didn't bring a whole lot of food with us because it was supposed to be a two-mile hike. You don't need a whole lot of food. We were planning to eat out. We went and ate at some burgers and fries joint. It wasn't fast food, but, like, a little better than fast food. I've eaten there since then. Let me tell you, that day, that was the best hamburger I've ever thought of. I went out so full I felt like you needed to roll me to the car. I was satisfied at that moment. I've eaten there since then. It wasn't as good, so I don't highly recommend it.

But if you get hungry enough and you get the right food, you enjoy it and you get full. And yet we all know by the next day I wasn't full anymore. We have something called satisfaction that we feel, and then it goes away.

And Solomon, in Ecclesiastes chapter 6, he draws our attention not just to what it's like with hamburgers and food. He draws our attention to what it's like to be satisfied in our soul.

Reading Ecclesiastes 3

Let's read together beginning in verse 3. "If a man fathers 100 children and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life's good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he, even though he should live 1,000 years twice over yet enjoy no good. Do not all go to the one place? All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite. This also is vanity and a striving after wind."

If Your Soul's Not Satisfied, What's the Point?

So Solomon sets up a problem for us. He gives us, as he's done throughout the book, he gives us these, these mental gymnastics to go, "What about this situation?"

We know there's a problem when something like this happens, so his-- he sets it up like this. You can have many good things. You can live a long life. You can have a great family. You can have many good things in this life, even people can remember you. But if your soul's not satisfied with good, what's the point?

And we could say, "Solomon, I, I-- what do you mean by satisfied exactly?" Like, I know what it means to be satisfied by a hamburger when I'm hungry, but, but Solomon, is that all you mean? Do you just mean hamburgers, or do you mean something beyond that?

And we get some hints if you look at verse six with this hypothetical person, which he exaggerates to show you just how much he means it, really. If he lived a thousand years twice over. So if you say, "If I can just have a long life," Solomon's right, "All right, how about a thousand years times two?" If you live two thousand years, yet here's a little bit of a, a, a, uh, way that he describes being satisfied, yet enjoy no good. Literally, this says, "See no good." That was a, a Hebrew idiom. The way you would talk about enjoying s- enjoying good, you say, "You see it. You see good."

That's instructive because I think sometimes we think, "I can only enjoy it if it's a certain kind of thing, and if I think this is not good, I can't enjoy it." It, it's about perception. Have you ever had a situation where you could see good in the situation and you could see bad in the situation?

And sometimes, depending on maybe your temperament or what exactly has happened, maybe it's really hard for you to get past seeing the bad even though you know there is good. This idiom helps us get this picture. He says he sees no good. He's not saying the guy who lives two thousand years over, nothing good ever happens in his life. He's saying when all these good things happen, he doesn't see them, he doesn't enjoy them, because all he can see is the bad. So when Solomon says he's not satisfied with life's good things, think about enjoyment. Think about seeing it.

Do you know someone, have you ever known someone in your life who you would say, "Man, there's so many good things in your life," but if you heard them talk about it, it would sound like none of them were there? Maybe that's been you sometimes, but I bet we've all seen it with somebody around us.

So Solomon says to be satisfied is to enjoy. Or verse three, he used this phrase, "Satisfied with life's good things." So if you're gonna be satisfied, you need to have two pieces. You need to enjoy the thing, and it needs to fill you up. If you eat something and you don't enjoy it, but you get full... I've done that before.

One time when I was at Florida State in grad school, this restaurant really near the campus advertised all-you-can-eat pancakes. I'm a grad student. I don't have a lot of money. All-you-can-eat pancakes, me and my friends, we're, we're about to go hurt that restaurant. That was the plan. Those were the worst pancakes I've ever tasted in my life. They tasted like sawdust mixed with water I got full. I didn't enjoy a single bite of them. Was I satisfied? No.

On the other hand, if you really enjoy something. Say you're gonna go and y- you're really hungry. You get a giant Coke. You drink it. Might taste really good, but how long does it take before you're not full?

So to be satisfied, when we use that word, we want to have both. To say, "I enjoy it and it fills me or gives me rest in my soul." That's another way he describes it in verse five. He does it through this counterexample where he says, "What if a child comes into this world, but the child isn't really born?

