Spiritual Anorexics – Part 2

“Oh taste and see that the Lord is good.” Psalm 34:8

I find it interesting that when the body becomes dehydrated that feeling is often masked as hunger. And when we fast, that hunger’s edge goes away after awhile. The physical illustrates the spiritual.

When we don’t feast on the word, the feeling of hunger for the word goes away. I’ve found it so hard to get back into the discipline of regular times in the word, when I’ve gotten away from it. My sluggish, undernourished self drags back to regular quiet times like I’m off to a banquet of gruel. When what really awaits me is a banquet that meets every nutritional need of my heart.

Hunger also could be masked as something else. When I’m hungry, I have a choice – I could eat the things that are good for me, or I could rely on a Snickers and a Coke. So rather than go to the word itself, I could head off to books written by others, or cd’s and podcasts that are unlimited. (Sometimes I think we live in a Christian convenience store with delicious, but empty calories abounding.) Don’t get me wrong…these are all extremely valuable tools and drinking in the vast resources around us is a gift from God. Possibly to store us up for the famine to come. (Amos 8 ) But compared to eating the word itself, the nutritional benefit is markedly less.

The writer of Hebrews compares all this to milk and solid food. Milk having passed through the digestive system of another, and is fit for babies.

Hebrew 5:12-13 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.

I don’t want to be a baby or a spiritual anorexic. I’m praying for divine hunger pains to drive me (and everyone I know) deeper and deeper into the Word of the LORD.

Jesus, give me a voracious appetite for your word.