Are You Hungry For God?

Let me ask you an honest question, and then you answer it honestly: Are you hungry for God? Webster defines hungry this way, "Feeling or displaying the need for food. Having a strong desire or craving." With that in mind, how do we meet than need naturally? If I'm craving something to eat, I know what to do. I walk to the kitchen or the pantry and I get something to satisfy my craving and if I'm craving something special, I will go through the effort to pack my wife and my children, and I plan a night out so that we can satisfy that craving. We personally like Italian or Chinese so we travel a distance to meet that need. Afterward, we know because of that effort, we satisfied our hunger and our craving. That's what it means to be hungry naturally. We feel the craving, and we satisfy it.

Often we go through the trouble of planning and then traveling to meet a special craving. Well let me ask you again: Are we hungry? Am I hungry for God? Did you answer that? Not in words but have you answered it the same way you would your natural hunger. Jesus said in Matthew 5:6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." Think about that for a moment, Jesus is saying, "There is a hunger and thirst that comes to us when we serve him" What does that mean?

In Bible school, we had a teacher that taught on this verse and made it very intimate with these words. He said, "It is Christ in you craving for more of himself to dwell in you. So it is a guarantee that if we meet that need with discipline we will be met" What a thought?

If I spend time with him, he will fill me with righteousness. If I meet this spiritual hunger the way I can meet my natural hunger if I make a habit of going to the kitchen or pantry of my spiritual life. It will be met because he promises he will give us what we need. Doesn't he say we are to pray for our daily bread? Not just crumbs but the whole loaf of bread. If I spend time with him in prayer out of holy reverence, he will guide me in prayer and give me a word that will sustain me for the day or guide me on my way.

Job said, "I desire your word more than my necessary food" And how about this? WIll I travel weekly to be fed by God in my local church so that he can satisfy my hunger there? I believe we are living in a time, where God is moving people towards his heart, causing a remnant to take route downward and bear fruit upward Isaiah 37:31.

The last sentence in that verse by Isaiah is, "The zeal of the Lord will perform this" Zeal means: an intense desire in accomplishing an objective. God's intense desire is to move his people in these days ahead, towards righteousness to towards holiness, to be a witness in our society. If that's true if God feels this with such intensity, shouldn't we? If he feels this way towards us, and we know that he wants to accomplish it, we shall be filled. Then shouldn't we be encouraged to obey him in his call to us towards hunger and thirst?

So ask again are we hungry for God?


"Oh God I have tasted thy goodness and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. Oh God, The triune God, I want to want thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me thy glory, I pray thee, that so I may know thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up my love my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus Name, Amen"


-AW Tozer