It's a stillborn child." What if that happens? He says, "It's, it's like it's better for that child because," verse five, "it finds rest rather than he." To live without satisfaction is that bad. That's the way he describes it. But he describes it with this term, finds rest. That means it's, it's enough. It's, he's saying it's better to have the rest of nothingness than to have good things and have no satisfaction or joy in them.

What Is Satisfaction?

So he's about to illustrate it using the same kinds of things I did, food. But as we move, let's think about what satisfaction really is. Let's take three pieces. You enjoy it. And you're full, or it's enough. And it gives you rest. If you could have everything you want in life, but you never enjoyed it, you never felt full, and it never gave your soul rest, would it really be that good? That's Solomon's point. It's not that good without satisfaction, without this internal experience.

Our Appetites Are Never Satisfied

So he illustrates the experience in verse seven. He says, "All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet the appetite is not satisfied." Solomon uses food, and especially in an agricultural society, right? A pre-Industrial Revolution world.

Perhaps you feel like you spend a lot of time making food, but let's get rid of microwaves, and let's get rid of ovens and stoves, and let's get rid of Aldi and Sam's and Food City, and let's talk about how long and how much effort it took just to make dinner. Way more than we think. All the labor went... And not only did you spend a lot of time, but for many, many people in the ancient world, you didn't have leftover disposable income. You worked so you could buy food for tomorrow, or for next week maybe. And if you had anything left over, it was so you could buy clothes For the majority of the world. Of course, there were always wealthy people who had more than that. But in general, you'd say you work and you work and you work just to pursue more things that you can consume.

And it says his appetite is not satisfied. So with our definition of satisfaction, that means you could work and work and work to try to get food, and perhaps you don't enjoy it. You say, "I ate, but I don't enjoy it at all." Or maybe you ate and you're still hungry. The appetite is never satisfied.

And this really adds another picture, which we know about food, and that is that even when you're satisfied, your satisfaction leaks. Even if you're satisfied, you don't stay that way Now we know that about food. I want you to keep food as your illustration, but in just a minute we'll talk about some other appetites. We know the more you eat doesn't guarantee that you stay satisfied that much longer.

And it might seem like a slight exaggeration to us to say all your labor is for your mouth. Really? But if you think about how much time we spend working just to try to satisfy whatever desires we have, just for a little bit more to consume. And do you ever get to the point that's absolutely enough. My soul is completely full and I don't need any more. That's not our experience here on this earth.

Notice when he illustrates this, because he says, "All the toil of man is for his mouth," he's not using a trivial desire. He's not saying man toils to have the vacation home, where you go like, "I can live without a vacation home. It's okay." He's not saying all the toil of your, your life, of your hands is for your retirement. Like well, I mean, I can live without some of those things. He's not using trivial desires. He says your food, it's for your mouth, something you need, something that's a biological appetite built into you. He says you work and you work, and all your work goes to fill your needs, and yet your desire isn't satisfied. The appetite, the craving isn't fi- filled.

So what kind of other appetites could we have? And we could think about, well, I might have a desire for money. We don't call it an appetite there, but it's the same principle. I might have an appetite, a desire to be remembered, for my life to count, for it to last. We know food and drink works like this, but so do things like houses and cars. If you buy a house, does it provide shelter for you forever with no maintenance? Homeowners say not a chance. If you buy a car, does it last forever and just keep running? Might get closer if it's a Toyota or something like that than some other things, but not forever.

We know these things, you have to maintain them. You don't remain satisfied, and even if it doesn't wear out. Some of you bought your first home and it felt like a mansion. And how long does it take before it's like, "If we just had this extra room. If we had one more bedroom, little office space." You see, this is how we work. We, we are so easily ... We have something good that we wanted and we're not satisfied.

You can work and work and work to fill those appetites, but all of our souls are like teenage boys. There's no bottom to the appetite. You keep wanting more and more and more.

How about appetites of safety? You say, "I h- I hunger, I crave to be safe, so I try to guard my physical health." Some of you can see that doesn't always work. We pursue money so we can be safe. We seek approval from all the people around us so we can be safe. We go, "Just a little more, just a little more, just a little more. Maybe I'll be satisfied. Maybe I can guarantee my safety. And all of our labor is for our appetite, and it's never satisfied.

