Spirtitual Hunger
Spiritual Hunger
My life changed two years ago. Up until that point, I believed in a balanced life. I have written a lot about this time before, and I won't go back over it now, but it was one discovery during this time of my life that changed everything. Up until the day I discovered this one principle, my hunger for God was very weak. I loved God, but a hunger for more of His presence wasn't something I regularly experienced. If my natural hunger for food disappeared for very long, I would find myself in the hospital. My spiritual hunger was nearly absent. Spiritually, I was in the ICU, but I never realized it! One day two years ago, God showed me something that opened my eyes and showed me that I was spiritually very sick.
The principle I discovered is so simple anyone can do it, and so simple very few do. I had grown up in the Church from the time I was a little boy, and I had never heard it mentioned once. It is this: God gives food to the hungry and thirsty, and my hunger is up to me.
The Sermon on the Mount is an entire teaching on this simple truth. Matthew 5,6 and 7 describe in great detail how to live with a vibrant and hungry spirit, one that reaches for more fascination with the Author, Creator, and Sustainer of every thing, who has invited you and I to come as close as we want. It is actually very simple: recognizing the gap between what God says is available and what I actually experience (spiritual poverty), mourning (not being satisfied with) that lack, and asking for that gap to be closed (meekness...not trying to close the gap in my own strength, but knowing God wants to help me close it):
Matthew 5:3-5 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.
When I consistently reach for God according to this principle, it produces a vibrant hunger for God and His kingdom (righteousness/justice) in my heart:
Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.
This process of reaching with my words to God by simply requesting more of Him, letting the hunger build, and then waiting on the supernatural filling with more of an experience of God is designed to satisfy what every heart is built for: supernatural encounter and excitement in the experience of God's love, power, and glory.
Mankind was not meant to live spiritually bored with a dull spirit, distracted by the temporary and passing things. An eternal heart will never be satisfied by anything less than the eternal God. Mankind was meant to live with a daily supernatural experience of God. Our heart was formed with the intention of daily encounter with the Genesis 1 creator God, who speaks light into existence and measures oceans in His hands:
Genesis 3:8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Although God called spending time with Adam and Eve in the garden "very good," the man and woman were deceived into rebelling against God...choosing their own possession of wisdom and knowledge...a lesser fascination... over time with the Author of wisdom of that very knowledge.
But God knew man was made for more! I was made for love! Because of love, God gave Adam and Eve the choice to rebel against perfect vibrant fellowship with God, but because of love, God also made a way to restore perfect fellowship. God with man was always His desire, He called it very good. Jesus...Immanuel...came to restore God with man:
Matthew 1:23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”
Because of sin, corruption entered mankind's very frame. Man's body, designed to encounter God, was no longer capable of encountering God's bright holiness:
I Timothy 6:15-16 which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.
Right now, Jesus, who is God, is also the only man in heaven with a body capable of standing before the Father's bright holiness. Soon, Jesus, the firstborn of many, will give each of us who are His a body like His:
Philippians 3:20-21 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.
God desires to be with us. Until the day of our resurrection, we can spend time with God in our hearts and spirits. But, because of love, God will not force us to desire Him. He has reached for us in the most dramatic way, even sending His own Son to pay our ransom, but He desires a relationship. If we want to live in agreement with God's desire for relationship a reach back is required. I could decide you were going to be my best friend, but if you didn't choose me too, it would never work. The enemy of our souls is desperate to distract us from reaching back. Satan desperately attempts to dull our hunger for the invisible God by presenting alternatives to our eyes. But, we can break the cycle with God's help. It takes God to love God. Asking God for more of Himself breaks the dull spell of the world, and replaces it with a vibrant spirit, hungry for what really satisfies!
Psalms 42:1-11 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul 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 continually say to me, “Where is your God?” When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, With the voice of joy and praise, With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance. O my God, my soul is cast down within me; Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, And from the heights of Hermon, From the Hill Mizar. Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me. The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, And in the night His song shall be with me— A prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a breaking of my bones, My enemies reproach me, While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.
