“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God”
Our bodies naturally send us signals when it’s time to refuel. Our physical body begins to grow weary. For a mere moment we find something to feed our hunger, and it makes it all better. We, as humans, have fallen custom to a pattern: hunger and thirst that leads us to consume something that might satisfy. As human beings, we see ourselves falling into this almost every single day, in every single moment. We are often hungry, but for what?
In the same way that God has created our bodies to send us signals when it’s time to refuel, He has created our souls to send signals when they are unsatisfied. The Lord has instilled a longing for Him in our souls, we hunger and thirst for Him daily, but this longing is beyond recognition in the eyes of many. Not everyone realizes where their longing comes from, what it means, or how to fulfill it. Our flesh is able to skew the longing in our souls, leading us to shallow, worldly fulfillment – where there is only a fragment of satisfaction before we begin to hunger and thirst once again.
We are wired to want and need God, not the world. The riches and ways of the world will “eat your flesh”, things of this world cannot satisfy the eternal body.
Our world is a broken world. In the midst of this broken world, we face many trials. In some instances, we fall victim to our misery, we let our brokenness become our identity, and we feed off it. But still, we remain hungry. In other instances, we think we can gain control and authority over our lives, so we strive to do so. Then, at the end of all the effort we put into pursuing and fulfilling the desires of our flesh, we grow exhausted, and we are even more hungry than before.
Human beings, like you and I, are creatures with many feelings. But God’s word is clear that we must hold fast to truth over our emotions. Our heart and feelings will deceive us in almost every circumstance if we are not on guard. We cannot put our faith in our own understanding, nor the authority we think our feelings and desires have. We must put our faith in the Lord. The beautiful thing about our Father is that he doesn’t ask us to understand why, he just asks us to trust He is good, walk in obedience, and glorify Him as we try to do so. Our lives are our mission field, and we’ve been made to live mission minded. We have to stop viewing our hunger as a reason to fill up with temporary forms of satisfaction. It’s time to look at every part of our lives, good and bad, as an opportunity to serve and praise Him – maybe serving and praising Him is the real soul food we all crave.
So, let me ask you, why do you hunger and thirst? And what for? We all have a longing instilled in our soul for the Lord. So maybe my real question is, what are you going to feed that longing with? The ways of the world, the “identity” in your brokenness, or the truth and promises of the Lord and His faithfulness?
We must put our full hope and trust in God. He is the only thing that can provide and satisfy what the world cannot.
May we remind ourselves to “Hope in God; for I shall again, praise him, my salvation, my God.”
w/ love,
Nat