Maybe your appetite of control. It works just like we talked about food. Some days, occasionally, but some days you feel really in control. How long does that last? Usually not very long. Some days you say, "I really feel like I've got my life figured out." Whatever stage you are, you're like, "I've, I've reached the place I wanted to be." Good. How long do you stay satisfied with that? You don't. You can work and work and work to be more and more in control of your life, and it might work for a little while, and you might feel full for a little while, and you might enjoy it for a little while. But that phrase for a little while does a lot of work.

How about our appetites of esteem? We hunger to think well of ourselves. I'm hungry to think, "Okay, today I did, I did a good job. This past week, this past year, I've done well." We hunger to think well of ourselves, so we work and work and work and work to achieve it. Do we ever get to the point where you say, "I just enjoy it and it's good. I'm full and I'm satisfied"? Solomon says, "You aren't built like that. These things cannot fill you."

What Advantage Does the Wise Have Over the Fool?

So then he asks the question in verse eight, if you work for your appetites, you have a, a craving, a desire, a hunger for food, for clothing, for shelter, for safety, for approval, for any of those things. If you work for your appetites and you find they're not filled in a lasting way that's satisfied, well, verse eight, "What advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living?"

He's like, "There's wealthy fools out there roaming through life, looking for self-reliant gain, trusting themselves to fill their appetites, and they're still hungry." Like, that happens. But Solomon also says, "What about the poor man who knows how to conduct himself before the living?"

He just knows how to conduct himself well through life. Like, what advantage is there? Is there an advantage? And the key contrast, by the way, here isn't wealth. He's not saying it's bad to be rich and it's good to be poor. What he's recognizing is when we are rich, we tend to think that I can fulfill my desires and be satisfied, and when we don't have a lot of resources, we tend to realize that's not gonna work.

So Solomon drives us to think If the Rolling Stones got it right when they said, "Can't Get No Satisfaction," if that's actually our experience, what's the point of living in any good way? Why be wise? What advantage is there?

And this matters because Solomon, throughout this book, he gives you all kinds of deep thoughts like oppression, injustice, like really deep, hard questions. Things like legacy, things like productivity. He's given you all kinds of big ideas, and his big conclusion on the negative side has been if you try to control your life to guarantee how all this stuff works out, you'll be frustrated. It's vanity. It's striving after wind. You're trying to grab something you can never control. Or we could say it like this text does, if you seek to fill your appetite with the next thing, you'll find that your appetite is a bottomless pit. It's frustrating.

Don't Pursue Control. Pursue Good.

So when we hear that message, maybe you get this bitter cynicism that comes in. If I can't control my life, why try to be wise at all? If I can't fill these desires, if I can't make sure, that's where control comes in, if I can't make sure my appetites are filled, do I just forget my responsibilities? Since money can't bring control, do I just not worry about money? If productivity gets frustrated because there's injustice in the world, do I just not try to be productive? We can be cynical, but that's not Solomon's answer. Here's Solomon's answer. To all the complex things that he gives, he gives very simple answers:

Don't pursue control by any of these means. Instead, pursue good.

Pursuing good is not the same thing as pursuing control. When I try to pursue control through my relationships, I usually end up poisoning them actually, because I'm manipulating people instead of loving them. When I try to say, "I can't control these things, but I want to pursue good. That's a very different experience.

You know the difference between somebody who's just trying to do good in, to you or to people around you versus somebody who's trying to control all of those things. Over and over, and we're gonna see this contrast come up throughout the book, Solomon's saying, "Don't pursue control. Instead, pursue good."

And he's given us some really simple ways to do that. Back in chapter two verse 24 through 26, he says, "Pursue good by enjoying God, and enjoying God's good gifts, and enjoying the fruitful work He gives you." That's really Solomon's answer. Like, for all the complex stuff that goes on in Ecclesiastes, he says, "Don't pursue control. Pursue good by enjoying God, His good gifts, and the work He puts in front of you."

I think this is a deep question we need to sit with as we go through Ecclesiastes. I'd encourage you to ask yourself this question. When you look at different areas of your life, am I pursuing control in these areas? Am I pursuing control with my relationships or my money or my productivity or whatever? Or am I pursuing good and trusting God?"

