I felt/heard God say something interesting to me the other day. It went along the lines of this: "Food is a gift, but the greater gift from Me is hunger."
It's a fascinating thought. Hunger is so natural that we seldom think of it apart from ourselves. Pain, we don't like, so we disassociate ourselves from it and can say, it's unpleasant but it's a gift from God to help us know when we're doing something that harms us physically. Or something like that.
As I meditated on this thought, this is what came to mind:
I pictured God making a bunch of people. Except, I can't quite picture that, so instead I pictured a loving wizard making a bunch of smurfs. He makes every aspect of them, fashions every single bit of each of them. He makes them with the intention, and the eager expectation, of loving them and being with them, and He makes them to be the counterpoint to His love, i.e. He designs them not just for community with each other but to need Him and find their fulfillment in Him. Not in a selfish way, but in a smart design kind of way.
Imagine the group of smurfs, all made to need their creator. Then the wizard gives them life and lets them live and commune and do stuff. He makes himself available to them. He shows them who he is and why they need him. Some of them respond, knowing logically that they need him. But most of them ignore him... because they have no desire. Their emotions are indifferent towards him.
It would break the wizard's heart. But the wizard who does nothing would not only be foolish, he would be cruel - cruel to make the smurfs to need him and be incomplete without him, yet to do nothing to make them want what they need.
That's where desire comes in. It is out of the wizard's love, and his grace, that he places a desire in the smurfs for Him. Slowly, the smurfs begin to realise that they feel different. And they begin to want to be with the wizard, to discover what the wizard is about, and to learn about how he made them and what was his plan for them. And that is where they find themselves complete... not only because they have found what they needed but because their wizard-given desires have been fulfilled by the wizard's very design.
That is a very loose picture of His grace for us. It is out of His grace that He not only makes us to need Him but causes us to want the One we need. To break it down into simpler terms, He made our bodies to need food, and He could have said, "you guys need food, but I'm not going to put any desire in you for it, so that you will seek food purely out of discipline and diligence. If you don't survive and you go hungry, it's your own fault for not being diligent. And if you are diligent, then you will do well."
That sounds like a very familiar kind of perspective, doesn't it? It's a common perspective in Singapore. And maybe in Asia (or East Asia?) in general - we tend to despise the emotional sometimes, as though feelings are a bain that we must put up with, and as though the most sincere acts are those which happen in spite of contrary emotions. Diligence is often prized over desire.
I believe this is an absolutely unbiblical view. Jesus wrote to the church in Ephesus, praising them for their good works (diligence! and obedience!) but saying, they had left their first love for Him, they must go back to their love for Him, and if they don't He will remove the lampstand from them. Their desire for Him meant a lot more - a LOT more - to Him than their faithfulness in doing good things.
Many of us Christians can't help having the mentality I described earlier because we've grown up with it, and that's okay - God accepts us as if we were perfect because we are covered by the blood of Christ. But we do need to realise that this view does not glorify God. That's because God Himself has emotions, and when we despise our emotions because they are emotions, we look down upon a piece of the nature of God. God has emotions... For instance, anger is often seen as an unacceptable emotion in our society, and one that is better left unsaid... but God does get angry and He has no problems with being vocal about it. The Bible also tells us that Christ was willing to sacrifice Himself for the joy set before Him. He had more than the discipline to obey His Father - He had a promise of joy after the sacrifice too. God, in His mighty wisdom, gave Jesus a joy (a desire) to motivate Him for what He was destined to do. Surely this emotional stuff must be a good idea.