My life changed two years ago. Up until that point, I believed in a balanced life. I have written a lot about this time before, and I won't go back over it now, but it was one discovery during this time of my life that changed everything. Up until the day I discovered this one principle, my hunger for God was very weak. I loved God, but a hunger for more of His presence wasn't something I regularly experienced. If my natural hunger for food disappeared for very long, I would find myself in the hospital. My spiritual hunger was nearly absent. Spiritually, I was in the ICU, but I never realized it! One day two years ago, God showed me something that opened my eyes and showed me that I was spiritually very sick.
The principle I discovered is so simple anyone can do it, and so simple very few do. I had grown up in the Church from the time I was a little boy, and I had never heard it mentioned once. It is this: God gives food to the hungry and thirsty, and my hunger is up to me.
The Sermon on the Mount is an entire teaching on this simple truth. Matthew 5,6 and 7 describe in great detail how to live with a vibrant and hungry spirit, one that reaches for more fascination with the Author, Creator, and Sustainer of every thing, who has invited you and I to come as close as we want. It is actually very simple: recognizing the gap between what God says is available and what I actually experience (spiritual poverty), mourning (not being satisfied with) that lack, and asking for that gap to be closed (meekness...not trying to close the gap in my own strength, but knowing God wants to help me close it):
Matthew 5:3-5 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.
When I consistently reach for God according to this principle, it produces a vibrant hunger for God and His kingdom (righteousness/justice) in my heart:
Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.
This process of reaching with my words to God by simply requesting more of Him, letting the hunger build, and then waiting on the supernatural filling with more of an experience of God is designed to satisfy what every heart is built for: supernatural encounter and excitement in the experience of God's love, power, and glory.
Mankind was not meant to live spiritually bored with a dull spirit, distracted by the temporary and passing things. An eternal heart will never be satisfied by anything less than the eternal God. Mankind was meant to live with a daily supernatural experience of God. Our heart was formed with the intention of daily encounter with the Genesis 1 creator God, who speaks light into existence and measures oceans in His hands:
Genesis 3:8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Although God called spending time with Adam and Eve in the garden "very good," the man and woman were deceived into rebelling against God...choosing their own possession of wisdom and knowledge...a lesser fascination... over time with the Author of wisdom of that very knowledge.
But God knew man was made for more! I was made for love! Because of love, God gave Adam and Eve the choice to rebel against perfect vibrant fellowship with God, but because of love, God also made a way to restore perfect fellowship. God with man was always His desire, He called it very good. Jesus...Immanuel...came to restore God with man:
Matthew 1:23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”
Because of sin, corruption entered mankind's very frame. Man's body, designed to encounter God, was no longer capable of encountering God's bright holiness:
I Timothy 6:15-16 which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.
Right now, Jesus, who is God, is also the only man in heaven with a body capable of standing before the Father's bright holiness. Soon, Jesus, the firstborn of many, will give each of us who are His a body like His:
Philippians 3:20-21 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.
God desires to be with us. Until the day of our resurrection, we can spend time with God in our hearts and spirits. But, because of love, God will not force us to desire Him. He has reached for us in the most dramatic way, even sending His own Son to pay our ransom, but He desires a relationship. If we want to live in agreement with God's desire for relationship a reach back is required. I could decide you were going to be my best friend, but if you didn't choose me too, it would never work. The enemy of our souls is desperate to distract us from reaching back. Satan desperately attempts to dull our hunger for the invisible God by presenting alternatives to our eyes. But, we can break the cycle with God's help. It takes God to love God. Asking God for more of Himself breaks the dull spell of the world, and replaces it with a vibrant spirit, hungry for what really satisfies!
Psalms 42:1-11 As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul 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 continually say to me, “Where is your God?” When I remember these things, I pour out my soul within me. For I used to go with the multitude; I went with them to the house of God, With the voice of joy and praise, With a multitude that kept a pilgrim feast. Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him For the help of His countenance. O my God, my soul is cast down within me; Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan, And from the heights of Hermon, From the Hill Mizar. Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; All Your waves and billows have gone over me. The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, And in the night His song shall be with me— A prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a breaking of my bones, My enemies reproach me, While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.
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