But not just the things he's already talked about, with my appetites, my, my soul desires, if you will When I want approval, am I pursuing something good or am I pursuing control? When I want safety, am I pursuing control or am I pursuing something good?

That raises a huge question, which I'm gonna say the question and not answer right now, unfortunately. You have to keep coming for Ecclesiastes to get there, 'cause Solomon doesn't get there yet. The question is, how do I tell the difference? How do I know the difference between pursuing money for control or pursuing good through money?

Those are questions we all have to wrestle with in our individual lives. And Solomon will get to something more like an answer, but he doesn't give it to you yet because the wrestling with it is part of that journey that you need

Wandering Appetites

So he gives us this statement in verse nine, which tells us about what is good. And by the way, if you read from here especially down through the next chapter, you're gonna see a ton of places where the word better shows up. And just like in English better is related to good, in Hebrew it's just a form of the word good.

Solomon's been saying, "If you chase all these things, you find vanity. You need to pursue what's good." Okay then, Solomon, tell me what's good. Sure, I'll tell you. Better is this than that. Better is this than that. Or, pardon the bad grammar, but so that we make sure we get there, gooder is this than that. He's saying, "Which one's more good?"

So he gives you this contrast. When you chase after control in your life, what you have is what he calls a wandering appetite. The word for appetite here is literally soul. A wandering soul. It's like your soul says, "Ooh, if I could just have this." And then when you get it, you look at it, "Well, maybe not. Maybe if I could just have this." And you get it, you look at it. We're like kids on Christmas, right? If I could just have this, I won't want any other presents ever. And that birthday that comes in February We all found another present we want. It's a wandering soul.

Now, it's right to describe it as appetite and to connect it with food because of verse seven, "All the toil of man is for his mouth, but his appetite," literally soul, "his appetite is not satisfied." So he's drawing your attention to a specific desire, this hunger for food, but it comes out of who we are, and he's drawing it out to say all of these desires. And Solomon describes a kind of internal experience that we all know. Your soul wanders from one thing to the next. And a wandering appetite is a problem because it doesn't allow for satisfaction.

You have a desire, but when there's an opportunity for it to be filled, you either don't enjoy it or it doesn't really make you full. So then your appetite goes somewhere else. We hear it in phrases like this: How much money is enough money? Just a little bit more We know that. We've heard that in money, but put some of these other appetites in there.

How much control is enough control? Just a little bit more. How much safety is enough safety in your life? Just a little bit more. How much love from the people around you is enough to be loved? A little bit more. How much productivity is enough to feel good about what you've done? A little bit more.

Every one of those just a little mores is just an expression of what Solomon calls a wandering appetite. It's an, a soul desire that isn't quite full. It doesn't quite enjoy and see this good, so it runs to the next thing, looking for something that these things can't ever happen. We, we aren't satisfied to just enjoy God's good gifts and be filled briefly. What we really want when our souls wander from one things to the next, when we say just a little bit more of this or just a little bit more of that, what we really want is to never hunger again. But that's not how earthly satisfaction works. It leaks.

There may be a time in your life when you rec- thought, "All the people around me, they really love me. They approve of me." And then you had your, you know, first birthday.

Looking At the Good that God Has Given Right Now

Our appetites, if we look to be permanently filled, we find they never ever, ever get satisfied by earthly things. Just a little bit more. They wander. They wander, but there's something better than that that he lists here. Your soul doesn't have to wander, and it doesn't have to feel hungry.

This is described better is the sight of the eyes, or literally better is what the eye sees. You could translate this, uh, better what the eye sees than what the soul desires.

If you want to pursue what's good, instead of saying, "My soul wants to never be hungry again. Can this do it? No. Can this do it? No. Can this do it? No." Instead of that, to say, "What's the good that God has given me right now that I can enjoy?" What's the good that I can see, maybe literally see, maybe figuratively see? What's the good that I can enjoy? If you want to pursue good instead of pursuing control, this is what is good. Don't ask good things on this earth to satisfy you in a lasting way.

