Made to Crave Satisfying Your Deepest Desire with God, Not
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special feeling of buying a great new outfit at the store — and never
end up feeling special permanently.
You are craving something more. And as you read through this
book, you’ll learn what that craving is and how to truly fill your
heart so all those negative longings don’t have a hold on you
anymore. The good things will still be there; the bad ones simply
won’t be able to knock you off the path.
There is someone joining us in the pages of this book, and I’m so
glad to welcome her here. I knew I had to enlist a coauthor who had
written books for teenagers before, and my daughter Hope asked,
“What about Shaunti Feldhahn?” Hope and I met Shaunti on a very
fun cruise where we were both speaking, and what I loved about
Shaunti is that she’s not only a great Jesus girl, she’s an
accomplished social researcher who has spent many years
interviewing men, women, and teenagers to find out how we all
tick. You’ll meet her in the pages ahead.
So are you ready to go on this journey with us? Our goal is to be
careful but honest; understanding, but willing to ask you to accept
nothing less than God’s best for you.
Live Loved,
Lysa
PART ONE
Longing for More
chapter 1
She Saw No Need for God
Jenny had everything.
Gorgeous hair, flawless skin, and an infectious personality that
won her the acceptance of friends and the interest of guys.
Her parents bought her nice clothes, gave her a cute little car, and
didn’t spare any expense when she threw parties at her house.
And of course, she had a chest that stuck out, a stomach that
stayed flat, and long, lean legs.
I (Lysa) would be a fool to even think about liking the same boy
as Jenny.
I had frizzy hair, unpredictable skin, and an infected personality
where insecurities and a sense of not quite belonging ran deep.
I had to work to pay for my tank of a car and my off-brand
clothes. I didn’t do parties, at least not the kind where the cool
people came. Often, it was just me, my friend Stephanie, and a few
others, watching a video and pretending we didn’t care that we
weren’t at the party down the street.
And of course I had a chest that stayed flat, a stomach that stuck
out, and what I saw as stubby legs.
I seemed to fall short in every area while there was nothing Jenny
ever seemed to want.
Hold on to that fact — it’s important later.
Yes, I knew it wasn’t smart to go after the same things Jenny
wanted. I’d learned that lesson in a big way a few years before in
the seventh grade.
With the same frizzy brown hair and knock-off clothes, I walked
down the pea-green hallway of Raa Middle School. It was the day
after student council elections, the day after my classmates
confirmed what I’d so desperately feared: If you didn’t have beauty,
boobs, and a boyfriend, no one would vote for you. At least that’s
what it felt like at the time.
I shuffled toward my locker wishing I was invisible, keeping my
eyes down while I made my feet continue walking. Finally, my
locker was in sight. That glorious metal box was my one safe space
in this world of catty girls with cute outfits and spiral-permed hair.
The place where I could hide my face, let the tears slip, and pretend
to be busy shuffling books.
But instead of finding respite in that tiny metal space, I found one
of my election posters plastered to the front with the word loser
scrawled across the front. How do you quickly hide a poster-sized
proclamation by the world that you aren’t good enough, cool
enough, pretty enough, or accepted enough?
The sound of books dropping, girls laughing, tape ripping, and
poster board crunching filled my ears as the sign resisted my
attempts to ball it up small enough to fit into the mouth of the
hallway trash can.
“Please fit, please fit, please fit! Oh, God, please help this stupid
poster from this stupid election with my stupid face on it disappear
into this stupid trash can!”
The bell rang. As all the “normal” people scampered past me, I
heard Stephanie’s voice like a dagger’s death blow whisper, “Loser.”
I turned and saw my one confidant, my one friend, my one secret
holder being welcomed into Jenny’s popular girl’s circle. Stephanie’s
public rejection of me was her ticket in to the crowd we’d secretly
loathed together. Together.
I sank down beside the stupid trash can where the stupid poster
slowly untwisted on the ground in front of me. Loser.
I went home that afternoon and hid in my bedroom with an
arsenal of junk food. Comfort was just a few mouthfuls away. But
what comforted me in the moment compounded my feelings of
helplessness as soon as the wrappers around me were empty.
Have you ever been there? I don’t mean at the foot of a locker
with a loser poster untwisting before you. I mean have you ever felt
that everything would be better if only you had a life a little more
like Jenny’s? Have you ever wanted something so much you caught
yourself thinking about it 24/7?
A better body? More acceptance from friends or attention from a
boy? Money to buy things that get you noticed? Have you ever
thought that if you just had that, you’d be happy?
What if I told you it’s a lie? A lie hand-designed by Satan to pull
you away from God and trap you in a life you really don’t want. A
great body, friends inviting you everywhere, boys hanging on your
every word, and the ability to buy the cutest new outfits won’t
satisfy you. Sure, it may make you happy for a short while, but
these feelings won’t last.
In fact, after the initial rush of finding what you think you’re
looking for, you’ll likely end up more hungry, more desperate, and
more lonely than you ever expected.
I know because I have seen it time and time again. I watched how
differently my life and Jenny’s life played out. Time teaches
valuable lessons.