It is His grace that He stirs up in us a desire for Him. It is His grace that the things of God make us happy. Hunger is a greater gift than food because He's given us the ability to get our own food, so anytime food is on the table it is at least partly because of our own efforts. (We should still be thankful for it, of course, and it is good that we are.) Hunger is different - you can't make yourself hungry. You can cultivate hunger, and you can inspire hunger, but there is absolutely nothing you can do to create or remove how much hunger you currently sense. Put it another way - if you had no food, you could go look for some. What could you do if you had no sense of hunger (even when you needed to eat)? You would be completely helpless. You might be able to survive for a few days out of habit and discipline, to simply eat when you figure you need to. But the joy in eating would be gone, as would the sense of satisfaction, and the desire to find food... and I would like to propose that you wouldn't last in the long run.
God has given us even more than the gift of Himself (which is more that we could ask for already!!); He's also given us the gift of wanting Him, of loving Him. It is this gift that we must treasure, cultivate, ask God for more of... and it is this gift that we must look out for in others. I don't mean to say that some in the world have the gift and some don't... I don't know about that one. But I just mean that we need to look for those pre-believers who are hungry, who sense a desire they don't understand, and we need to be sensitive to that desire and seek to speak to it (or ask God to). Because ultimately, it is their hearts they need to give to God, not their minds, and God leads them to that place of surrendering their hearts by speaking to their hearts too. If we don't know how to be sensitive to their hearts, then perhaps we just need to let Him speak to ours a little more.
These few days, when I say grace at meals, I've been trying to thank God not just for the food, but for my hunger and the satisfaction that the food brings. It's still a new and slightly uncomfortable concept for me. But I think it is an apt parallel to thank Him not just for the things of the spirit, but to thank Him that Godly things make me happy and that He's given me a desire for more of them.
This relates to another thought I had some time ago. The physical perfections of the universe, the fine tuning of the chemistry of life and the gravitational constant and all those things... to some people these point to intelligent design, but to others they simply point to the fact that we are on the other side of random chance - if a million universes existed but only one was capable of life, that universe would naturally be the only one we see. I get that. But to me, there is absolutely no reason why those life beings should find beauty in that same universe. Why should these creatures of chance revel in the moving colours of a sunset, or have their heart leap in awe at mountains, or feel like the stars speak to them of something greater? Why should they even be happy or sad at all? Maybe there are atheistic reasons proposed for that too... but my point is just that I think it is much harder to explain our sense of beauty and how it matches with how things really are, than it is to explain the science behind why we are alive.
Our sense of beauty testifies to His sense of beauty. It is that love for colour, aesthetics, grace and kindness, deposited into every human heart, that gives us a hint that we are all linked to our common Creator and meant to be with Him. For it is He, clothed in rainbows and painter of every sunrise and sunset, who is the epitomy of all beauty and all that makes our hearts sing. He is kind, gentle, strong, beautiful, joyful, just, compassionate and patient... traits that make hearts from tribes and nations all around the earth leap with joy.
He is, unquestionably, the desire of every nation and every people.
Woot.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Thoughts on Hunger and Passion
Hunger
"Come on, let's stir up our hunger for God..."
I've heard many iterations of this over many years of my Christian life, and I just heard it again today. It started me thinking today... and I think many churches have a fundamental misunderstanding of how spiritual hunger works.
I'm not sure what "stirring yourself up" is supposed to mean exactly (it's not a biblical term I'm sure), but to me, the closest equivalent I can think of is to meditate on God and His goodness when you're down. Perhaps even, as my US pastor Glen used to say, preach the gospel (the good news! not that you need to be a better Christian) to yourself. Focus on God, declare that He is good to you, and keep focusing on the aspects of God that He reveals to you until your internal environment (how you feel) conforms to the truth of how He is. This is not about avoiding your feelings; this is about influencing them with your mind until your feelings actually reflect what your mind knows is the truth.
Many times, though, I've heard "stirring yourself up" to mean the equivalent of "make yourself feel ___". No one will ever say it like that, but from the way people use it, it sure sounds like that's what they mean. Stir up the hunger, stir up the passion etc etc often sounds like "Make yourself feel hungry," or "come on, be passionate!" to me.