We see this in, in marriages all the time. If a husband and wife look to each other for the ultimate satisfaction of their souls. It never works. And instead, eventually, that appetite, that desire for respect and for love, it wanders somewhere else. That might be what we think of in adultery or pornography. It might just be that instead of really pouring into this relationship with love, you get distracted by everything else and you coexist.

Why does that happen? Many times, maybe not every time, many times because they're looking to each other and saying, "Can you satisfy the deepest appetites I have in a way that I won't ever be hungry again?" And the answer is no, they can't. That's true in relationships. It's true in all of these appetites.

So Solomon, if we put it in that context, Solomon says, "Better what the eye sees." Better to love this marriage covenant that you're in, to love that person faithfully, to enjoy the good. Better to do that than for your appetite to wander everywhere else. Better to enjoy the good and be satisfied with what you have than to ask what you have to be more than that and for you to always be hungry. That's what Solomon is saying.

Or if we put it in food terms, when I finished hiking my hike and I was starving, and we get to the nearest restaurant, which was that burger joint, I could have sat down, I could have taken a bite, and I could have said, "No, I think I'd rather have steak." Now in a vacuum, would I prefer steak rather than a hamburger? Sure, probably. But I didn't even think about that that day because it was better to enjoy the thing that was right there. Better the sight of the eyes, better the hamburger than to think, "If I only had a steak right now, I'd be satisfied."

The Proper Place for Goals and Ambition

Now, perhaps you struggle with this message around contentment, essentially. Perhaps you struggle a little 'cause you say, "I really like setting goals. I really like having growth in my life, and I wanna pursue it, and contentment often seems to be the opposite of that." Are you saying, like, we never try for anything good? To use the food example, is it okay to sit and say, "I'd actually like to go eat steak"?

And I'd say scripture doesn't teach contentment as something that's opposed to goal setting or diligence, or even in the right definition, ambition. Contentment is opposed to the foolish conclusion that anything on this earth is gonna satisfy this desire.

It's not opposed to saying, "Hey, do you wanna eat a hamburger or steak?" And you go, "I'd like to eat steak. Let's go figure out how to make that happen." It is opposed to saying, "I've got this hamburger right here I could enjoy and I could be full, but if I only had a steak, I'd never be hungry again."

We know better with food. But we can sit here and think, "I've got these great relationships with people, my wife, my kids, my friends who love me." And are they perfect? No. And am I perfect? No. But I've got these wonderful, good relationships. And we just think, "If I could have people respect me like that, then I'd be satisfied.

There's nothing wrong with wanting the steak. There's nothing wrong with setting goals and pursuing it. There is something wrong with assuming that this earthly thing is going to satisfy your desires so that you're never hungry again. There is something wrong with assuming that your goal is going to give you control over satisfaction in your soul.

Where Do You Fail to Enjoy Something Good Because Your Appetite Wanders?

So let me ask it this way. Where in your life do you fail to enjoy something good because your appetite wanders? What good things in your life that you know objectively if you stopped and listed them out, you go, "That's a really good thing," and you fail to enjoy it because you think, "If I could just have that-"

Social media doesn't help us, by the way. Because we, they have a really great house or a really nice car. But every time one of our friends buys a new house or a new car, it's all over their profile. And you think, "Man, if I had that, I could really be satisfied." It's just a wandering appetite.

Whatever it is, whatever good that you don't enjoy, anything you say, "I know I should enjoy this and it should in some ways make my soul feel full. Not forever, but I should enjoy it." Whatever that is, this week make a list of some of those things. Ask God to show it to you, and then set it before Him in prayer and say, "God, what am I asking this to do that it wasn't designed to do?"

If you have a family, spouse, children, parents who love the Lord especially, and you say, "There's supposed to be good. There's a lot of good in this relationship." If you are chronically discontent with something about that relationship, sit with your heavenly Father and say, "God, what am I asking this to satisfy in me that it was never meant to satisfy?" Why is my appetite wandering? Why am I not enjoying and being full temporarily, just like food, with this good gift? Or we could ask it this way, where does your soul have a gnawing hunger that you want to be filled but it never is?

The Woman at the Well

Thankfully, we have more than Ecclesiastes, and maybe some of you have already thought about John chapter 4 when Jesus speaks to the woman at the well. She'd gone from husband to husband to husband to husband to husband, and the man she was with now is not her husband.