For a while I chased what Jenny had, and in college I got some of
it. I had the cool boyfriend, lots of friends, and — thanks to a
running class — a more toned body.
But I still wasn’t satisfied.
There was still this deep craving inside of me for something else.
Something lasting. Something beyond what the shifting
circumstances of the world had to offer.
Matthew 6:33 says, “But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” The
Greek word for seek in the original manuscript of the Bible is zeteo,
and one of the meanings of that word is to crave.
In other words, everyone has a desire for “all these things” —
love, acceptance, material things — but first and foremost we must
always crave God. If we always have everything we long for in this
world, we’ll be numbed to the deeper and much more eternal
longings of our heart. Only God can satisfy and fill those deep places
in a lasting way.
Only God can give us what can never be taken away. His
acceptance. His comfort. His provision.
Because Jenny always had what she wanted, because she was not
in a place of turning her longings toward God, she became numb to
the deepest cries of her soul and followed her cravings in sad
directions. She was always seeking, never truly finding.
Jenny dropped out of college when she got pregnant. She has
experienced great heartbreak; she’s endured the devastating end of
not one but two marriages, and is currently living with her third
boyfriend. She still parties on the weekends. Her once flawless skin
now tells a tale of a hard life. She’s in debt. She’s restless. And she
sees no need for God.
Do you remember earlier in this chapter where I told you to
remember something? I said, “I seemed to fall short in every area
while there was nothing Jenny ever seemed to want.” At the time, I
didn’t realize just how much Jenny’s great-looking surface hid a
deep longing just like mine.
I suspect you know what it feels like to feel like you don’t
measure up. I bet you have felt the cravings for acceptance, comfort,
and provision just like I did — just like Jenny secretly did.
If so, keep reading. What you’re about to uncover in this book will
change the way you look at your life, and protect you from
searching your whole life for something that can only be found in
God.
How, you ask?
That’s exactly what we’re about to uncover.
takeaway
Like every other girl, you have a craving for acceptance, comfort,
and provision — and it was put there by God, to be satisfied by Him
alone.
the action plan
At the end of each of the chapters ahead will be questions and
ideas that might help you to apply or think further about what
you have discovered in that chapter. If you’d like, you can use
this book, and especially this section, as a personal devotional,
reading pieces each day and reflecting on the appropriate
questions.
For this chapter, find three things to accompany you on your
journey:
Get a Bible. If you don’t have a Bible, and it isn’t possible to get
one, find a good site online that you can use to look up
Scripture passages. We like BibleGateway.com or
BlueLetterBible.com, which allow you to see different
translations of Scripture.
Get a friend. A journey is best walked with a friend, after all.
And you will find great encouragement, inspiration, and
comfort along the way if you use this book as a way of
helping one another and having accountability with each
other.
Get a journal. Many of the end-of-chapter sections will ask you
to write down your thoughts, draw a picture, or make a list
of things you are working on. Find a fun journal or just a
simple notebook you can use.
chapter 2
What’s Your That?
Shaunti and I want to ask you a question: What would it take to
make you completely satisfied today? Would it be to have “that”
boy ask you out? To be able to afford “that” wardrobe? To win
“that” award or get accepted into “that” university? To be “that”
size? To be “that” beautiful?
What is your “that”?
Often the script that plays in our head is, “If I had ______, I would
be so happy.”
Or what about its sister script? The one with the question marks
at the end of each sentence and a really slick temptation as “the
answer.” You know the one I’m talking about:
Am I special? (I sure feel like it when that cute guy in class pays
attention …)
Am I beautiful? (Maybe, if I could just fit into those jeans …)
Does anyone really like or notice me? (I guess so, when a lot of people
comment on my Facebook post …)
Now, what if I assured you that there is a way to know for sure
that you are special, beautiful, and noticed — because the One who
created you and knows you better than anyone else has told you
that you are? And what if I told you that the belief that anything
else will make you truly satisfied is a lie? We looked at this lie in
the last chapter. The problem is that it usually doesn’t start out
feeling like a lie; it might, in fact, give you that satisfied, happy
feeling for a while. But the happy feeling will be temporary because
the high of getting whatever it is you think you want will be
temporary.
In fact … this lie is hand-designed with your weakness in mind, to
draw you away from God.
Not that any of those things I mentioned are wrong in and of
themselves. But if the desire to have them pulls you away from God
rather than draws you closer to Him, they become a temptation. A
pull. A lure. A tactic handcrafted by Satan to get you to take a few
steps away from God. And then a few more.
The focus of this book centers around ways Satan tries to distract
us from God. He wants us to get legitimate needs met in an
illegitimate way.
Satan comes after us in these three areas:
Emotional Desires
Physical Desires
Material Desires
It’s the same three ways he came after Eve in the garden of Eden.
Eve, the first woman, was tempted by Satan in the garden of Eden
— a perfect place where Eve had everything she wanted. Well,
almost everything. God told Eve and her husband, Adam, to not eat
from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Though she had
everything a girl could want, she set her eyes on what she was told
she couldn’t have. Satan lured Eve into the first sin, tempting her
into taking the fruit from the forbidden tree and eating it.
