Are You Hungry?

I remember once hearing about a doctor who worked with patients suffering from severe malnutrition. The doctor would look for specific signs to determine how critical of a situation the patient was in. Often he would ask them a seemingly rude question: “Are you hungry?”

The doctor explained his reason for asking the question like this, “If the patient is hungry, I know they’re going to be okay. But it’s the ones who have lost their hunger pains altogether, even though they’re starving, who are in real danger.”

My question to you is this: Have you lost your hunger for God?

It’s one thing to feel distant from God or feel like you’re not as close to Him as you’d like to be. But the danger is when you’ve lost your hunger altogether. The ache in your soul for more of God retreating into the darkness of apathy.

Lack of hunger is the last stop on the road to spiritual death.

I’ve had several conversations recently where people have approached me with tears in their eyes saying, “I’ve lost my hunger for God.” Maybe you’re in the same boat. Maybe you used to burn for God in your teens. Maybe you used to be desperate to know Him more when you first came to Christ. And you wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint it until now, but even as you’re reading this you’re realizing that you’ve lost your hunger. Your fire has faded. And you’re wondering, “What do I do?”

I firstly want to encourage you that realizing you’ve lost your hunger isn’t a reason to beat yourself up. God is not a Father like that. Acknowledging you’ve lost your hunger and that you want it back is the best place—and the only place—to begin.

I secondly want to comfort you with the fact that I think one of God’s favorite prayers to answer is this, “Father, I’m not hungry, but I want to be.”

We can’t hunger for God without the Spirit of God. It’s the Holy Spirit in us that produces hunger for God. So cry out to Him saying, “Holy Spirit, put the same desperate love and desire for the Father and the Son in my heart that You have in Your heart. Father, stir a hunger for more of Jesus and Your Holy Spirit in my soul. Jesus, baptize me in the fire of your Spirit that burns away all lesser desires. Amen.”