Hungering and Thirsting for God: Understanding Our Hunger

by Mike Cope

In Scripture there is a word to describe any attempt to find true life in anyone or anything other than God: idolatry. In that sense an idol could be a stone figure or a spouse, a graven image or a growing retirement fund.

    One reason we may not recognize our hunger for God is because most of us don't know what hunger really is.

    During the famine in Somalia, thousands of starving families left their homes and once-productive farms to seek shelter and food at distant refugee centers. Foreign nations and humanitarian agencies sent and distributed food to these starving people. Many received help in time to save their lives. Some, however, waited too long before seeking help. They were so malnourished that when they tried to eat, their bodies rejected food. Their digestive systems had shut down and would no longer process the very thing their bodies needed. Many died because their bodies no longer recognized or accepted life-sustaining nourishment. Their bodies didn't recognize what they were hungering for.

    The psalmist had a deep hunger, but unlike most people, he understood the true source of his hunger and expressed it clearly:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, 0 God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God. (Psalm 42:1, 2a NRSV)

    You can hear the grumbling caused by hunger pains all around, from bars to Bible classes. Unfortunately, people -- both those outside the church and many inside -- have failed to recognize in those hunger pains a deep longing for God.

    Many people identify their hunger as the need for a relationship, which it is. But they look for the perfect relationship with another person. They try to fill their void with a parent, spouse, or child. They endlessly look for that certain someone who can make them happy and complete.

    Each time they are disappointed because there are no perfect human relationships. There is no person that can make you or me feel satisfied.

    Only God can bring fulfillment to our lives -- because he made us to live in harmony with him. Scripture never tells us to love another person with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That is investing way too much in any human being. The place to invest our heart, soul, mind, and strength is with God, and God alone.

    Notice these testimonies from people who invested in God and hungered for him:

You have made us for yourself, and our souls are restless until they rest in you. (Augustine)

Your name and renown
are the desire of our hearts.
My soul yearns for you in the night;
in the morning my spirit longs for you. (Isaiah 26:8b, 9)

Made as we were in the image of God, we scarcely find it strange to take again our God as our all. God was our original habitat and our hearts cannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautiful abode. (A.W. Tozer)

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1)

    Each of these testimonies cuts through the noise of culture to hear the one clear voice of God -- a God who created us, sent his Son for us, and longs for us intensely. And, he carefully made each of us with an inner desire -- a hunger -- to know him. His heart rejoices when we accept and draw near to him. He delights when we accept his eager desire for a relationship with us.

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
he rises to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him! (Isaiah 30:18)

    God is a self-sufficient God and needs nothing, including us, to be complete. Yet he loves us so much, so overwhelmingly, and he wants us to benefit from his abundant blessings. So he relentlessly pursues us as a shepherd for his sheep, as a father for his child, as a mother for her baby, as a groom for his bride.

    Until we understand that and respond to his love, we are like the prodigal son, searching again for the security of our home. And our search will end in disappointment until we search for God. No human relationship, no job, no possession, and no amount of money or success can ultimately satisfy us.

This is Part 2 of a series (click here for Part 1). Next week, Part 3...

Posted: 03/31/2001
URL: http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200103/20010331_hunger2.html

(c) 2001 Mike Cope. Excerpted from "One Holy Hunger," HillCrest Publishing, 2001. Used by permission.

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