How to Satisfy Your Longing

Sometimes longing for things in our life can hinder us from reaching the fullness of what God has for us. We stray away from our path when we desire things and ache for things. We start to show up different. We might even lose patience. But God will never leave you longing. Watch this sermon and let God redirect your longing.

It’s significant that David prayed, “God, make a show of how much You love me.” He was releasing his faith, saying, “God, I believe You can take me where I can’t go on my own.” I wonder what would happen if we would start praying, “God, make a show of how much You love me. Display Your awesome power through me. Let me not only see Your goodness, but use me to show other people how great You are.”

God’s original demand. How can I be fruitful and multiply? How can I fill the earth?
How can I subdue and have Dominion over everything connected to my name.
And then God, if it is within your will for my life, align me with someone who has the same mission as me.
Verse 31.
And it says, when the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb but Rachel was barren.
So Leah conceived in Bora’s son and she called his name Ruben for she said, the Lord has surely looked on my affliction.
Now, therefore, my husband will love me. My text continues.
It says, then she conceived again in Bora’s son and said, because the Lord has heard that I am unloved.
He has therefore given me this son also. And she called his name Simeon.
She conceived again and Bora’s son and said, now this time, my husband will become attached to me because I have born him three sons.
Therefore, his name was called Levi.
And the last scripture says in verse 35 and she conceived again and bore a son and said, now, I will praise the Lord.
Therefore, she called his name, Judah. Then she stopped bearing God.
We recognize that when you begin to set us up to produce, to walk in our purpose to be affirmed in why you created us, that there will be obstacles.
And God, I pray that this time together for the purpose of her conference will be an opportunity where those obstacles are made clear where it becomes increasingly evident, not just that something is standing in our way, but what it is how we can overcome it and why we must overcome it for the sake of what you wanna do on the earth God.
I thank you that you continue to shake heaven and earth on our behalf.
Let this message be further evidence that you are with us, that you are for us and that we have work to do in Jesus name.
I pray. Amen. Amen. If you are like me, you’re a church girl and you can’t just say amen one time like you gotta say it twice or it doesn’t count.
I was studying this text and once again, I have seen it over and over again and it really just stood out to me.
I have to tell you if anyone knows my story and if you don’t, I don’t wanna take up the whole time telling you my story.
But I’ve gone through all of these different ebbs and flows in my life and it wasn’t until I really got filled with the Holy Spirit and started leave living a spirit led life that I began to see incredible transformation take place in my life.
And as a result of that transformation, it really made everything that I faced before then begin to make sense.
When I was studying this message, I was reminded of this season of my life when I was facing something, but I didn’t realize I was facing it.
Let me maybe take you back in time when I was in college, I was waitressing at a place that was where people went to take their clothing off for money.
Ok. Bear with me. Stay with me. Stay connected.
Um, some people would call that place a strip club and it’s not because they sell New York strips.
Stay focused, stay with me. I’m still with you at the time I just dropped out of college and I was looking to make cash.
I needed to make money fast. I had a son, I needed resources.
I couldn’t wait the three weeks you put your two weeks in and then a week later you get your check.
I didn’t have time to wait for that process. I was dropping out of school.
I had my son, I knew I couldn’t go home and live with my parents after making some of the choices that I made.
And so I was working really hard waitressing and I was waitressing at this place because I wanted to make money quickly.
But the truth is that if you looked beyond the want, what you would have discovered was truly a longing, not just for financial stability, a longing for value, for worth, for acceptance and purpose.
You see the difference between wanting and longing is that wanting is something that is within your control and yet longing is something that is beyond you.
It feels like something that is so out of your control that it literally creates a melancholy desire.
That’s what that word longing means. I don’t just want to finally find peace. I’m longing for it.
I don’t just want my child to be redeemed. I’m longing for it.
I don’t just want to be married. I’m longing for it.
A longing is an ache that is out of your control and that is so undeniable that it becomes a part of the undercurrent of how you show up in your life.
Are there any women with us tonight? Who know what it means too long?
I mean, the kind of longing that you can’t even put into words longing for someone to understand exactly what it’s like to be.
You. Longing to feel someone, appreciate you and protect you and defend you.
A longing is something that is created as a result of our Brokenness or how someone broke us.
When we experience the Brokenness of life, it creates this longing on the inside of us.
And I always wondered when reading this text and hearing about Leah, I love to hear about uh David’s God.
I love to hear about Sarah’s God. I love to hear about Mary’s God.
I even love to hear about Eve’s God. Come on somebody.
But what do you do with the God who causes or allows rather someone like Leah to go through a circumstance where she was and loved.
These are the stories and narratives that we skip over because we can’t quite explain how we could be in a situation that God would allow that God would allow us to face, that would leave us feeling, leave us longing and loved unseen, underappreciated God.