So here's my thoughts on two truths about hunger that seem extremely pertinent to me right now:
1) You can't make yourself feel something.
You can't will an emotion. You either feel it or you don't; you either want it or you don't. You can't make yourself want something. Yes, there are many times when our emotions are dulled or we're just fearful of feeling or desiring things because of bad past experiences, so in that case, there is a process of letting how you feel or what you desire reveal itself. But that takes time, patience, love and acceptance. It is not an instantaneous thing, and telling people repeatedly to stir up that feeling is probably more counter productive to letting that feeling come out. The same goes with hunger. You're either hungry, or you're not. God can change that in an instant of course, but you're not God. You can't make yourself hungry.
What you CAN do is put yourself in situations or environments that would influence you to feel a certain way. E.g. if I'm feeling lonely, I can stay home and sulk, or I can pray and focus my mind on the fellowship of the Holy Spirit until my heart gets it and I stop feeling that way, or I could almost force myself to say yes to an invitation I know is open to me to hang out with good friends, even though I feel like sulking, because hanging out with them will make me feel less lonely. Similarly, I can't make myself fall more in love with someone, but I can create conditions where I would develop feelings for them (which is one of the points of dating - to regularly and frequently create situations where feelings for the other person can develop and grow). So when it comes to spiritual hunger, I could hang around spiritually hungry people; I can go to a place where people are experiencing more of God than what I normally do etc. But I cannot make myself be hungry if it happens that all these things don't stir up anything in me.
Emotions and desires are like plants - at best, you can cultivate and nurture them. But you can't force them to grow.
2) The only way to get hungry when you're not, is to begin to want the things you don't yet have.
How many times have you not felt like eating AT ALL, only to see someone walk by with a delicious morsel that just whets your appetite and makes you crave it? We sometimes think we're just being weird, but let's be honest - it's the way God made us. At any one point, we have a certain amount of hunger. Let's say we have none now. We're full, we're satisfied, we've eaten what we've eaten and there's nothing we can do to change that. When someone walks by with something that looks delicious, suddenly we're made aware that there is something more that we haven't had, something that's desirable... and then we want it.
If we always eat everything we want (in the natural) then gluttony may result. But in the spirit, hunger is a good thing - our spirits get strengthened by spiritual food. (Although I will add that sometimes when we receive a lot spiritually, the best thing to do isn't just to receive more but to give it away by ministering to others). So, the only way to build spiritual hunger is to get a revelation of God that is even better than what you already expect, and what you expect is often based on what you've experienced. It's faith - the substance of things hoped for, proof of things unseen. It's the conviction, the realisation and revelation, that God has already been good but He really does have more for you, and even if you don't quite see what it is, you realise that you don't already have it all, that there is more (that's the faith part!). And then you want it. Ta daa! Hunger.
So, as a leader, the best way to stir up hunger in a people is to focus their eyes on God's goodness. There is always more of Him to see, and He always has a next step for us that takes us closer to Him. Declare His promises. Preach His goodness. Let people connect with the fact that God really loves them as they are (i.e. taste that He is good now) and has more for them (and who can resist that when they've already tasted He is good?).
The reason why this is so important is that if leaders try to get their people to stir up hunger without setting their eyes on something greater, then I think the people only have one other option, which is to tell themselves, I don't have enough. But what if they really do feel like they do have enough? Then they begin to doubt themselves. "I don't have enough but I feel like I'm full. How arrogant can I be? My feelings must not be of God and I must fight them." And then condemnation comes in and becomes a tool to make themselves feel a need for God. Because it's actually true; if we accept condemnation (which we shouldn't! See Romans 8) then we feel lousy and we feel the need for God to rescue us. Of course then the problem is, when God rescues them from the guit, how do they maintain the hunger? So then they go into condemnation again, and essentially end up almost intentionally using condemnation to stay distant from God so that they will always feel like they need Him, so that the prayers that their pastor is asking them to pray to tell God that they are 'desperate' for Him will actually be sincere.
