Grief, loneliness, waiting—these feelings and experiences of wanting and lacking are all a gift from God. They show us our lack of control and our need for help outside ourselves. When we make it our goal—always unspoken—to avoid any trace of these feelings, we lose a powerful guide. We reject pictures and lessons from God designed to draw us to him.

Can you remember the last time you were truly hungry?

Not another-Oreo-would-hit-the-spot hungry. Not grab-a-granola-bar-mid-afternoon hungry. Let’s talk honest, echoes-in-the-stomach hungry. I’m rarely this flavor of hungry, and I suspect I’m not alone.

I thank God for this. Many people around the world—and plenty in my own town—ache for food. God has (to this point) spared me this distress, and I’m grateful.

But I have often been a poor steward of God’s provision. I have used food to push hunger away, rejecting my body’s built-in notification system. In eating and snacking (and snacking and snacking), I have insulated myself against feeling my need.

Perhaps the physical consequences of this insulation are obvious, but the danger runs deeper.

A Spiritual Problem

Notice the centrality of hunger and thirst in these three passages from the Bible.1

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2)

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

Hunger, thirst, pants, faints. The Bible uses the language of our bodies to describe a heart dependent on God.

There is desperation in these words. “To hunger” doesn’t mean to want very much to eat.

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