Dashboard Confessions: Appetite

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?" Matthew 6:25

"Oh God, You are my God; earnestly I seek You. My soul thirsts for You, my flesh faints for You...." Psalm 63:1

"For many...walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things." Phillipians 3:18-19

Another light that sometimes flashes on the dashboard of my life is my appetite. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. The window into his heart may also be found there. We're prone to treasure treats as much as trinkets.

On the day that I went shopping for shoes I had a craving for shakes. I purposefully chose to shop in a particular shopping center because I knew there were four options for securing one of my favorite treats: milkshakes. I could go to these milkshake dealers in the following order of my preferences from first to last: Marble Slab, Baskin-Robbins, Arby's (love that Jamocha shake!), or Steak and Shake. I recognized that day that I had an unusually overwhelming appetite for a chocolatey milkshake. It served as a light on the dashboard to warn me that my soul was not thirsting for God; instead, my flesh was fainting for food.

Jesus' command to not be concerned about what we will eat or what we will wear must have sounded different to His hearers on the hillside than it does to us today. Their concern was whether they would eat or wear anything, our concern is what we will choose to eat or wear. As one of my student ministry interns admitted, "We get stressed because we have so many options." Why do I tend to see Jesus as only one of the many options for my heart's hunger rather than the sole satisfaction of my soul?

At the start of the new year I started Weight Watchers. I know that dieting may be an idol for some folks, but for me (since I rarely do it) it is a spiritual discipline. Limiting the amount and kinds of food I eat is just plain hard work. Cutting back on my food and soft drink intake has revealed to me how unwilling I was to allow myself to feel hungry or thirsty. I had been quieting every pang of hunger with something to munch and drowing my thirst with liquid sugar. It's easy to confuse emptiness of heart with emptiness of stomach. But the Spirit has been gracious to turn my hunger pangs into reminders that, like Jesus, "my food is to do the will of my Father who sent me and to accomplish His work" (John 4:34), to know Him and to make Him known. He wants me to remember that I am made to fill up on Him by faith until I overflow with the righteousness, joy, and peace of His Kingdom (Galatians 5:6, 22-23; Romans 14:17).

When the appetite light begins to blink in my belly, I know it's time to turn away from idols to the Living God again, asking Him to feed my famished heart with Jesus, the Bread of Heaven, and to sate my soul with His Living Water (1 Thessalonians 1:9; John 4:13-14, 6:35). Then, satisfied in Him, I will find strength to live the cruciform life of feeding on God and feeding His sheep.