I’ve learned a lot from this story about how Satan lures us.
It will taste good and feel good — physical desires
It will get you noticed — material desires
It will make you feel accepted and loved — emotional desires
Jesus was also tempted in these same three ways in a desert. But
unlike Eve, Jesus didn’t fall to Satan’s temptation. While Eve
focused on the forbidden object of desire, Jesus focused on the
truth. Satan tries to tempt Jesus with physical desires, offering Him
bread in the midst of a fast; Jesus resists by quoting a Bible verse.
Satan offers Jesus material possessions, promising Him whole
kingdoms; Jesus resists by quoting a Bible verse. Satan reminds
Jesus He could feel significant and powerful and popular by doing
something foolish like throwing Himself off a mountain and
watching angels rescue Him; again, Jesus quotes the truth in order
to resist the pull of popularity gotten by stupid choices.
Anytime we get good things in bad ways, they aren’t God’s best
for us. That’s true with all three of these desires — physical,
material, and emotional. They are the same three ways we’re told
not to get lured away from God in 1 John 2:15–17: “Do not love the
world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the
Father is not in him. For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful
man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does —
comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires
pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”
Here are those same verses from The Message paraphrase:
“Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the
world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes
on in the world — wanting your own way, wanting everything for
yourself, wanting to appear important — has nothing to do with the
Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting,
wanting, wanting is on the way out — but whoever does what God wants
is set for eternity.”
That wanting, wanting, wanting is the pull with which Satan is
tempting you. Temptation of any kind is Satan’s invitation to get our
needs met outside the will of God — in an almost limitless number
of ways. Seeking approval from others, soothing loneliness by
hooking up with that cute guy, giving in to unhealthy physical
desires like overeating or starving yourself, or even wanting a new
outfit, bag, or hairstyle to make you feel new and improved … As
we will cover in Part Two of this book, these are all examples of
ways the enemy loves to tempt us.
Satan’s very name means “one who casts something between two
to cause a separation.” He wants to separate us from God. One of
the subtle ways he does this is to plant the insidious thought in our
mind that God will not meet our needs — that God is not enough.
Satan wants us to feel alone, restless, and unsatisfied, so that we
turn to his offerings instead.
This wanting, wanting, wanting is what pulls at Halley, a “good
girl” committed to reading her Bible first thing in the morning, to
make an exception and check her Facebook notifications and text
messages instead. Longing for attention, it makes Halley’s day if
someone special leaves her a comment. If she feels ignored, her
whole day is ruined. Instead of feeling spiritually prepared to face
each morning, she’s emotionally vulnerable.
It’s what sends the budget-conscious Mia off on a spending spree
— just one more accessory to make her “new and improved,” like
the makeover reality shows tell her she needs to be to get noticed.
Mia feels the thrill of the sale in the moment. But as she’s hiding the
bags from her parents, shame creeps in.
It’s what sends McKenna, a senior who committed herself to
therapy and being healthy after a fight with bulimia, back to
binging and purging. She doesn’t know how else to handle her life:
the hurtful comments, a stressful schedule, or demands and
pressures that feel beyond her control. It seems the only thing she
can control is what she puts into her body — and the satisfaction of
that control is something she often craves more than anything. So
with great justification she indulges only to have a bloated stomach.
Then she purges only to have a deflated heart.
This subtle message sold to us by Satan can be exposed when we
break it down to understanding the difference between a need and a
want.
Your Idols
All of the examples above were wants, not needs. But, oh, how
Satan wants to make them one and the same.
When the difference between want and need starts getting skewed,
we start compromising. We start justifying. And it sets us up to start
getting our needs met outside the will of God. When we do that,
when we respond to these lies of Satan — or even just our own
desires! — we’re taking a craving or a “want” and turning it into an
idol.
When the Bible talks about idols it isn’t just talking about little
stone men that ancient cultures relied on as gods. An idol is anything
— including otherwise good things! — we are looking to or relying
on other than the one true God. An idol is a “God substitute,”
something you are looking to, to make you happy — like a gorgeous
body, an attentive boyfriend, finally having the latest and greatest
cell phone, the approval of a certain group of friends, or getting into
the “right” college. Those desires aren’t necessarily bad, but you
know you are making something an idol when you feel deprived,
depressed, or even panicked at the idea of not having it. Relying on
God will never make us feel this way, because only He can truly fill
that hole inside of us. Relying on anything else will eventually leave
us lacking, because everything else is merely temporary.
When Shaunti lived in New York City, she heard her pastor, Tim
Keller, give a great illustration of how we can know whether we are
making something an idol. He brought a heavy four-foot-tall pillar
on the stage, and as he spoke to the congregation he casually rested
his weight against the pillar, smiling, one leg crossed over the other,
as if he was chatting with friends and leaning on a high-topped table
in a coffee shop. After a few minutes, he asked the congregation to
imagine what would happen if the pillar was suddenly taken away.
It was clear that he would fall over.
He explained that an idol is anything we lean against like that;
anything we are relying on to support us. We know we are making
something an idol if we would topple over once it is gone. In a
recent article, here’s another way Tim Keller described it:
Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making
good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and
