“O God, thou are my God: early will I see thee:
my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh
longeth for thee in a dry and
thirsty land, where no water is”
(Psalm 63:1)
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Do you ever feel empty?
Do you ever have a gnawing hunger inside of you but it isn't for physical food?
Do you try and fill that hunger with the things of God or with the things of this world?
Do the things of this world bring you satisfaction that lasts or are they merely a temporary remedy that fades quickly. A fleeting panacea for the soul that somehow never gives us the relief we are looking for.
We can derive that temporal kind of satisfaction when we are trying to excel at our jobs or when we are working toward a goal that we have set for ourselves. We can even strive to become better wives, better mothers, better grandmothers and even better friends. We can even strive to become better Christians.
But all of that does us no good if we aren't experiencing a true hunger of the spirit. Because until we really recognize the deep, gnawing hunger of our souls as an emptiness that only Christ can fill, we will remain in a state of spiritual starvation. And no amount of personal gain can satiate our spirits in a permanent way. Not ever.
We need to reach the point in our lives that the only thing we truly hunger for is God. That our spirit cries out in sheer desperation for something that can only be delivered to us by our sweet Lord.
I want my appetite to be desirous of Him and Him only. Because the truth of the matter is, when we are desirous of Him and we allow Him to fill those empty places that beg to be occupied, all the other things in our life will begin to fall in place.
I want to feast on His Word and I desire to continually dine with my Savior. I want His Word to fulfill the yearning of my soul. I long for a never-ending buffet laid out by the One who can ease the hunger pains and satisfy even the hungriest soul.
I want an ever-increasing hunger for the Bread of Life. I desire to be head-over-heels in love with my Savior every day. All day. Forever and ever.
If we want to get to this place in our lives - a place where our true desire is an authentic, intimate, committed relationship with Jesus - we need to be desperate.
What is the definition of desperate?
1. Having lost hope
2. Moved by despair
3. Suffering extreme need or anxiety
4. Involving extreme danger or possible disaster
5. Involving extreme measures in an attempt to escape defeat
Have you been there? Are you there now? Are you perhaps teetering on the brink?
What are you desperate for? Better job? More money? More things? Bigger houses? Nicer car? New clothes? Better relationships?
All of those things will provide a very temporary fix for our longings. But absolutely none of them will even begin to reach that deep down, persistent, empty gnawing of the spirit that cries out for something that will fill it up permanently.
Only God can do that.
We can try and fill it up on our own but it will never be enough. We must be filled with the things of the Spirit. We must get our contentment and sense of well-being from Christ. He has to be enough in our lives or we will never find peace.
When we cry out in our wilderness wanderings, the God who sees will find us there. He will hear the intense longing in our voices and He will beckon to us to join Him at the waters edge.
The God who sees us will open our eyes so we can see Him and then He will quench the hunger and thirst that we have with a sweet and satisfying drink from Him. The Living Water.
Our desperation is satisfied only with God’s provision.
“And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger,
and fed thee with manna….. Man doth not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeded out of the
mouth of the LORD doth man live”
(Deuteronomy 8:3)
There is power in spiritual hunger. If we allow God to gently turn our gaze toward heaven, He will totally redefine our lives with amazing glimpses of His perfect and satisfying love that we will see and experience.
“And Jesus said unto them, I am the
bread of life: he that cometh to me shall
never hunger; and he that believeth
on me shall never thirst”
(John 6:35)
Are you hungry? Open the Word and feast to your hearts content. Let the precious words of God satisfy that longing in your soul and let it satisfy even the most ravenous appetite.
