Feast or Famine

In this season of renewal, if we find ourselves not hungering for God, it is because we are filling up His places in our lives with substitutes. Often such substitutes are temporal in origin—pleasures that satisfy for the moment but leave us empty in the long run.

The Word is very clear: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). God guarantees that He will fill us if we choose to feast on Him.

What does “feasting on Him” mean?

The Hebrews would often take one Scripture and mull it over, meditating on the Word. Meditating on anything is to dwell on it, to contemplate it, to study it, even to memorize it.

The Word offers many encouragements for meditating and feasting:

 Psalm 1:2 – (speaking of the righteous) “… his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.”

Joshua 1:8 – “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”

Many Scriptures speak about our human longing for God:

Psalm 63:1 – “when David was in the desert, his cry to God was: O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

Psalm 42:1 – “As the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after thee, O God.”

Psalm 84:2 – “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.”

I have read through Psalm 119—a verse a day—simply to take each of the 176 verses, think on it, chew on it, feast on it, drink it, and let God’s Word saturate my soul.

We can select any verse that God highlights for us and pray that verse, sing it, and memorize it. Much of Hebrew learning was achieved by memorizing. Many in this generation have lost the art of memorization.

In this year’s spring-cleaning, fasting, and renewal time, let’s make a commitment together to fast from negativity, resist empty cravings, and choose to fill ourselves with the eternal Word of God.