On Tuesday night of this week I had a sudden craving for some frozen yogurt – at 9:00PM. So guess what I did? I snatched 20 bucks from my sweetheart’s wallet (thank you Honey!) got in the car, drove to the yogurt shop and bought me some cheesecake/mango yogurt! It was super delicious and hit the spot just right!
I don’t know about you, but on more than one occasion, I have gone the distance to fulfill my cravings. Literally. For instance, during one of our road-trips to Tennessee, I began “to have a strong inward desire” for some sweet tea from Chick-Filet. So I called on Destination Assist to ask where the nearest location of Chick-Filet was. Much to my delight, they found one! The only problem was it was several miles out of our way! But I had a craving and wanted me some sweet tea! So they downloaded the information to the car and we were well on our way. We exited the freeway as Rosie told us to do (Rosie, by the way, is name we’ve given to the GPS), and continued to follow her instructions. I should have known that something fishy was going on because the scene grew progressively worse by the minute. At Rosie’s last command, we turned into the parking lot of a shopping center that was totally rundown – and no Chick-Filet in sight! And to my great disappointment, Rosie kindly said, “You have arrived at your destination.” Needless to say, I didn’t get any sweet tea, but we did get a huge laugh out of that one!
As human beings, one of the things we all need and crave is food. Without it, we cannot survive. But, have you noticed that when we get sick or are feeling under-the-weather we tend to lose our appetite for food? Nothing sounds good, nothing taste good. We don’t crave anything…we just want to lie down and sleep.
In a very similar way, when our hearts have grown spiritually dull or sick, we tend to lose our spiritual appetite and we don’t crave or yearn for the Lord anymore. We find that we have no desire to read and study His Word. We have no desire to worship, no desire to pray and no desire to go to church. The craving is gone. The hunger is gone. And consequently, we lie down spiritually and fall asleep
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Friends, you and I cannot afford to fall asleep; it could literally cost us our lives. We must make a spiritual evaluation of the current condition of our heart by asking ourselves: Do we crave the Lord? Do we have an intense, urgent, abnormal desire or longing to be in His presence? Do we have a strong inward desire to know Him, His Word and His will for our life? Do we yearn for Him? Do we want Him greatly above all else?
If you can answer “yes”, then praise God and keep on keeping on! If the answer is “no” and you have lost your spiritual appetite and no longer crave the Lord, His presence or His Word, or maybe you’ve never really had that craving before, I want to encourage you ask the Lord to rekindle the flame inside you. Ask Him to give you the desire to crave Him once again. Then set your mind on Him and begin to pursue Him with everything you are and with everything you’ve got. If your Bible is buried somewhere, dig it out and begin to seek Him through His Word. If you haven’t been attending church lately, this Sunday get up and go! Pursue your Father. Run after Him. Seek Him. Crave Him.
“Seek, inquire of and for the Lord, and crave Him and His strength;…seek and require His face and His presence [continually] evermore.” (Ps. 105:4)