What are you hungry for, when you don’t know what your hungry for?  This question was posed in television commercials years ago, with the answer being, “Something on a Ritz cracker.”  While filling out her weekly grocery list my wife will nearly always ask me what am I hungry for so that the necessary items can be obtained when she goes shopping.  Recently, I’ve been reading a book on shepherding God’s people in which the author makes reference to “God-Hungry” people.  I’ll admit it took a few times seeing the phrase before it became readily accepted speech, but I still felt it necessary to investigate further what it truly meant. 

So, what does it mean to be “God-Hungry”?  Could it really be as simple as it sounds?  A person who is hungry is being told by their body that they have physical need of nourishment for the means of survival.  If one is “God-Hungry”, they sense a need of a spiritual nature requiring nourishment that can only be provided by feasting on God in some fashion.  One way is to meditate on Him much like did King David. In Psalm 1:2 he wrote this of the blessed man, “… his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night.” In Psalm 77:12 we find, “I will meditate on all Thy work, and muse on Thy deeds” and then in Psalm 119:15 he says “I will meditate on Thy precepts, and regard Thy ways.”  We are nourished, spiritually, when we reflect on our great God.

In His own ministry, Jesus adds a new perspective to “God-Hungry” telling us in John 6:33, 35, “For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world” and “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”  Those who are “God-Hungry” are those who come to Jesus, the bread of life, believing in Him.  One other aspect we cannot overlook is something He said to His disciples at Jacobs well in John 4:34, “My food (nourishment) is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” 

Are you “God hungry”?  Do you sense your spiritual survival is dependent upon quality time with God?  Could it be that this would be the beginnings of true hunger pangs for God?

Copyright © 2007, Nolan P. Rutter