Why did that happen? I don't know exactly, but I think wandering appetite would fit. We can speculate a little. We can imagine maybe she goes, "I just want to be loved Husband number one didn't love me like I thought would fill my soul. Maybe husband two will. I didn't feel safe enough with him. Maybe husband three will. This guy isn't good enough either. Maybe husband number four will."

Her appetite wanders and she is hungry. She's not satisfied. And Jesus tells her, you know some of the story, but he tells her, "Everyone who drinks of this well water right here will be thirsty again." That's true for every one of our appetites. Every little bit of earthly control you get, you'll want more. You'll be thirsty again. Every bit of money you get, you'll want more. You'll be thirsty again. "But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again." Say, "Why, Jesus? Is it like a miracle? Like I, I come to you and then I never feel it again?"

No. "The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Jesus says, "I know your soul has appetites and thirsts." And if you come to me I'll quench your thirst. And we do that sometimes as believers. We're like, "I've done it before, and I got thirsty again."

He's still there offering the water. It's gonna be a spring so that you can go to Him always to say, "My soul isn't satisfied permanently in any of these things." But the answer isn't, "I guess I'm doomed to dissatisfaction." The answer is to go drink from the one who says you'll never be thirsty again.

Because when you're thirsty for people around you to approve of you, you keep going back to the grace of Jesus and say, "I didn't deserve any of it. And he loves me."

When you're hungry for safety, you go back to the grace of Jesus and say, "If God gave His Son for me, how will He not give us all things?" Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. You say, "My soul still longs for safety." Yes, and Jesus is the one you can go to and find. You can enjoy that safety and be filled by it continually.

So Solomon tells you, there's an experience we all have of a wandering appetite, and the more you try to control and fill your appetite with earthly things, the less it satisfies and the more you wander. But instead, pursue not control, but pursue good. See the good. Enjoy the good.

You say, "But it's not gonna last forever." Of course not. Neither does food. That's okay. God gives us so many good things to enjoy that don't fully satisfy us, but they give us a taste of an enjoyment, a satisfaction that drives us to the God who gave it, who will always satisfy. So take this to every appetite of your soul. We could name more, but we've named some.

In your appetite for money. Say, "God, I need money to live. I need you to provide my daily bread, but it's never gonna satisfy my soul. Only you can do that. It's never gonna give me real safety. Only you can do that."

Take it to your appetite for esteem. "I wanna feel good about myself and what I've done." and recognize that's never gonna fill your soul and satisfy you. But God has given you His esteem. He has loved you enough to give His Son for you.

Take it to your appetite for relationships. And enjoy the human relationships you have, not because they're gonna satisfy your soul completely, but because they're a good gift from God who ultimately satisfies all of those desires.

And your experience really can be that you pursue good by enjoying God and His good gifts and enjoying the work He puts in front of you, and your soul can be satisfied. Can be full. It can be enough.

Closing Prayer

I wanna invite you to take a moment and respond to God in prayer. If God has through His Spirit and His Word, if He's put His finger on something, a desire that you know won't ever satisfy, but you reach for it anyway, take that before His throne. Ask him to give you a hunger and thirst for himself and to fill it. I invite you to respond in prayer, and then I'll close.

Father, you know us. You know our desires, our appetites that pull us in all kinds of different directions. You know the ache that we feel when we long for something that doesn't satisfy. You know the trouble we get in our lives when we let our wandering appetites pull us from one thing to the next. We sang earlier, prone to wander. And we feel it Though we've tasted and we've seen that you are good and we have been satisfied, we are prone to leave the God that we love.

So Father, I pray that you would give, uh, give us grace that our deepest desire would be for you and that you would satisfy it. Here's our heart I pray that you would take and seal it.

Pray for grace to enjoy all of the good gifts that you've given us. I pray that you would work in each of our souls, that you would meet us exactly where we need to be met.

Some of us may feel strong and ready to take the next step in our spiritual life, ready to examine our desires and our satisfaction. Some of us may feel so weak and stuck that we feel like we can't move a step. I pray that you meet each one You teach us the trust of pursuing what is good and satisfy us with your loving kindness.

In Jesus' name. Amen.