I can say this because I've been through it, and I've had to recover from it. This is my inside scoop. And maybe I'm wrong; maybe this was just my own issue and no one else got this message from what the church I've left (but still have much fondness for!) did on a regular basis. It's possible. But I highly doubt I'm alone. My leaders meant well and God gives them grace, so I'm not judging them or any other leader. I'm just saying, telling your people to 'stir up hunger' (or passion, or desire) all the time is NOT a healthy thing for the flock.
A focus on passion
The other thought I have is this focus on being passionate for God. It's a frequent cry, and a good one often times, to be more passionate for Him. However, I do think that it can be overstated as a spiritual goal. The kingdom of God is full of contradictions (Jesus is a lion and a lamb; we are to be innocent as doves and sly as foxes; we are to love our neighbours and love our enemies, but hate Satan and hate sin) and it is in the tension of those contradictions that His precious and awesome truth is found. It's the same here. Passion alone is insufficient; it must be completed by patience.
Notice I didn't say that it must be balanced by patience. "Balance" is a good word, but it often connotates a sense of compromise; that too much of one thing is bad, and sometimes we need to have less of one and more of the other. In the kingdom, contradictory truths don't balance each other out. They fulfill each other. A wife does not balance out her husband; she completes him. Without her, he cannot be all that God made him to be, and without him, she cannot grow to the fullness of her identity as a God-made woman. It's the same with kingdom principles. We aim to love our neighbours and enemies a lot and hate sin a lot. We don't aim to have a limited amount of passion and a limited amount of patience; we aim to have tons of both.
Have you ever met a person who is completely quiet and agreeable all the time, and then one day gets really angry over one thing (something good, like injustice)? Doesn't the fact that they were so meek before serve to bring out the severity of the rage? It's the same with passion. The more passion you have, the more your patience means, and the more the patience to wait for God to do what you desire Him to do builds character and draws you closer to Him. Similarly, the more patience you have, the more your passion means, because you're crying out to God out of a desire so big that it has to come out in spite of your patience to wait. That's why patience and passion fulfill each other.
In contrast, a focus purely on passion, I think, promotes impatience. "God we want you! Come! Come now!" The intent is good, and there's nothing wrong with expecting God to do good things in the present. But if this is the predominant cry of our regular prayer meetings, then our relationship with God becomes focused on the now, the presence of God in the meeting you're in, the success of this particular event. But our relationship with God is eternal, and even within this lifetime is a long process of Him transforming us into His image. As Christians, our aim shouldn't be to be better now (more passionate, more hungry or whatever it is); we are already made perfect by the blood of Christ and we can consider ourselves accepted by God today as though we were as perfect as Jesus is. Instead, our aim should be to walk with God in the present and for the long term, listening, yielding, obeying, loving, and allowing Him to develop the fruits of the Spirit in us.
I think a Christian with the fruits of the Spirit but not the gifts will inherit the kingdom of God, but a Christian with the gifts but without the fruits may not. At the end of the day, the key question when we get to Heaven is whether we know Christ and Christ knows us (Jesus rejected many in the parable who cast out demons in His name because, in His words, "I never knew you"), and that relationship in the long run is made manifest most acutely by the presence of the fruits of the spirit.
Of course the gifts are pretty darn fun too. :)
"Come on, let's stir up our hunger for God..."
I've heard many iterations of this over many years of my Christian life, and I just heard it again today. It started me thinking today... and I think many churches have a fundamental misunderstanding of how spiritual hunger works.
I'm not sure what "stirring yourself up" is supposed to mean exactly (it's not a biblical term I'm sure), but to me, the closest equivalent I can think of is to meditate on God and His goodness when you're down. Perhaps even, as my US pastor Glen used to say, preach the gospel (the good news! not that you need to be a better Christian) to yourself. Focus on God, declare that He is good to you, and keep focusing on the aspects of God that He reveals to you until your internal environment (how you feel) conforms to the truth of how He is. This is not about avoiding your feelings; this is about influencing them with your mind until your feelings actually reflect what your mind knows is the truth.
