A person who is full refuses honey, but even bitter food tastes sweet to the hungry. (Proverbs 27:7)I read a story of some starving children who were rescued. They were fed and taken care of, but they wouldn’t go to sleep that night. They kept coming back into the kitchen. As it turned out, they were afraid that they would wake up in the morning and find it all gone. So they were afraid to go to sleep.
The man who had rescued them gave them each a slice of bread and told them to go back to bed, to not eat the bread, to just hole it in their hands. If they got hungry come back in and they could have something to eat. But just hold the bread.
They slept through the night. They knew that if it all went away, at least they still had a slice of bread.
I have been on two long fasts in the past few years. One was thirty days and the other was twenty-one days. One thing I noticed during them was levels of hunger.
I would be hungry and Ella would ask what I wanted. What I wanted would be a pizza or a hamburger and fries. I didn’t want something to eat. I was craving something. That is different.
After a while, the craving went away and was replaced with real hunger. Real hunger is different from craving because real hunger just wants to eat. Real hunger looks at a slice of bread and wants it. Real hunger looks at food, not pizza. Real hunger just wants to be fed.
When you are full, things do not taste the same as they do when you are hungry. A full person might turn down something that is quite good. But even sub standard food tastes good to a hungry person.
One who does not feel the need for God and his grace turns down things that are beautiful. One who is starving for the grace of God and knows it, accepts it and is grateful for it.
Those who are full of themselves crave things in church. They crave a certain kind of music, or a certain translation of the Bible, or a certain way of dressing to come to church. They crave small things and think they are hungry. They will think they are hungering for the word when all they are doing is craving junk.
When you are hungry for God, you want him, not stuff. When you are hungry for him, it doesn’t matter what music is used in worship, it doesn’t matter what translation you use or how you dress. What matters is that you come into contact with God himself, that you find him.
Jesus said that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life (John 6:53-56). That means that the only thing that will satisfy you and your spiritual hunger will be him and who he is.
But the problem is, you have to be hungry in order to really appreciate him, to really know what it is that you need.
It is hard to be hungry when you eat junk all day. Sometimes you have to step back and realize the Bread of Life, to realize what it is that you really need.
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