Hunger. Day 28 of Lent. How to find satisfaction.
What are you hungry for?
The question pops up whenever we set out for dinner. Sometimes we have a clear preference. Sometimes we’re indifferent. Sometimes we are craving Chuy’s Chicka-Chicka Boom-Boom Enchiladas or Tim Love’s bulgogi beef at the Woodshed. Other times we are starving and the nearest fast food is all we can wait for. But never in my life have I ever gone hungry. So blessed to live in a country where the supermarkets are never out of food and easily accessible and the food court at the mall is like a mini-Epcot center of foreign choices. We are well fed.
But spiritually, what are you hungry for?
Is your heart in tune with David? “O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Psalms 63:1
Are you currently like a foreigner on a journey of faith that has lost his job or become disabled and provisions are shrinking. Maybe its chemotherapy that has your strength weakening and suddenly in this spiritual wilderness you find yourself really hungry. Famished for a word, any word at all from God, humbly realizing you were never really in control of your provisions when you were in your full strength. God is in control and now what you hunger for most is today’s promise that He will supply all that you need today. “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.” Deut 8:3
Maybe you’ve been eating at the world’s banquet table and shopping at the world’s fashionable idol factories only to realize gluttonous, you are empty. Closet bursting, you have nothing to wear. You’ve had the latest and greatest all of a week and you’re already bored. Prov 27:20 reminds us, “Death and Destruction are never satisfied, and neither are human eyes.” But Jesus promises, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Matthew 5:6
How can our spiritual hunger be satisfied?
“For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.” Then they said to Him, “Lord, always give us this bread.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” John 6:33-35
Come daily to the Lord Jesus Christ and through relationship with Him talk about the things of the world you hunger and thirst for and ask Him to replace the appetite for those temporary things with a deep desire for His eternal things.
All 4 gospels give the account of the small boy who provided his small lunch—which was everything he had at the time—that became the bountiful feast that fed over 5,000 hungry people who had gathered to hear the Lord Jesus teach. Perhaps the boy thought he’d give all that he had to simply feed Jesus that day but his love and his faith were miraculously multiplied and all were satisfied.
“You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied and praise the name of the LORD your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; Then My people will never be put to shame. “Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, And that I am the LORD your God, And there is no other; And My people will never be put to shame.” Joel 2:26-27
“Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” Psalm 126:2
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