Today too many Christians have lost their hunger for God.
Instead of coming into the Lord’s presence hungry for more of His fullness, our thoughts are held hostage to worldly pursuits and fleshly distractions. At best we are merely curious about spiritual realities, but not truly hungry.
Let me tell you a story that illustrates what I mean. We have a little dog named Sophie. Sophie loves people food. To her, eating people food is the culinary equivalent of entering the Kingdom of God. She loves our food. She even has a Bible verse that she claims in faith, “Even the dogs get the crumbs” (Matthew 15:27).
When my wife and I share a meal, Sophie will sit at our feet, squint her eyes, and stare at us (she thinks squinting makes her cuter). Any food that falls to the floor instantly vanishes into her mouth. No matter how much of her food she has already eaten, she is always hungry for ours.
Our home has a small, fenced-in yard outside our porch where Sophie plays. Although the fence surrounds the area, there are gaps where the pickets don’t quite reach to the ground. If Sophie wanted, she actually could squeeze under the fence and get out, but she normally has no reason to try.
Occasionally she will get curious and go as far as the gate, stand there a while and look out, but she doesn’t leave the yard.
One day, though, my wife decided to feed a few slices of stale bread to the birds that nest on the other side of the fence. When Sophie went out an hour later, she immediately noticed a human food smell in the air, which she tracked to the bread outside the gate. In less than a heartbeat she found a little gap under the picket fence, flattened herself to the ground, and then shimmied beneath the fence to the bread on the other side. It was gone in less than a minute.
My point is this: hunger will take you where mere curiosity would never go.
My friend, God is looking for hungry people. Blessed are those who hunger. He is seeking people who are truly seeking Him. Indeed, He has bread from Heaven for us, and it is eternally satisfying. We cannot afford to settle into the routine of a fenced-in reality, not when God has eternal food prepared for us. Let us, therefore, follow our hunger as we pursue the presence of God.
By Francis Frangipane
Used by Permission
FURTHER READING
• Hunger and Thirst – by Bill Bright
• Hunger and Thirst for God -by Charles Stanley
• Cry of the Hungry and Thirsty | A Perspective on Adversity – by Lynn Mosher