When I discovered your words, I devoured them.  They are my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies. Jeremiah 15:16

 

When some people miss a meal they don’t get hungry, they get hangry! Hangry is the state many people find themselves in when their blood sugar falls, they feel panicky, and their stomachs aren’t the only thing that’s growling. Anyone who’s ever taken care of a baby knows about the unpleasantness of trying to comfort a hungry infant with anything other than what they want:  milk!

It’s interesting that the Bible uses the pictures of food and hunger to describe our spiritual lives. It says, “like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation” (1 Peter 2:2 NASB). Just as there’s no substitute for milk for a baby, there’s no substitute for scripture, God’s Word, the Bible, when it comes to us growing in health spiritually.

Throughout the Bible, those who follow God have found God’s Word to sustain then in the worst of times. Job, a man with terrible troubles declared, “I have stayed on God’s paths…I have not departed from his commands, but have treasured his words more than daily food” (Job 12:10-12). Jeremiah, one of God’ prophets who had such a hard life he was called the “weeping prophet,” said, “When I discovered your words, I devoured them. They are my joy and my heart’s delight” (Jeremiah 15:16).

Spiritual hunger doesn’t work the same way our physical hunger does: the more you “eat” spiritually, the more you want. Stop interacting with scripture and you’ll find it gets increasingly harder and harder to do. If you follow Jesus, you have an enemy that wants to keep you away from the Bible. Discover the joy and delight that waits for you when you eat up!