Many times, though, I've heard "stirring yourself up" to mean the equivalent of "make yourself feel ___". No one will ever say it like that, but from the way people use it, it sure sounds like that's what they mean. Stir up the hunger, stir up the passion etc etc often sounds like "Make yourself feel hungry," or "come on, be passionate!" to me.
So here's my thoughts on two truths about hunger that seem extremely pertinent to me right now:
1) You can't make yourself feel something.
You can't will an emotion. You either feel it or you don't; you either want it or you don't. You can't make yourself want something. Yes, there are many times when our emotions are dulled or we're just fearful of feeling or desiring things because of bad past experiences, so in that case, there is a process of letting how you feel or what you desire reveal itself. But that takes time, patience, love and acceptance. It is not an instantaneous thing, and telling people repeatedly to stir up that feeling is probably more counter productive to letting that feeling come out. The same goes with hunger. You're either hungry, or you're not. God can change that in an instant of course, but you're not God. You can't make yourself hungry.
What you CAN do is put yourself in situations or environments that would influence you to feel a certain way. E.g. if I'm feeling lonely, I can stay home and sulk, or I can pray and focus my mind on the fellowship of the Holy Spirit until my heart gets it and I stop feeling that way, or I could almost force myself to say yes to an invitation I know is open to me to hang out with good friends, even though I feel like sulking, because hanging out with them will make me feel less lonely. Similarly, I can't make myself fall more in love with someone, but I can create conditions where I would develop feelings for them (which is one of the points of dating - to regularly and frequently create situations where feelings for the other person can develop and grow). So when it comes to spiritual hunger, I could hang around spiritually hungry people; I can go to a place where people are experiencing more of God than what I normally do etc. But I cannot make myself be hungry if it happens that all these things don't stir up anything in me.
Emotions and desires are like plants - at best, you can cultivate and nurture them. But you can't force them to grow.
2) The only way to get hungry when you're not, is to begin to want the things you don't yet have.
How many times have you not felt like eating AT ALL, only to see someone walk by with a delicious morsel that just whets your appetite and makes you crave it? We sometimes think we're just being weird, but let's be honest - it's the way God made us. At any one point, we have a certain amount of hunger. Let's say we have none now. We're full, we're satisfied, we've eaten what we've eaten and there's nothing we can do to change that. When someone walks by with something that looks delicious, suddenly we're made aware that there is something more that we haven't had, something that's desirable... and then we want it.
If we always eat everything we want (in the natural) then gluttony may result. But in the spirit, hunger is a good thing - our spirits get strengthened by spiritual food. (Although I will add that sometimes when we receive a lot spiritually, the best thing to do isn't just to receive more but to give it away by ministering to others). So, the only way to build spiritual hunger is to get a revelation of God that is even better than what you already expect, and what you expect is often based on what you've experienced. It's faith - the substance of things hoped for, proof of things unseen. It's the conviction, the realisation and revelation, that God has already been good but He really does have more for you, and even if you don't quite see what it is, you realise that you don't already have it all, that there is more (that's the faith part!). And then you want it. Ta daa! Hunger.
So, as a leader, the best way to stir up hunger in a people is to focus their eyes on God's goodness. There is always more of Him to see, and He always has a next step for us that takes us closer to Him. Declare His promises. Preach His goodness. Let people connect with the fact that God really loves them as they are (i.e. taste that He is good now) and has more for them (and who can resist that when they've already tasted He is good?).