How could you leave me longing?
I was studying this text in mine because I recognize that so many women feel like leah unseen, not valued in an environment that is supposed to accept them.
It would be one thing if you go to the grocery store and they don’t want you.
There, you get in your car, you go home because you have somewhere where you feel loved and valued.
But what do you do when the place that is supposed to accept you is the place where you feel the most rejected.
What do you do when the church is supposed to be the place where you feel the most safe?
And now you feel more spiritually abused than you ever have.
What do you do when the job where they created the role where you applied for the role?
And they said that you were perfect for the role.
It’s a place where you don’t know exactly where you fit.
What do you do when you can tell that your environment doesn’t want you there.
And yet God has called you somewhere positioned you somewhere placed you and birthed you into an environment that doesn’t quite get you.
And then we wanna be in purpose.
But the truth is that sometimes our purpose demands that we see beyond the lack of acceptance or comfort from those around us.
And instead learn to trust God that God if you put me in this position, even if no one else around me can affirm me, even if no one else can validate me because you have placed me here.
I have to be at, I have to be strong enough and brave enough to ask God if you allowed me to be in this space.
Then what is it exactly that this space is supposed to produce in me or what am I supposed to produce here?
That’s one of the most challenging things that any of us can ask because it requires that we override our human basic need to be understood, seen, valued and loved and instead come to a place of discipline and perspective that says, God, I don’t necessarily need for everyone to love me.
Although God knows I wanted and Leah cannot overcome this truth that she’s stuck in a circumstance where she doesn’t feel loved unloved.
It says, and when our text begins.
It says that the Lord Saul Leah was unloved.
If I could name this message, anything I would call it longing no more.
Because as I was reading these scriptures, I realized that God was trying to position Leah in such a way that she would get that longing off of her that he was trying to prove to her that that longing that is down in your spirit doesn’t have to stay there.
And I wanna to dissect for the short time that I have with you, how God allows our circumstance to become servants.
So that that longing is no longer in control of us.
You may not think that longing is in control of you.
But if that longing is in your heart, that longing changes the way you see everything that’s taken place in your world.
That means that no matter how blessed you are on one side because you have that longing, it’s still never enough.
That longing creates an emptiness down on the inside of you.
And you miss where God is moving and you miss how God is breathing on your life.
And you miss how God is shaping and shifting things so that you can still come out on the other side because until that longing is addressed, then that longing tells you you are inadequate.
That longing tells you that you’re working from a disadvantage.
That word longing, that desire is so powerful that in Genesis three, it’s the very first time that we even see that word that is translated, desired.
It actually means longing. It is the first time that we see it.
And yet we see it again, echo throughout scripture in Genesis three and 16.
It says that God told the woman that I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception and pain.
You shall bring forth Children, your desire. That word desire means longing.
Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.
This is so powerful to me because right here we see in scripture why it is that we have so many women, so many incredible successful, beautiful single women who no matter how much they accomplish or now or how whole they become still have this longing.
It was part of the curse where now they feel like I need the man to be a part of completing me.
When before this curse even occurred, the woman wasn’t longing for her husband.
All she knew was that she was blessed by herself.
God blessed them and he told them to be fruitful and to multiply.
She wasn’t in a position where she felt less than where she felt inadequate.
God’s original intention for women was not for women to feel like the only way that I can be a full woman is if someone comes into my life and completes me, no.
God said you were complete before that you were whole before that because sin has entered the world.
Now, this woman has a long that she was never meant to have. But I want you to know sister.
If you’re watching this, that your identity is greater than who you are or are not married to that, your identity begin in heaven where there are no relationships where there are no marriages, your identity started in a realm that is above you.
And our goal on earth is not to just figure out who will marry us and complete us. No sis.
Our goal on earth is to get back to God’s original demand. How can I be fruitful and multiply?
How can I fill the earth? How can I subdue and have Dominion over everything connected to my name.
And then God, if it is within your will for my life, align me with someone who has the same mission as me.
Because at the end of the day, if I align with someone who has the same mission as me, then we can take even more territory.
But God empowered you before then. But the longing, the longing, it blurs your eyes.
And that’s exactly where we find Leah in her.
In this text, Lea is living out another woman’s curse.
Eve’s curse is on her shoulders.
And what she wants more than anything is for that longing to be met, that longing to be satisfied.
And that’s my text says, it says when the Lord saw her, someone being unloved is not something that you just see, you could be dressed up, walking down the street and it’s not like there’s a big label over someone’s head that says she feels unloved, unloved is a desire that is buried deep in the soul.
That longing is deep in the soul.
Which means that when my text says that when the Lord saw that she was unloved, what my text is saying is that God looked at her soul, aren’t you so glad that we serve a God?
