Hungering for God

For a few weeks we are featuring material from Teach Us to Pray  ©1995 by Discipleship Publications International and edited by Tom and Sheila Jones. This week’s post is the first of two we will publish from a chapter by Steve Kinnard who serves as a teacher in the New York City Church of Christ.

            

               As a doe longs for running streams,

                so longs my soul for you, my God.

                My soul thirsts for God, the God of life;

                when shall I go to see the face of God?

                (Psalm 42:1‑2, The Jerusalem Bible)

True prayer is a yearning for God.  The person who rightly prays hungers and thirsts for God.  Most people in the developed world have never really been hungry.  At most we have experienced a self-imposed hunger from fasting.  I once fasted for 21 days on just water.  By the fourth day, I felt really hungry.  Every cell in my body was crying out for food.  But my situation was somewhat artificial.  At any moment I could have grabbed a hamburger or pulled out a “Twinkie.”  With real hunger comes a sense of desperation—and urgency.

One sees this hunger in the Third World.  When I was in Calcutta, India in 1985, I saw hunger.  I saw it in the eyes of an emaciated girl who held out her hands longingly for a piece of bread.  I saw it in the face of a dirty, sweating boy who rummaged through the trash in the gutter looking for a discarded sandwich.  It is more than being a little hungry or a little thirsty.  It is desperation.  This is the type of hunger and thirst we must have for God.  The heart that finds is the heart desperate for God. In the Bible a hunger for God always ends in prayer.