The reason why this is so important is that if leaders try to get their people to stir up hunger without setting their eyes on something greater, then I think the people only have one other option, which is to tell themselves, I don't have enough. But what if they really do feel like they do have enough? Then they begin to doubt themselves. "I don't have enough but I feel like I'm full. How arrogant can I be? My feelings must not be of God and I must fight them." And then condemnation comes in and becomes a tool to make themselves feel a need for God. Because it's actually true; if we accept condemnation (which we shouldn't! See Romans 8) then we feel lousy and we feel the need for God to rescue us. Of course then the problem is, when God rescues them from the guit, how do they maintain the hunger? So then they go into condemnation again, and essentially end up almost intentionally using condemnation to stay distant from God so that they will always feel like they need Him, so that the prayers that their pastor is asking them to pray to tell God that they are 'desperate' for Him will actually be sincere.
I can say this because I've been through it, and I've had to recover from it. This is my inside scoop. And maybe I'm wrong; maybe this was just my own issue and no one else got this message from what the church I've left (but still have much fondness for!) did on a regular basis. It's possible. But I highly doubt I'm alone. My leaders meant well and God gives them grace, so I'm not judging them or any other leader. I'm just saying, telling your people to 'stir up hunger' (or passion, or desire) all the time is NOT a healthy thing for the flock.
A focus on passion
The other thought I have is this focus on being passionate for God. It's a frequent cry, and a good one often times, to be more passionate for Him. However, I do think that it can be overstated as a spiritual goal. The kingdom of God is full of contradictions (Jesus is a lion and a lamb; we are to be innocent as doves and sly as foxes; we are to love our neighbours and love our enemies, but hate Satan and hate sin) and it is in the tension of those contradictions that His precious and awesome truth is found. It's the same here. Passion alone is insufficient; it must be completed by patience.
Notice I didn't say that it must be balanced by patience. "Balance" is a good word, but it often connotates a sense of compromise; that too much of one thing is bad, and sometimes we need to have less of one and more of the other. In the kingdom, contradictory truths don't balance each other out. They fulfill each other. A wife does not balance out her husband; she completes him. Without her, he cannot be all that God made him to be, and without him, she cannot grow to the fullness of her identity as a God-made woman. It's the same with kingdom principles. We aim to love our neighbours and enemies a lot and hate sin a lot. We don't aim to have a limited amount of passion and a limited amount of patience; we aim to have tons of both.
Have you ever met a person who is completely quiet and agreeable all the time, and then one day gets really angry over one thing (something good, like injustice)? Doesn't the fact that they were so meek before serve to bring out the severity of the rage? It's the same with passion. The more passion you have, the more your patience means, and the more the patience to wait for God to do what you desire Him to do builds character and draws you closer to Him. Similarly, the more patience you have, the more your passion means, because you're crying out to God out of a desire so big that it has to come out in spite of your patience to wait. That's why patience and passion fulfill each other.
In contrast, a focus purely on passion, I think, promotes impatience. "God we want you! Come! Come now!" The intent is good, and there's nothing wrong with expecting God to do good things in the present. But if this is the predominant cry of our regular prayer meetings, then our relationship with God becomes focused on the now, the presence of God in the meeting you're in, the success of this particular event. But our relationship with God is eternal, and even within this lifetime is a long process of Him transforming us into His image. As Christians, our aim shouldn't be to be better now (more passionate, more hungry or whatever it is); we are already made perfect by the blood of Christ and we can consider ourselves accepted by God today as though we were as perfect as Jesus is. Instead, our aim should be to walk with God in the present and for the long term, listening, yielding, obeying, loving, and allowing Him to develop the fruits of the Spirit in us.
I think a Christian with the fruits of the Spirit but not the gifts will inherit the kingdom of God, but a Christian with the gifts but without the fruits may not. At the end of the day, the key question when we get to Heaven is whether we know Christ and Christ knows us (Jesus rejected many in the parable who cast out demons in His name because, in His words, "I never knew you"), and that relationship in the long run is made manifest most acutely by the presence of the fruits of the spirit.
Of course the gifts are pretty darn fun too. :)
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