You wanna talk about God moving heaven and earth just for you, you serve a God who looks at your soul that even though you can still show up for everyone else and you can still put on the clothes and you can still fry the bacon and you can still take care of the Children and you can still lead the worship team and you can still go out for group ministry and go out with your girls that God is still looking at your soul.
God doesn’t care how you show up for other people.
God cares about how you’re showing up in your own soul.
And because God cares about how you’re showing up in your soul, he will not allow something in your soul to go unchecked.
I feel that for somebody, sometimes we’re frustrated because God won’t allow something in our soul to go unchecked.
But God says, what kind of God would I be if I walked around knowing that you were bleeding in this area and didn’t try to fix it.
So God wouldn’t let Leah escape what was in her soul and God’s not gonna let you escape what’s in your soul.
That means he’s gonna keep throwing therapy in your face. He’s gonna keep throwing message at message in your face.
He’s gonna keep having someone bring a tough conversation to you because God will not allow you to go ignoring what is in your soul.
He sees what’s in your soul. He sees what you don’t have the courage to cry.
God understands how you got there most importantly, because when God looks at our soul, I feel this so strongly for myself because there were so many moments that I was afraid to open up my soul because I was afraid that someone would make a judgment about how I was filling in my soul.
But when God looks at your soul, he doesn’t look at it with a judgment.
God looks at your soul with compassion. God says, I understand how that issue has been affecting you for generations.
God understands how you’re not having that sense of acceptance and that sense of identity has caused you to give yourself away to anyone who would just blink at you.
When God looks at your soul, he sees it with compassion.
He sees why you do the thing that you do, not just what you do.
God’s looking at your soul and what we see in this text is that God doesn’t just look at Leah’s soul, but he tries to give her soul a remedy and in the process of trying to give her soul a remedy, he allows her to produce Children.
Oh my gosh, I just got a download. He, he allows her to produce Children.
Because in that culture though, when you are able to bear Children, it makes you a more valuable woman.
And because Leah was looking to find her value, God gave her something that would make her valuable.
But the reality is that it wasn’t so that she could be valuable in the culture.
It’s that he was answering what her soul needed.
I wish I could break this download down to you the way that I just received it.
But what happened was that God was saying because she is unloved, I’m gonna allow her to produce Children, which will feel that need to be loved.
But because Leah could only see things through the eyes of her longing.
She took what God gave her and tried to use it to satisfy that longing and instead of using it to satisfy that longing, she recognized that she was just gonna have to keep producing over and over and over again because she was trying to build a life that would cure the longing.
Instead of seeing that God would overlook what man could not. You see, Leah felt unloved.
But God said she was lovable. Leah felt that she wasn’t worthy, but God felt that she was worthy.
But because she wasn’t getting what she wanted from the source that she wanted it from, she missed all of the ways that God had been affirming her.
And I want you to know purpose her that when we talk about God moving heaven and earth, just for you, that heaven and earth could be moving, but you could miss it because because you’re waiting for heaven and earth to move in one particular area.
But you serve a God that says if it never moves right there, can you see how I moved it around you?
If it never becomes what you hoped it would be.
Can you see how I still allowed it to be built up around you?
And God says, I’m gonna get love to her by any means necessary, but it is gonna be on her to come to a place where she recognizes.
I see you, God, I see you God answering my longing.
I see you God seeing where I am and where my Brokenness is God.
I see you trying to heal my soul. I see you trying to affirm me.
I see you trying to prove to me that I am smart.
I see you trying to show me that I do have strength.
I see you trying to help me get it daily bread.
God, you keep giving me so that I can show up in this life and show up in this situation.
And so God, my question for you is, is it possible that I’ve been so busy focusing on what I didn’t have?
That I didn’t see how you were building me up all along the way.
My prayer for you is that you would come to a place where you were no longer blinded by your longing.
That longing changes the way you speak. It changes the way you pray.
You begin shrinking your prayers because your longing has to be met.
So instead of asking God, can you do exceedingly and abundantly, you only ask God to do just enough God, I just want that marriage.
God, I just want that job.
God, I just want that car and God is saying, but do you understand that I could give you the nations?
Do you understand that I could break a generational curse after you?
Do you understand that you may be praying prayers that are based on your longing instead of your faith?
And God wants to move you from a space of desolate.
He wants to move you from a space of feeling barren and empty and into a space where producing is all that you do.
And I know this because as I was reading this text, I saw that Leah every time she got something, she then turned around and said, now my husband will love me.
But something powerful happened in verse 35 when she conceived in verse 35 she went from trying to produce so that her husband could love her to saying something so powerful.
