How's Your Spiritual Appetite

16, May 2016

‘You have said, “Seek My face.” My heart says to You, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”’ Psalm 27:8 ESV

If you spend hours each day watching television and can’t find a few minutes for prayer and reading the Scriptures, you have a spiritual appetite problem—one that needs your attention.  David Brainerd, an eighteenth-century missionary to the American Indians, wrote in his journal:  ‘I withdrew to my usual place of retirement in great tranquillity.  I knew only to breathe out my desire for a perfect conformity to Him in all things.  God was so precious that the world with all its enjoyments seemed infinitely vile.  I have no more desire for the favor of men than for pebbles.  At noon I had the most ardent longings after God, which I have never felt in my life.  In my secret retirement, I could do nothing but tell my dear Lord in a sweet calmness that I knew I desired nothing but Him, nothing but holiness, that He had given me these desires and only He could give me the things I desired.  I never seemed to be so unhinged from myself … so wholly devoted to God.  My heart was swallowed up in God most of the day".   

In today's scripture, the psalmist felt the same way:  ‘I desire you more than anything on earth.  My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; He is mine forever … how good it is to be near God!  I have made the Sovereign Lord my shelter’ (Psalm 73:25–28 NLT).  You can tell how spiritually healthy you are by your appetite for the things of God.