Recently I have been on a diet and have lost 26 plus pounds! Hooray! It was necessary to address my weight and what a wonderful difference it has made in how I feel. As I was walking the dogs the other day (it is a great time simply to think or pray) I began to realize that I was hungry, but I knew I couldn't and would not eat anything until supper time. It was at that time I understood that I was managing my hunger and it was no longer controling my life. What a feeling of impowerment.
It is amazing how much we eat because of a desire to simply be satisfied. We don't want to feel hunger at all and what it leads to is being overweight, sluggish, lazy, sleepy and the list could go on. My thoughts then went to how there are also spiritual implications and lessons to be learned here. Hunger is for a purpose. It is God-given so that we don't starve ourselves and yet eatting too much will cause us to mask the hunger pangs and move into complacency. Complacency is where the majority of us live, both in the natural world and in our spiritual relationship with God. We constantly have so much being pushed at us that we don't know when to push away. We end up thinking in our minds we need all this food, this goes for our spiritual lives also. We don't allow our bodies to properly digest the food we have already eaten. We begin to choose food based on how it satisfies us and not on the health benefits and how it fills us. The bottom line is that we end up eating way to much junk and drinking way to little water (the Holy Spirit)!
Spiritually it is no different we have been convinced that more is better so we are constantly trying to feed on books, programs, conferences and other people, rather than resting in our relationship with the Lord and cultivating the Holy Spirit in us. The spiritual food that comes directly from God is far more nutritious than most of what comes via many of these other sources. Obviously a healthy diet is a balanced diet. That means you need to have a balance of food from several food groups and you may need to cut out some foods altogether. I think you get my drift.
Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." Notice that He doesn't say, "They shall be satisfied." The word "filled" in the Greek actually means to have an abundance of food. Nothing fills like the righteousness of God. Some how I believe that God wants us to manage our hunger, rather than continually gorge ourselves and get fat on foods that are not good for us and do not satisfy the real needs of our soul. Hunger is not a bad thing. It tells me I need more of Him!
Dont' let anything mask your hunger for more of God. Lean and mean is much better than fat and lazy. Your destiny could depend on it! What a difference it will make in your life!
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