Hunger

As I closed last night after our youth meeting at church, I prayed from a compulsion. The compulsion was to ask for God to develop and create a hunger and a desire that burned for Him and Him alone. Today I was confronted with many things that feel like a spiritual net dragging me to the ground. Negativity, faceless criticism, and voiceless supporters wrangle my spirit and my mind. I feel like giving up on some things and just moving forward in the simple easy things that I know. Like most people I just want to make everyone happy. That includes God. The problem is that what God wants is not always what man wants. In fact, it rarely is. Consider Job. Consider Paul. Consider Stephen. Do you think they actually sought what they received? Not likely. But I can name the one thing they each sought after that they did receive. God. So much did they hunger for their Lord that they suffered at the hands of men. They were spat upon, stoned, beaten, accused, laughed at, mocked, scorned, and killed. Their response was almost a, "So what." They weren't in it for the fame and fortune or the glory. They were in it for God. Both as a servant of Him and a recipient of Him. So I dwell on this. I think it over. I prayed for a hunger, and now I am dissatisfied with what comes my way. I wonder how many of the kids are feeling this now and don't know how to label or deal with it. If my prayer was answered in each case, then they are all here with me. We are hungering for something that no amount of anything on this earth will satiate. And I pray that each of us realizes what it is that we hunger for. Dissatisfaction with the world means that God is at work. Know it. Follow it. Reason with God about that hole in you. And let Him fill it. And in knowing, do not give the world back what it has given you, but return love for disappointment. Return love for betrayal. Give back love for suffering and pain and war and loss and lack of control. And in that act you will be revealing that you are a true disciple of Christ. Pray that I do this. Pray that you do this. Pray that every Christian would become so truly disillusioned with the world that God is their only solution.