She says, now, now I will praise the Lord all of a sudden she went from producing so that someone else could applaud producing so that someone else could find value in who she was.
And instead said, I’m gonna turn my face towards the Lord.
Because if I turn my face towards the Lord, maybe this longing won’t hurt anymore.
If I turn my face to what God is doing, maybe this longing won’t hurt anymore.
And then my scripture tells me that she stopped bearing after that. Why did Leah stop bearing?
It was almost as if God said, that’s it right there.
I wanna hold you in that spirit, I wanna hold you in that mindset.
And there is somebody who think they registered for a conference.
But I’m telling you that God has registered you to come to a place where you would stop bearing for other people.
And instead turn your bearing into focus on God that you would turn your life in such a way that you would begin to say, you know what God my circumstance hasn’t changed, but I have changed in the middle of my circumstance.
I see that heaven and earth has been shaking on my behalf and I missed it all along the way.
Somebody needs to get in the shaking, what we see happening right here is that Leah stopped bearing, but her spirit started shaking and that longing started breaking off of her and all of a sudden it didn’t matter what was happening.
And I feel like God wants to do the very same thing in your life that he wants you to stop producing for just a moment and turn your focus to what God has been doing so that you can feel the ground when it shakes.
I live in Los Angeles, California. And there are some moments where it feels like the ground is shaking.
But in order to see if the ground is shaking, you gotta be still, you gotta stop producing because you can’t tell if it’s a tremor or if you’re just tripping.
And I hear God saying that what you’re sensing right now is the beginning of a tremor.
What Leah was sensing when she stopped bearing was the beginning of a tremor because we know that Judah would go on to produce David and David would be a part of the line of the Messiah.
She produced something that had divinity connected to it and nobody changed the way they felt about her.
But she started focusing on how God saw her.
And when she focused on how God saw her, it became increasingly evident that God doesn’t care who didn’t do it.
It won’t keep him from showing up.
God doesn’t care who didn’t show up, it won’t keep him from still stepping into the room and creating an earthquake in your life.
Sister, I want you to know that the ground is shaking. Sister.
I want you to know that heaven and earth is moving on your behalf and it is not just moving to break everything up, it is moving so that everything can be in position.
And I feel like now more than ever that in 2021 that we have a mandate from heaven to get serious, we have a mandate from heaven to recognize what it is we are producing and to stop abusing the grace that God has given us for someone else’s gain.
I’m gonna say that again for the people in the back, there comes a point in our life where we have to decide I’m not going to abuse the grace that God has given me for someone else’s gain.
Yes, I’m here. Yes, I’m supportive. Yes, I’m a prayer warrior.
But at the end of the day, I am also aligned with what God is doing in the earth.
And because I am aligned with what God is doing in the earth, I can’t allow this grace to be abused by my own longing because people don’t abuse us unless their abuse satisfies a longing, our own insecurities create longings that sign the permission slip, that allows someone else to abuse us.
If we don’t come to a place where we long no more, then everything we produce will be tainted by what we wanted someone else to do in our life.
And I was reading this scripture and I was stunning about what it is that God gave Leah.
I saw that in order for God to satisfy that longing in her, that what He does more than anything is that He gives Leah something to nurture.
Yes, he allows her to bear Children.
But everyone knows that bearing Children is quite literally the easiest part of the whole thing.
It is the nurturing that small thing that turns into a medium thing that turns into a great big thing that requires all of you.
This isn’t just about nurturing Children right now.
What God has given you to satisfy the longing on the inside of you.
It has to be nurtured.
Mhm What God gives you doesn’t come in the shape or the size of the hole that the longing created.
But if nurtured properly, it will take up the space where there was longing.
So Leah’s got to nurture what God gave her.
And that’s what you’ve gotta do too.
That’s what I’ve gotta do too whenever I’m not nurturing what God gave me.
I have a lot of time to think about what God didn’t do.
But when I nurture what God gave me, I live with such worship and so gratitude that what he didn’t do all makes sense in context to what he has done.
And some of us don’t experience the goodness of God or the glory of God because we don’t nurture the goodness that is already in our life, which is why gratitude is so important and taking time to worship and have prayer is so important because it nurtures what God gave us.
It nurtures what God is doing in our life.
And so the only way we can nurture is in prayer because my hands are tied and I don’t know what to do.
But I know that if I keep praying over this business, if I keep praying over this ministry, if I keep praying over this book, that my righteous prayers are gonna avail much.
I’m nurturing something. I’m sorry, I gotta get up earlier than I usually get up because I’m trying to nurture something.
I’m trying to nurture this into what God has called it to be. I’m trying to nurture it into multiplication.
I’m trying to nurture it into something that looks like Jesus.
What Leah nurtures becomes something that she nurtures that just looks more and more like Jesus.