Are you living with an empty pit in your stomach with a deep longing for more out of life?
You’re not alone.
Many are living empty and unfulfilled, longing for more, and it’s because many have a hard time staying in step with God’s plan, yet at our core, we’re hungry for it.
Not a stomach hunger, a heart-hunger. We live in a culture with endless options and a constant flood of distractions to the point that we easily get led away from what’s most beneficial for us.
We resort to finding fillers, trying to satisfy our needs in the moment, causing us to miss out on the best life possible.
Why are we so easily distracted from what is most beneficial to us?
Great question!
We get distracted from what is most beneficial because we’re not dining regularly with our Heavenly Father, leaving too much room between us and Him while the “fillers” that seem to bring instant satisfaction are right in front of us.
It’s like going to the grocery store on an empty stomach, and we all know what that’s like, right?
We get everything that sounds good in the moment and walk out of there, realizing that we don’t really have anything substantial because we wandered up and down the aisles, letting anything and everything grab our attention, allowing our growling stomachs to dictate our decisions.
We look down at our cart to see ice-cream, chips, and quick fixes because we are just so hungry, and every commercial advertisement is now playing through our minds as we see the brightly colored packaging at arm’s reach. Our carts are now filled with no nutrition, a boat load of yummy-tasting-garbage, and we drive away. Then it’s a quick pit stop at the next drive-thru before we reach our driveways because who has time to cook after all that shopping?!?
We are STARVING!
When we finally pull up to our house, we roll ourselves into our living room, crash on the couch from a food coma, and that’s when we remember how we wanted to start a new health plan that day.
Now what?
A large grocery bill with very little to show for it.
No energy.
And feeling a bit guilty for the decisions we just made.
All because we were hungry.
We lost sight of the vision we had and filled it with instant satisfaction instead.
Been there.
God, Creator of all things, desires for us to live in step with Him. He has determined the boundaries of our lives and has a purpose for the very moment we are here. As we allow Him to lead, He takes us to a life beyond measure – a plan so tailor-made to His design for us we are continually satisfied.
He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since He is Lord of heaven and earth, He doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve His needs—for He has no needs. He Himself gives life and breath to everything, and He satisfies every need. From one man, He created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and He determined their boundaries. His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him—though He is not far from any one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, “We are His offspring.” —Acts 17:24-28 NLT
Our heart-hunger reveals the vision God has placed in us by design and draws us to Him. That God-given vision produces a hunger that absolutely needs to be satisfied. It’s what gives us a nudge to move and not remain stagnant in our lives.
What He did not design us to do is to step out of His will to fill those desires. That’s where our lives become complicated, bringing more pain than we already have to deal with in this messy life, causing us to chase after anything and everything that makes us feel good but never fully reach a place of true satisfaction.
When we fill our hunger with God, He stirs up the desires He already has in mind and then takes us on a journey to fulfill them!
Take delight in the LORD, and He will give you your heart’s desires. —Psalm 37:4 NIV
Notice it says delight in the Lord AND THEN HE will give you your heart’s desires.
But we have to remove the distractions and fillers that we lean to and learn to take those desires and lean into Him.
We have to be willing to feel that momentary discomfort and rather than fill it with instant gratification, that never leads us to lasting comfort and turn our hearts to the true Comforter.
Deep hunger mud pits left unfulfilled by God take us farther and farther away from getting true satisfaction out of life. We hunger for joy, peace, satisfaction, and purpose, but the flashing signs of options and “you could have this now if you click here” lead us away. And then boom . . . stuck in the mud of settling or worse – sin!
I could sit here and type out all the facts about how our brains were designed to function—that they have one hundred billion neurons that are not meant to light up all at once, but the way our culture is set up, they, do and it’s not benefiting us. We live in an always-on culture. I mean, come on, we are so overstimulated we can’t even sit for that two-minute time span at a traffic light without picking up our phones.
Don’t deny it.
You know I’m dead on with this.
I drive a very tall suburban, and I see you with that phone in your lap (wink-wink).
Here’s what happens with the overstimulated mind: when those transmitters have been ignited in our brain at that high magnitude, it releases a chemical called dopamine, known as “the feel-good” hormone. Dopamine puts us in a state of euphoria. When we are not igniting those neurons in our brain at that magnitude, it feels like a big crash that leaves us feeling depressed. We then feel the intense need to “feel good” again, so we overstimulate ourselves to try to stay there. If our brains are not being stimulated at that magnitude (we think we’re checking out), we kinda freak out because we don’t know what to do with ourselves. We then begin to tell our mind and body that we need to check out more to feel okay, and that’s where we get caught in a cycle that is totally the enemy’s intention, taking us farther away from choosing God’s will, leading us to an over-stimulated, unsatisfied life. Truth be told, we cannot find rest for our souls or understand what it means to be still.
Do you know who loves watching us stay overstimulated and distracted, leading us to make choices that are just fillers and not the real deal from God?
The one who has a masterplan to derail us from the rich and satisfying life that Jesus came to bring us, including our God-given purpose in life.
The enemy!
“The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” —John 10:10 NLT
It doesn’t seem to take him a whole lot of effort to slither his way in and distract us. We’ve got an influx of flashing empty promises of hope and freedom as we compare our lives to the small corners of someone else’s life that they are choosing to share right at our fingertips.
Ahem . . . social media.
Apps with notifications . . . okay, so my ministry has an app, but it won’t lead you away from God’s best. It will point you straight to Him, so you can’t put it in that category.
Jus’ sayin’.
We are connected to everything and everyone, day and night, without turning it off.
This doesn’t even include the demands right in front of us.
Boss.
Kids.
Housework.
Office work . . . the checklists and everything in between.
Then the enemy just sits back and watches us wander aimlessly, filling ourselves with a never-ending task list and distractions that leave us busy but still hungry for more.
Or so focused on others’ lives through social media that we aren’t even doing much with our own.
How can we?
We are too distracted with entertainment, as our dreams and goals fade to the back of our minds, and then we struggle to connect with “why” we are feeling so empty inside. We then reach for more distractions to drown that vacant pit the distractions caused in the first place.
The enemy knows our “more” is with God and God alone. He absolutely doesn’t want us to come to this revelation because as soon as we do, he knows we become a threat to his dark kingdom.
Why?
Because we become free, living out that rich and satisfying life Jesus paid for. Not only does this dramatically change the course of our existence, but as we live in step with Jesus, we are continually filled with His supernatural joy and peace that others can feel and see, and from there, we can point them to the same kind of freedom.
This way of living becomes a positive trickle effect for God’s Kingdom.
When we understand that our fulfillment comes from stilling ourselves in the presence of God regularly, we can then hear the direction He has for our lives, and from there we can make decisions that line up with that God-given vision. It also empowers us to discern in each moment when satan is trying to find an in and derail us!
It’s a brand new year.
Make the decision to remove the fillers that have taken God’s place and fill those empty spaces with Him.
He satisfies our hunger in ways beyond human comprehension.
Nothing can compare to who He is and what He has for our lives. The only way we will ever know these ridiculously amazing truths is if we begin to take steps away from the fillers and distractions and toward the stillness of a life with Him.
It’s where rivers never run dry, where His peace never leaves us, and where His joy becomes our strength to persevere.
It’s where the mundane becomes an incredible adventure, where the supernatural becomes natural in our everyday life, and where we taste and see that there is nothing that will ever satisfy our cravings and that deep hunger within, like Him.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in Him! Fear the Lord, you, His godly people, for those who fear Him will have all they need. Even strong young lions sometimes go hungry, but those who trust in the Lord will lack no good thing. —Psalm 34:8-10 NLT
