Help for the Hungry Soulنموونە

Plead for a Holy Hunger

We love miracles. They surprise and excite us. Temporarily distracting us from our so-called uneventful existence, they make us feel connected, however ambiguously, to the divine. When a baby is born healthy and strong? “It’s a miracle,” we say. The rescue of an entire Thai soccer team from entrapment in a flooded cave? Miraculous.

Miracles, miracles everywhere—or so we think. We love remarkable events, even if they’re not really miracles.

What if I told you that you could experience an actual miracle—a supernatural act of God—today? And what if I told you that this involves opening your Bible?

When I first encountered this argument, I had to pick my jaw up from the floor. After decades of studying my Bible, I read John Piper’s wonderful book Reading the Bible Supernaturally, and my whole outlook on Scripture changed. Pastor John amazed me by this perspective-shifting reality: to love God’s word is a miracle.

Our Hope for Hunger

In the last chapter, our aim was to do a heart check and examine our current appetite for God’s word. We looked at several hindrances that can keep us from loving and hungering for it: distraction, dullness, deceit, discouragement, and desires. If you’re like me, identifying these hindrances might have left you with some pressing questions.

If these can keep us from a greater, deeper hunger for God and his nourishing words, then what is our hope for growth? Is satisfied hunger even possible for believers living in this fallen world?

And if it is possible, then how?

We will draw out the answers to these questions throughout the rest of this book. But the simple answer is that our God is the initiator of the impossible (Luke 1:37). Nothing is too hard for him (Gen. 18:14; Jer. 32:27)—even working on the complex and lukewarm hearts of wayward, skeptical, too-easily-satisfied people like you and me.

Our God is not dangling the proverbial carrot here, friends. If he invites us to find satisfaction in him, then he will make good on his invitation (Ps. 81:16; Isa. 55:1). He intends to fulfill his word as we earnestly seek him through his word. Our hope for hunger, then, is found in the one who beckons us to himself—particularly in the miracle of spiritual hunger that God alone can create within us, through his Spirit, as he awakens us to our helplessness and humbles us to our need.

Ready to Receive

“I need milk, Mommy!”

Thus goes the daily refrain of our two-year-old son as he pleads for milk before bed. Sometimes I remind him that he doesn’t need milk—he wants it—but generally, I am touched by his childlike dependence on me, his momma, for something as simple as a cup of milk.

We too are needy, friends. Especially when it comes to our Bibles.

I want us, right now, to feel the wonderful freedom of this reality in our bones: only God can produce hunger within us for his words. This means that all our attempts to “read the Bible well enough” or “do what we’re supposed to” or “feel all the right things” cannot on their own stir up within our hearts the hunger we so desire.

Here’s what I mean. God often accomplishes his miraculous works through means, and we know his Spirit works through his words.2 But in order for his Spirit to work through his words, we need to actually engage with those words. We need to hear God’s word and read God’s word.

We need to put ourselves in the blessed position to receive from God. We need to be needy.

Only God can produce hunger within us for his words, but we can put ourselves in the blessed position to receive from him.

Speaking of little ones, Peter tells us to think and act like babies: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Pet. 2:2–3). Newborns don’t produce the milk their bodies need to grow and thrive; their moms do. But in order to benefit from their mothers’ milk, those babies must be in a ready position to receive it. Like “newborn infants,” then, we see our ongoing need for God to sustain us, and so we put ourselves in the way of being sustained by him (Phil. 2:12–13).

We open our Bible, and we plead with God to do what only he can do through it.

Below are two prayers you can use to plead with God for a holy hunger. They are taken from his word. I encourage you to use these as a springboard for creating your own prayers from other scriptures, or simply to pray them until you really pray them.

From John 17

Jesus, thank you that you are mine and I am yours. Be glorified in me (17:10). Guard me and keep me in your name, and use your word to do this (17:12). Your word is a gift to me (17:14), and you have spoken so that all your people may have your joy fulfilled in us (17:13). I want more and more of your joy! Sanctify me in the truth; your word is truth (17:17). Send me into the world as an ambassador of your word. You came for this reason, Lord Jesus, that I would also be sanctified in truth and used for your glory (17:17–19). May others see in me the love that you share with your Father (17:23). I long to know you more, so please continue to make yourself known to me through your word, that I may walk by your Spirit and live in your love (17:26). In your Son’s name, amen.

From Ephesians 1 and 3

Father of glory, would you please give me the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of you (1:17)? Enlighten the eyes of my heart. I can’t see beautiful things in your word unless you help me see (1:18). I want to know the hope to which you have called me, and the riches of my glorious inheritance in the saints. Fill me with the immeasurable greatness of your power (1:18–19), the same power that raised Jesus from the dead (1:20). Grant me to be strengthened with power through your Spirit in my inner being, so that Christ may dwell in my heart through faith as I encounter him in your word. Root and ground me in his love so I would have strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that I may be filled with all of your fullness, O my God (3:16–19). Amen.