It's Okay to Be Hungry

     Like most of Western Civilization, I am always conscious of my weight issues and every now and then, I actually try to do something about it.  When my doctor told me to lose 20 pounds before my next check-up, I decided to set that as a goal, so I joined a Facebook support group that was discussing the same diet program that I was trying.

     One day, a new member posted that she was worried she wasn’t going to be able to be successful because she was already so hungry on Day One.  One of the other members, Spencer Sloan, posted this comment to her post:

“We have to realize it’s okay to feel hungry.  People for thousands of years felt hunger, pain, cold, sadness and were fine.  In our culture today we want to always feel comfortable. Eat when hungry, pill when pain, always warm, etc.  It’s okay to be hungry.”

     The moment I read that comment, I felt an immediate leap in my spirit.  God used Spencer’s thought to teach me something rather simple, yet profound.  In the last few months, I had been feeling “spiritually frustrated” – thinking that I should be further along in my spiritual maturity by now, closer to God, more knowledgeable in the Word, stronger in prayer, and more effective in ministry.

     What I understood in that moment was that “spiritually frustrated” translated to “hungry”.  When Spencer said that it was okay to be hungry, I realized that it was okay to be spiritually hungry as well.  When we are physically hungry, we spend time finding something to fill us up.  We gather the ingredients for that meal and we spend time putting those elements together to create something delicious and satisfying.  Hunger drives us to seek what we need and to labor to put it into a form that we can consume and use, not only to soothe the pangs of that hunger, but also to nourish our bodies and please our palates.

     Spiritual hunger compels us to seek the presence of God and use the ingredients of prayer, Bible study, praise, worship and gathering with other believers to satisfy that longing inside us.  Not only is that initial hunger satisfied, but we are given the spiritual nutrition that helps us to grow and have the joy that our spiritual appetite can enjoy.

     Hours after we eat, physical hunger returns   After a while, so does spiritual hunger. If we get spiritually “comfortable” and don’t experience that hunger, we’ll stop seeking all those things which God desires us to pursue.

     So, I am continuing the new eating plan and losing weight.  Some days, I am hungry, but when those hunger pains hit, I’m just reminded to go after God with all that I have within me and I remember that it’s ok to be hungry.

When It All Goes Wrong.....

When our son was a little boy, we planned a family trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to tour the town and battlefields and to witness a Civil War reenactment. Being frugal people (meaning we didn’t have enough money for a hotel), we borrowed a tent from a church friend and made the six-hour drive, planning to save money by doing our own cooking at the campsite so that food would cost us no more than it would have at home.

Alas, that plan fell apart quickly, because the rains came down, day after day, and we could not cook those homemade meals because it’s a really terrible idea to use a propane camp stove inside a tent if you want to live to make the trip home. So, we did what all good travelers do – we hit the fast food restaurants!  One evening, we found ourselves in that traditional Scottish establishment – McDonald’s. 

One thing that is unique about the Gettysburg area is that because of the emphasis on history in the town, even the fast food restaurants are decorated with large paintings by local artists that depict battle scenes from the July 1863 conflict there.  While I was waiting for our food, I stood looking at a painting of Pickett’s Charge – a part of the battle in which an ancestor of mine had fought.  I glanced over beside me and there was a Civil War reenactor in a Union uniform admiring the same picture.  We struck up a short conversation and we found out his name was Mike and he was from Kenova, West Virginia – not far from where we lived at the time.

Long story short – we exchanged contact information and when we returned home, he introduced us to the leader of his reenactment group and we joined the unit shortly thereafter.  This led to a hobby that we pursued as a family for several years which planted a love of all things historical in our son that he enjoys to this day.  We traveled, learned, made lasting friendships, and contributed to other folks’ understanding of Civil War history.

What does all this have to do with anything? Well, my perfect little money-saving plans for feeding our family on a budget were disturbed by the unrelenting rain, but had it not been for the weather, we would not have met Mike and we would have never experienced this portion of our lives that we treasure to this day. 

Many times, we have our little plans for our lives worked out just so perfectly.  We think we are in charge and have it all together, but then circumstances come along that we can’t control and things veer off course. Those interruptions can be just inconvenient or irritating, but sometimes they can even be painful.  However, they can lead to something new in our lives that might never have happened had our original design stayed in place.  I think that’s what trusting God is all about.  We don’t always like the path we must walk, but God can bring blessing out of challenge and make the messes in our lives into messages.  

Who Owns Your House?

Before I moved my blog to this site, I wrote about living in 21 houses during the course of my marriage. After that, I started thinking about the circumstances of those varied homes. Five of them were homes that we (and the bank) owned and the other sixteen were rented.

A person has a far different relationship with a rented house than with one that is owned.  We were in our last rental house for two years.  Though I was thankful for that home and appreciated many of its features, it was still not really “mine”.   When we first moved in I hung some pictures and arranged some furniture to decorate it, but it was never been a place that I had great dreams of remodeling, because when you rent you don’t invest money in making changes to something that doesn’t belong to you.

Then God dropped a little thought along those lines into my mind.  If a house is a symbol for our own lives, then I wonder how many of us treat God like he’s a renter instead of the owner of our “house”?
A renter pays a price to dwell in a home, but is not permitted to make decisions about the property and can only make the changes that he clears with the landlord first.  I guess some preachers would say that this is a person who has made Jesus their Savior, but not their Lord.  He has paid the fee on the cross which should have been enough to fully purchase the “house”, but once He in the house, many doors are bolted and padlocked to deny access to Him. “God, you can have this area of my life, but I want to retain control of these other places”.

When I own a house, I dream BIG!  On a few occasions in my life, I have had the opportunity to make changes to those homes that I have owned.  Some were necessary and functional – like putting a new roof on a home when the current one was leaking or damaged.  Some were much more fun – like adding a roof over a section of a back deck to provide a shady place to enjoy the outdoors.  Others added beauty to a space – like painting a room a different color or adding pretty new light fixtures.  Once we even added a new room to the mobile home we owned when we first married.
Just like those improvements, God wants to spend lavishly on us.  He can make necessary and functional changes in our lives like helping us to change our attitudes in the middle of our circumstances or helping us to forgive someone who has wronged us.  He can make enjoyable changes like guiding us to discover new things about our gifts and talents that give us opportunities to do things we never imagined.  He can bring beauty in our lives through the many blessings He is able to provide. He can even enlarge our “house” to show us new possibilities in our lives that will stretch us beyond what we ever dreamed we could experience.

Oh, how much He desires that we would treat Him as Who He is – the one who fully purchased us and the One Who should have full control of our lives – not to impose His will on us, but to dream with us – to plan the remodeling – the great Designer who can show us His vision of what the house can be.

A New Start

Welcome to all the followers of my blog! I'm still here - just at a slightly different address. The cost of maintaining the other blog's web hosting and domain name just wasn't practical considering the type of blog that I do, so the move just means you have to type a few extra characters. (Bookmark it today and you won't even have to do that.)

In the coming weeks, I'll be re-posting many of my previous blog posts and adding some new ones, so please check back often or watch the Facebook page for updates. Please feel free to share the blog as a whole or the link to specific articles if you know someone who would enjoy the content.

My goal has always been to encourage people who are facing difficulties, feeling spiritually dry, or just going through everyday life by sharing the little lessons God is teaching me.  I hope that you'll continue to join me and check out what I'm learning.