Spirit Hunger Week #2

Numbing

A pacifiers role is to comfort, sooth, diminish crying and fussing.  Adults use pacis as well: food, clothes, men, alcohol, business and control.  These things are not necessarily bad.  However, when the need becomes greater than the pleasure we’ve moved into chaos.

Enjoying pleasure is normal.  Anything  pushes us towards secrecy, anxiety or shame stems from Satan’s lie that we can feed our own appetite.  We can numb ourselves in a variety of ways, but Spirit Hunger can only be filled by God himself, not by Satan’s substitutes.

Exodus 16:2-3  God brings us to knew and exciting places, but we are prone to complain.  They had only been gone a few days before they desired meat and bread over freedom.

Exodus 16:4  God’s role is to feed and our role is to walk in his instruction.

The Israelites didn’t recognize God’s provision because it came in an unexpected form.  They are an image of the see-saw between needs, desires, and wants  - and God’s filling, protecting and engaging.

Jesus:  Satan tried to numb Jesus and squeeze Him into cultural expectations.    Why did Jesus need to face a temptation: see Hebrews 2:17-18.  He got into life with us.

Matthew 4: Jesus quotes Deut 8:3 “And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that H might make you understand that man doesn’t live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

-          He humbles us

-          He lets us be hungry

-          He feeds us with bread we don’t know.

He does this so we can understand that we don’t live by physical filling alone but by what He is accomplishing in our lives.  The problem with counterfeit fillings is they numb us to a greater filling.

Yokes and Strongholds

The original meaning of stronghold belonged to God.

Psalm 9:9-10  The Lord will be a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know Thy name will put their trust in You, for you, O Lord have not forsaken those who trust in you.

Psalm 59:9-10 Because of his strength I will watch for Thee, for God is my stronghold.  My God, in His loving kindness will meet me; God will let me look triumphantly on my foes.

Judges 6: Gideon was an unlikely hero. He built an altar on top of what’s been a stronghold.

What are strongholds in your life.

Look at Christ in Matthew 11.  He engages God in  3 ways: prays, clarifies and offers