Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”
-John 4:31-34
I am so hungry today.
Our local church is fasting along with our larger spiritual family, Every Nation. Yesterday I scrolled through the Instagram posts tagged with #greatfaith2019 and was overwhelmed by the incredible encouragement I felt by seeing how many people are praying and seeking God together all over the world this week. We’re trusting God for food that can’t be held or tasted with our mouths. We are eating spiritual things, things that nourish something other than our bodies.
We’re hungry for God’s presence; hungry for greater faith; starving for God to strengthen us for the journey ahead this year.
But we’re also just straight up hungry for food.
Proverbs 27 promises us this: “One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.”
Hunger awakes a new kind of sensitivity in us.
In all honesty, I don’t enjoy fasting. I like eating. I like tasting my coffee with hot buttered toast in the morning. I like peeling an orange and enjoying the fragrance of it before I eat it. I like eating the food we all know about, the kind that tastes sweet and savory and delicious in my mouth. I was dreading this week a bit, but now that we’re here, I feel only gratitude.
My physical hunger is heightening my awareness to God’s faithfulness. After almost twenty-five years of trusting God, I can clearly see how our faith is simply a natural response to God’s great faithfulness to us. What a simple truth I’ve missed all these years. It’s so obvious to me today, but yesterday I was dull and stupid to this particular truth.
Our faith is only powerful because God is faithful. Faith looks like pulling a chair up to an empty table, in an empty kitchen, with empty cabinets, and watching the front door for a feast to be delivered, or for God to pick us up and carry us home with him for a forever dinner.
God has a banquet planned for us that outdoes any meal we could prepare for ourselves.
I lift my empty plate and wish you well today, in all the places you hunger for more of God. May you know Him as a redeemer who never fails you, as bread that satisfies every kind of hunger, and as water that quenches the deepest thirsts of your soul. I pray his great faithfulness overwhelms any doubt or fear that may linger in your heart, and that your faith would grow this year into a mighty fortress to guard you from every attack the world wages against you.
Here’s to living hungry.
