SPIRITUAL HUNGER
This article deals with what I believe to be one of the most essential ingredients necessary for revival: spiritual hunger. Enjoy!!!
Cultivating an appetite for God.
There was a season in my life when every time I lifted my hands to worship, I would get slain in the Spirit; it seemed like I had a direct line to heaven, my own spout, and I was just drinking whenever I wanted; it was awesome. I still have a strong response and a sensitivity to God’s presence. I have learned over the years that the Holy Spirit is like a magnet attracted to metal, but he is attracted to spiritual hunger and the kind of faith that says, “God hears and will satisfy my hunger.” Why did I have such a strong response to the Holy Spirit? I had cultivated within me an extreme hunger for God’s presence.
In our everyday lives, the foods we are raised on are the foods we have cultivated a hunger for. If I offered you some of the foods I used to eat growing up, you would probably say, “No way, I am not going to eat that,” for example, chitterlings. Chitterlings are pig intestines, and most people who were not raised on them would say ewe, that’s nasty. Still, if you ask anyone from the south and most of my siblings, they would immediately get excited and say,” Awesome, let’s eat,” because they have cultivated and developed an appetite for chitterlings.
What you eat frequently becomes the thing you desire, and just like people tend to prepare what they long for and what their family likes when preparing a meal, God causes us to feast on his presence when that’s the desire of our heart. Because I had cultivated such an extreme hunger for the presence of God, the Lord gave me the desire of my heart. David said this in Psalms 42:1-3
- As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.
- My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
- My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
In this verse of Scripture, the Psalmist compares our thirst for God to that of a deer panting after the water brooks. The word pant means to breathe heavily, it’s how a persons body responds after running for a prolonged time and distance. Why do we pant after running for a prolonged time and distance? We pant after running a prolonged time and for a great distance because our bodies become depleted during exercise need more oxygen, our cells become hungry for glucose and oxygen which produce energy which causes our body to be able to continue to function. So, why was the deer panting? Many have surmised that the deer was panting because he was being pursued by a predator and had been running all day, that constant running and fear would have elevated the deer’s heart rate and created an immediate need for more oxygen and energy producing glucose and it would have caused an extreme thirst.
In our Christian walk, we often find that there are situations in life that have the same effect on us spiritually. The struggles of life are like that of predators chasing deer; they tend to drain us of our spiritual vitality and cause us to need God’s presence in order to continue to function at a high level in dire and stressful conditions. In verse 2 of chapter 42, the Psalmist tells us how his soul responds and how he feels spiritually when he finds himself in those dire and desperate situations. He says,” My Soul Thirsts for God, for The Living God; ” You can feel the desperation in his voice, the cry of his heart.
My soul thirsts!!!! Often, when we find ourselves in adverse circumstances, we start to ask God, “How long, God, how long will I have to go through this”? The funny thing is, the psalmist was not asking that question; he asked, ” When shall I come and appear before my God?” You would think that he would be asking, “How long Lord”? I think he understood that just as the deer would always have predators chasing it, he would always have to deal with and face the adversities and challenges of life, and being free of adversity and the difficulties of life is not a realistic goal, and even if it were, it still would not meet the deep needs of his heart, so the cry of his heart was not for relief but for God. That one thing that would quench his thirst and satisfy his heart’s longing. Like some men burn in lust, this man’s heart was after God.
I think the early church understood this: how else could Peter and John, after having been beaten and thrown into a Roman prison could still lift their hands, worshiped God, and, after being released, walk away rejoicing? To the psalmist, there was only one thing that would feel the void and satisfy the longing of his heart, and that one thing was the presence of the living God. It is not a dead-dry religion, not a religious ritual, but a living God, a tangible, life-altering, life-transforming, bondage-breaking God. He understood that the Joy of the Lord was his strength. In the same chapter, verse 3 says,
- My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
What is the cry of your heart?
I can often tell when someone is going to be blessed, they have a deep hunger for God and faith for a miracle like the woman with the issue of blood who pushed threw a crowd of people on her hands and knee’s just to be able to touch Jesus. If you don’t know the story, there was a woman who had spent all of her money to get cured of a horrible tormenting disease, and the disease only got worse (Matt 9:20-22); she understood that there was no one and nothing that could meet the need, that could heal her body or satisfy the hunger in her heart but God. She expected God to touch her; she was hungry and full of faith, and the anointing of the Holy Spirit responded by healing her body. Her hunger and faith pulled the power right out of Jesus. He told her, “Woman, your faith has made you whole,” That day, the whole crowd was touching Jesus, and the bible does not say anything happened, but when this particular woman touched him, he turned around and said who touched me? She touched Jesus with faith and desperation, spiritual hunger.
I expect God to move through me when I minister, and I expect God to meet with me when I worship; I expect to enter into his Holy of Holies; I expect to rest in his presence where burdens are no more, where there is peace, rest, revitalization and transformation, I expect it, I expect, I expect, I expect to be brought into his glorious presence because I am thirsty. I have faith that says,” My Heavenly Father is not going to leave me hungry.”. This kind of thirst is often compared to that of a man stranded in the desert, desperate for water; his mouth is dry, and he is crying like a baby crying for a bottle of milk. When my kids were babies, you could not ignore them when they were hungry; their cries would wake the dead.
We would instantly respond because we love our babies and we did not want them to be malnourished. God’s love goes way beyond that of a man. God does not want us to be spiritually malnourished, and he wants to feed our spiritual hunger. God hears the cries of his people, so I ask again, what is the cry of your heart? Does your heart long for God? Are you so in love with God that you long for his presence, like a man or woman longs to be with their loved ones when distance has separated them?
I am in the middle of moving, so I had to go in advance with the rest of the family to prepare for the move; my wife flew down to spend seven days with me and brought my 6-year-old with her. When my wife flew back to California, she told me that baby boy cried almost all the way back to California; when they got there, he was still crying. I had to call him and joke around with him on the phone for quite some time, and then he was fine. He gave the phone to his mom and went back to playing his video games. He wanted to be with his father more than anything else at that moment. I was feeling the same way, too; my heart was crying to be with that baby boy.
The teens are like,” I’m busy dad, I will call you later,” not so with the baby boy, when they are young there love is intense and they want to be with you all the time. Do you long to be with your heavenly father like that? With all your heart, spiritual hunger mixed with faith is the key to God’s presence. That’s when he turns around and says who touched me? I understand what the psalmist was saying in that third verse when he said, ” my tears have been my food all day long, when will I see my God”? I’m thirsty, Lord!!!
