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Teaching -
Word Of The Week
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Written by admin
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Monday, 06 October 2008 16:42 |
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It's important to
realize that God causes us to hunger. Hunger
is "normal".
God does not want us to starve or to accept starvation as a
part of life, and His purpose for causing hunger is to prepare us for His great
provision of satisfaction.
Amos 8:11  "The time is surely coming," says the
Sovereign Lord," when I will send a famine on the land-not a famine of
bread or water but of hearing the words of the Lord.
New Living Translation ®
Still,
Those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness will be filled. (Matthew 8:6 )
That's a promise that was spoken from God through Jesus the
Christ to a large crowd of people on a hillside. It's a promise you can count
on! He even prefaces the promise with a
"Blessed be", which means that they are highly favored and to be envied.
Imagine that the hungry ones are the blessed ones. We usually think of this in
reverse.
As Christians, we are
all born "out of Egypt". Egypt is a type (a picture or representation) of
sin. The land of Egypt is governed by a
single leader with great power over all the people. It is further controlled by various gods and
deities represented and worshipped as idols each with their own temples and
worship rules. It was a rather complex system, but the point for us is that
they were all "seen". The Idols and the leader were visible and they could be
touched. These deities claimed to have power over the people above and beyond
any other gods, especially one that could NOT be seen. YHWH, the God of Israel proved all that wrong
as recorded in the story of Exodus.
But here's the thing that at first seems odd.
If Egypt is the type
of sin and bondage, why do so many people of the Bible "sojourn "in that land?
Moses went down to Egypt. (Genesis: 12)
Joseph was bound by his own brothers and sold into slavery
in Egypt. (Genesis 37 )
Jesus and his family went down to Egypt to escape the wrath of
King Herod. (Matthew: 9)
What could possibly
be in Egypt that is of benefit?
Hunger, separation, and affliction
These things cause us to cry out to God. When is the last
time you cried out to God from your satisfaction?
Now Joseph was a righteous man who suffered much over a long
period of time, but he never lost his integrity or his fear of the Lord. Before
a famine struck Egypt, the Lord worked in Joseph's life to give him wisdom and
favor with Pharaoh to such an extent that Joseph built and managed great granaries
and store for Egypt. He managed to store up enough that Egypt became a source
of supply for the whole region. (Genesis: 37-50)
Here we see God using hunger again. Joseph's family came
down to Egypt to buy grain. In the end, they were re-united and their family
was restored. The treachery of the brothers was revealed and forgiven, and
righteousness was restored.
Who among us has not
come out of Egypt?
Have we not sought to fill our needs and desires from the
things we can see? We operate out of our own "reality", that's the phrase these
days, but it is simply operating out of Egypt.
It takes Faith to
please God.
God is Spirit and
those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth. In the Kingdom of God,
seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing.
Those who trust in
the Lord will not fail....
But first there is the famine. Without the hunger, we would
never seek Him. The Bible prompts us to seek Him early (Isaiah 26:9 ). But it
seems that this only comes after training, after a sojourn or two down in
Egypt, where we can eat, but we never seem to find satisfaction.
One of the great promises for God's covenant people is that
they will eat and be satisfied. It's the thing I find missing on our great
country of America.
We live in a land full of food. We have many overweight and
unsatisfied people, eating disorders run rampant, and related health issues of
heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, and premature death are
all on the rise.
We are eating but we are not being satisfied. He is causing
a famine, not of food or water, but of HEARING the Word of the Lord. I emphasize
"HEARING" because the usage of that word in the Bible does not refer to a
casual hearing, but a hearing that goes deep within ourselves and our hearts to
bring us to the place where we CHANGE in response to the hearing. This
"HEARING" is the power of His words to make the changes that we cannot make on
our own. This is the operation of the unseen breaking into the land of Egypt
and displaying its power over all the gods of that land.
It delivers us from
hunger into satisfaction.
Once we are delivered from that "land", He will rain manna
from heaven, and split open boulders to give us lakes and streams in the
dessert. God's provision is never too far away from the hunger that He brings
to us.
Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and do not lean on
your own understanding, acknowledge Him in all your ways, and He will direct
your paths.( Proverbs 3:5 ,6)
God Says: I have led you
- that I might fill you
Deut 8:2-3
And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all
the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to
know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and
fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He
might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by
every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.
NKJV
A satisfied life
begins and is maintained by hunger. There is no other way.
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