I am thinking about hunger again. I know that seems to be a frequently visited topic in my blog posts, but… It really is something we need to think about more. I am not only thinking about physical hunger but I am specifically thinking about the deep hunger for God. Jesus spoke quite often about the hungry and hunger. In Luke 4 : 1-2 it says, “ Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil, And in those days He ate nothing, and afterwards, when they had ended, He was hungry.” And Satan being the ever clever liar was aware of that hunger and tried to get Jesus to turn a stone into bread. Imagine how hungry Jesus must have been after forty days? Some of us can barely last four hours. The devil knows that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach especially when really hungry. This was also apparent even in Old Testament days as Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for some lentil stew. That was an expensive meal. However there is a tool that is available and often used to call our appetite into submission. It is a fast. Now I am not going into all the details and the whys and wherefores of fasting here. There are plenty of books written if you need to do a scholarly investigation on fasting. I will simply say it is a very powerful weapon when teamed with prayer to tap into the power of God to speak into your life. The enemy, Satan, wants you distracted and hungry for food and things of the world. When you fast and pray you focus sometimes very intensely on desiring what God wants and waiting to hear what that is. There is a long and extensive history of fasting in the bible and some amazing things have happened secondary to fasting and praying. Moses fasted and so did Jonah, Daniel, David and Elijah among others. Fasting takes you away from the world; it is a renewal of your spirit and a powerful form of worship. Fasting gives me an opportunity to change my diet. It is amazing when I am not attentive to what I eat that I gain weight and am still hungry. I am overfed as many of us are but lacking something in my diet. Fasting helps me to focus on Jesus, the one who can satisfy real hunger. The temporary hunger I feel is just that…temporary. It has to constantly be satisfied in a variety of ways. We struggle to appease this never filled feeling that affects everything in our lives, our jobs, our relationships and our sense of self worth. We become enmeshed in a tangled mess of lies and deception and live lives in the desperation of having to consume stuff to mollify our hunger. I have decided to tackle this issue and look at my own personal hunger. For all of us it is different. For many of us it is uncomfortable. It is not easy to face something which we hate to admit controls us and drives our every decision. But there is a reward to be had in doing this. In the bible in 2 Chronicles 7:14, it says, “ if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and forgive their sin and heal their land.” Can you deny that we need to repent and receive forgiveness? Can you deny the blatant truth that this land needs healing now more than ever before? Our hunger for the wrong things in this world has almost pushed us over the edge and for many it already has. It’s time. It really is time to stop the madness that pushes us to run in circles and never find peace. There is only one way. I think that it is clear what that way is. So, the question then becomes which you will choose. Are you hungry?? What will feed you this year? Or maybe we should ask…who will I feed??