Today’s Reading: Ps 78:12-20
“They willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved. They spoke against God; they said, “Can God really spread a table in the wilderness? True, he struck the rock, and water gushed out, streams flowed abundantly, but can he also give us bread? Can he supply meat for his people?” Psalm 78:18-20
We crave so many things besides God. He alone can satisfy, but that doesn’t stop our flesh from hungering insatiably for quick hits of satisfaction and temporary feelings of fullness.
The root of most cravings is a legitimate need. That’s why sin can be so subtle in them and can warp them into becoming our master. We really do need the comfort that comes from a deep relationship with God, but we don’t naturally crave God, so we stuff our hearts with unhealthy human relationships over and over again as a cheap substitute. We need His provision, but we aren’t patient enough to wait on it or able to trust what we can’t see, so we hunger for hustle and self sufficiency instead. We need His healing, but that takes longer than we like and is uncomfortable so instead we settle for self medicating and ravenously seek whatever will numb the pain of our wounds like substances, shopping, sex, work, change, entertainment, even religious activity and routines.
The only true end to our soul’s cravings is God. If we avoid Him, we will spend our lives restlessly allowing one craving to run wild becoming another one, and another one and another one. As we serve each insatiable desire, meeting its demands, we sink further and further into self tyranny. And further and further from the only one able to wholly satisfy.
But there’s hope. The minute we taste and see how good the Lord is, the moment we surrender and humble ourselves and acknowledge that He is what our souls deeply need, the moment the true love of our souls begins to satisfy us- sin begins to lose its dominion over us. We no longer serve our cravings. We are set free from the bondage of seeking more and more at higher and higher cost to ourselves.
Israel had been set free from Egypt, their external oppressor, only to become slaves to the desires of their own flesh and slaves to themselves internally. Pharaoh no longer directed them, but their own stomachs still did. God wanted them to be free from serving both. They welcomed freedom from Pharaoh but they refused the deeper freedom from their own sin and self. Sadly, the same could be said of many who are no longer under the authority of a trafficker, but are still in bondage to the cravings of their flesh in the form of codependency, addiction, etc.
Jesus is able to give us full freedom, but only by giving us Himself. We have to receive Him, grow in Him, be transformed by Him, learn to come to Him for our full satisfaction and nourishment as He trains us to detox from false fulfillment. Israel had to wait a while between drinks of water so they could learn that God was the source of it and not the Nile. They had to trust for daily manna, as boring as it became to them, to learn that they needed healthy nourishment from a faithful Provider so they could grow strong enough to refuse the empty flavors offered by an oppressor. In short, they would have to stop stuffing themselves with the temporary pleasures of the world if they were ever going to develop a hunger for God and begin to be truly and wholly satisfied by Him.
Reflection:
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What substitutes for God do you most naturally crave?
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Do you believe that being more satisfied in God and enjoying Him more (instead of trying to enjoy the world less) is truly the way to rob sin of its ability to master you?
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How can you become more satisfied in God?
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He says in James 4:2-3, “You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Have you ever asked God to give you a longing for Him since we can’t desire Him on our own?
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Why do we tend to believe He can set us free but can’t set the table? That He is able to secure our eternal salvation but not able to meet our simple material needs?