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Topic: Hunger (11/08/04)
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TITLE: Allowed to hunger By Henry Swart 11/15/04 |
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Not all pain is bad.
This seams like a ridiculous statement to the self-centered, pleasure-seeking society that we live in. How can pain possibly be good or beneficial? Isn’t pain just a symptom of destruction? Indeed, it is, but not all destruction is bad, either. The destruction of evil is very good – and beneficial.
So then, not all pain is destructive – the pain we experience when the Lord disciplines and chastens us it constructive, since, according to Hebrews 12:11, it yields the ‘peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.’ No pain, no train.
Likewise, hunger can be constructive or destructive, often depending on how we respond to it. If we satisfy our hunger with the things of this world, it is destructive, but if we satisfy our hunger with the things of God, it is constructive. As Deuteronomy 8:3 says, God will often allow us to hunger so He can feed us with His bread from heaven. Often we are so satisfied with the things of this world that God is forced to take us through a desert, where there is no food, so we can start crying out for Him to fill us. I would venture to say that the children of Israel would never have entered the Promised Land if they had not first passed through the desert. It was their hunger in the desert that caused them to appreciate the land of milk and honey. Their hunger probably also inspired them to conquer their fear and face the giants and big cities in their Promised Land. Hunger can be a great motivator.
Each of us has a Promised Land, but lazy as our sinful nature has left us, we are often not motivated to possess that land. So God in His mercy is often compelled to employ a desert famine to motivate us, rather than see our inheritance go to waste. And this is where a hedonistic society, who has made pain-avoidance one of its chief virtues, misses God completely. How can a so-called loving Father use pain or hunger to discipline us? The answer: God would rather spank us for playing on the highways of life, than see us run over by a large truck. Any loving parent would do likewise.
The problem is that our spiritual hunger, though more important than our physical hunger, is less urgent. Many of us are spiritually malnourished and starving because we fail to realize that ‘man shall not live by bread alone.’ We often think that if our physical hunger is satisfied, we are taken care of, but are often blissfully unaware of a spiritual hunger that only God’s word can satisfy. Our spiritual hunger may be less pressing, but where physical food only sustains our earthly lives, God’s word sustains our eternal heavenly lives, making it infinitely more impartant.
My prayer is that each of us will pass through our desert and, compelled by our hungry souls, straight into our Promised Land which flows with milk and honey, into God’s holy word which nourishes us, and into the secret place where we can hear His still small voice.