When Good Things Aren’t Enough with Joanna Kimbrel
What are you looking to for satisfaction? We all experience longings—for comfort, approval, relationships, success, control, and more. But even good things were never meant to bear the weight of satisfying our souls.
Today we’re breaking from our series on Biblical theology for a conversation with Joanna Kimbrell about misplaced longings, what it looks like to cultivate our desires, and the true desire of every soul—Christ himself. This conversation is deeply theological and also incredibly practical, and we hope it stirs your longing for the day when every longing will be ultimately and forever satisfied.
Time Stamps from the Conversation
00:00 — What Does It Mean to Be Truly Satisfied?
07:49 — Where Are You Looking for Satisfaction?
15:43 — What Do Our Longings Reveal About What We Really Need?
25:36 — How Can We Grow in Our Desire for God?
37:48 — Finding Satisfaction in the Midst of Suffering
43:00 — When All Our Longings Will Finally Be Satisfied
NOTES & QUOTES
“When we think about satisfaction, we think about having the things we desire. But I would maybe turn that a little bit and say that satisfaction is having the desires that our hearts were created to have fulfilled. And so there isn't going to be…that true satisfaction unless we're actually trying to fill the right desires with the right thing.”
“We have a big desire for control. We want to control because we want things to be safe. We want to make sure things go the way we plan. We want things to go the way that is good and right and best in our understanding. So there's this desire to hold on tightly to people, to things. Or maybe it's money or a job. It plays out in different ways.”
“I think this is magnified in our AI age because there is such an emphasis on making things as easy and effortless as possible. And we've lost the value of the way we are formed by hard things, by discomfort, by effort. And so, more than ever, the value of comfort is raised up as this ideal that we have to strive towards.”
[What happens when we seek fulfillment in the wrong things?] “So much heartache, just so much heartache. One way that happens is that these things that we turn to—even when they are good things like a family or a job that feels really meaningful, you can fill in the blank—these things do not have the capacity to satisfy us. It's not possible. They're just not going to be enough.”
“On the one hand, we might experience heartbreak when they let us down. Or we might experience constant longing for more and feeling like we keep striving for the next thing and we get it and it's not enough. And that is discouraging. It leads you to this place of hopelessness because you think, ‘Well, can I ever be happy? Can I ever actually be satisfied?’ It also causes such a heavy anxiety for us when we are seeking satisfaction in these things because we want to hold onto them so tightly.”
“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” —Augustine
“Our satisfaction comes when we have the fulfillment of the desires that our hearts were intended to desire—that's knowing God, being in relationship with him, having access to him.”
“The gospel is not just that Jesus saves us from sin and judgment. It is that, but it is so much more than that, because he actually invites us to experience this lavish overflow of goodness and joy that comes from him.”
“Revelation 21 gives us an amazing picture of what it will look like when all of those desires of our hearts will be fully and completely satisfied in Jesus.”
“Often we don't crave the good things God has for us. We don't even crave God's Word that shows us the good things that he has for us. We have to recognize that there is only one who has the power to change hearts, and that is the Holy Spirit. We do not have the ability to willpower our way or convince ourselves into craving something we don't desire. We have to ask the Holy Spirit for help. We have to pray and ask God, ‘God transform my desires.’ And that is the most practical thing we can do.”
“If we believe God's Word is living and active, if we believe God speaks through it, we believe it's powerful, it's sharper than a double-edged sword, it's able to divide between soul and spirit, then as we continue faithfully to come to it, even when we don't feel like it, I believe God will do something and he will lead us to love it. That might be over the course of days, it might be over the course of years, but there is something about continuing.”
“There is a real joy in knowing that as we are experiencing really hard things, as you are walking through places where your own sin and rebellion have been the problem. Even those things God is using to form you into his image. So there's a rest there. There's a joy there. I think that gives us a little bit more freedom to accept God's forgiveness instead of holding shame for ourselves and punishing ourselves, because he is using it all.”
“The suffering and the sorrow and the pain and the shame and the confusion and the doubts and the questions and the tragedy, all these things, they are producing a joy and a weight of glory in eternity that we would not experience if we didn't have the suffering. And so no wonder Paul can say we rejoice in our suffering. It's not like ‘Grin and bear it, buck up, buttercup, slap a smile on your face.’ These moments of suffering are a result of the fall. They are part of the enemy, grieve them, lament them, but also rejoice because every bit of that is producing something good. It's not wasted, and you will be so much more satisfied in eternity because of the suffering you're experiencing now.”
“Satisfaction is when we have the thing that our hearts were made for fully satisfied. And that is to know God. Our hearts were made for him.”
“When Christ returns and everything that's broken is fixed, we will be with God. Any little bit of joy or happiness you have experienced in this lifetime is just a taste of what is coming.”
RESOURCES
You Are Satisfied: Devotions For Your Longing Heart by Joanna Kimbrel
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
Genesis 1-3, Isaiah 55, Psalm 37:4, Romans 5:8, Romans 8, 2 Corinthians 4, Revelation 21
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What are some things you tend to find your satisfaction in? Are there ways you notice your soul being “undernourished” by those things?
Which of the Scriptures that Joanna referenced resonated most with you? Consider memorizing it this week.
Have you experienced satisfaction in God even amidst a season of hardship and suffering?
How does dwelling on your future eternal reality help you to have satisfaction in God today?
What might you do or implement based on what you learned in this week’s episode?
RECENT CONVERSATIONS
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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