Hungry Yet?featured

For a good chunk of my Christian life I had trouble with relating to the sentiments below:

• “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matthew 5:6
• “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” Psalm 42:1

That kind of kind of hunger and thirst for God was for the super-religious – preachers, missionaries, etc. – not for us ordinary Christians.  I knew I was supposed to spend time with God in prayer and Bible study, so I worked at it – sometimes.  I tried to have the discipline to do it but if I missed a few days or weeks, I didn’t really miss it all that much.

I heard a snippet of a sermon by Dr. Tony Evans on the radio a few days ago.  He said that many people think they get adequate spiritual nourishment from listening to a sermon once a week.  A sermon, he said, is just an appetizer – it’s not a meal.  The appetizer is just supposed to whet your appetite for the meal.  Your spiritual meal involves daily encounters with God through prayer and Bible study.  His point was that if all the spiritual nourishment you are getting is a sermon once a week, you are on a starvation diet!

I certainly have had times in my life when I was just eating appetizers and starving myself.

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:51).  He is our nourishment, a feast given from the Father above.  Why in the world did I spend so long not hungry for Him and the nourishment He offers to each of us? 

I think the world offers us all kinds of junk food that we think will fill us and nourish us.  Many of these things are not inherently bad, but they have limits on how much nourishment they provide to our souls – family, career, financial security, hobbies, travel, etc.   We fill up on these things and we feel full for a while.  It’s like eating a bag of potato chips – tastes really good, fills you up for an hour or so but nutritionally – pretty much a zero.

I’m not sure exactly when I started to feel hunger for more than my sermon appetizer once a week.  God, in His mercy, took my sporadic “eating” habits and began to change my heart.  He began to put a desire in me to spend time with Him, not because I was supposed to but because He loves me so much and wants to spend time with me.  It really is like being served a delicious, nutritious banquet every time we just focus on Him and His word.  Psalm 107:8-9 says, “Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.”  

Now I don’t have this perfected.  Sometimes, I want to eat in a hurry when He wants me to linger.  Sometimes, I still skip a meal or two.  But finally, I actually do feel hunger for Him when I skip that meal.  It sounds kind of weird, but I hope you are hungry too!

Note:  the painting above is titled “Bread of Life.”  If you squint your eyes and hold your head just right, you might catch a suggestion of a rustic loaf of bread around the cross!

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