She's hungry!!! (And I am too!)

A friend of mine was talking to me. In the present, she's about as down as they come. Depressed. Unsettled. Unfulfilled. Unsatisfied. Not happy. She's got nothing really to complain about, yet everything. Not really. But depression produces reason to complain... it's got to look for some place to lay blame. So, it seeks something somewhere and decides surely that's why, surely that's it, surely it's this reason or that one,... or if this particular thing happened, I'd instantly be happy again.

Yeah.

Right?

No.

I doubt it.

That rarely happens.

She told me, "Seriously though," she cried when she said it, "I don't really know why."

I know. I could relate. I understood. I've been there. I could often find myself there still if I didn't refuse the offer to join when my own pity party invited. Sadly, the invitation tries to come often. It comes in all forms. I'd say "no two are alike," but that's not true. The party that you've pitied in before very much remembers. It keeps your name on the list and invites often as if hoping you'll come back again to join it. And yet, new invitations in all sorts of disguises come too. Satan came to steal, kill, and destroy.... he's creative in the ways he tries to take and butcher and devastate you. It doesn't have to necessarily even be sin. It's so crazy that sometimes it really doesn't have to have a reason. We can fall in despair over an "I don't know." We can sulk in a stew of depression with no real why of doing so. What crazy creatures we are! How easy it is to have an unfulfilled feeling.

Personally, I think she's hungry.

Matter of fact, I know she is.

How do I know?

Because I've been her. And sometimes I am her still.

She lost her job a couple of months ago, so she's antsy. A bit anxious. But, it's more than that. Like I said, I think she's hungry for real. Just because we don't live in poverty in another country and our bellies aren't caved in or protruding from starvation doesn't mean that we're not starving on the inside and in desperate need of feeding!

In John 4 we find that Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman... the woman at the well... the woman that had been married five times and was now living with a sixth man. Jesus, no doubt, knew she was coming and had made it His purpose to 'happen' to meet alone with her there. The sixth verse tells us that He was tired from His journey..... (again) no doubt, He knew that this woman was tired from her 'journey', as well. (How I love that about Him!)

The third and fourth verses say (KJV), "He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee. And He must needs go through Samaria" (emphasis mine). That "must needs" is the Greek word dei. That particular word is often used in scripture when talking about the plan or the will of God.

Examples, dei is used in:

·    Luke 2:49 when Jesus asks His parents, “Did you know not that “I must be about My Father’s business?”

·    Matthew 16:21, “"From that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things..."

·    Matt 24:6, "And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."

·    Mark 13:10, "And the gospel must first be published among all nations.”

·    Luke 4:43, "And He said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent."

·    Luke 24:7, "The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified..."

·    Luke 24:26, "Ought not Christ to  have suffered these things, and to enter unto His glory?"

·    John 9:3b-4, Jesus is talking, "... "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in His life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of Him Who sent Me..."" (NIV)

·    John 20:9, "For as yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead."

The definition insinuates that it was necessary for Jesus to go through Samaria, it was needed, it was a "necessity in reference to what is required to attain some end." Jesus didn't say or act anything or in anyway except what His Father told Him to do or to say. In other words, it was necessary for Jesus to go there in order to establish the purpose meant by His Father to do and to say what God had willed to be done and so told Him.

Jesus' disciples had left Him earlier to go in search for food. Upon their return and at their urges for Jesus to eat ("Rabbi, eat something") Jesus said, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

Confusion set in among them. They wondered with each other over who could have brought Him some food?

That's when He answered. "My food," Jesus said (listen to this!), "My food is to do the will of Him Who sent Me and to finish His work." To which then He continues, Open your eyes and look at the fields, they're ripe for harvest!

In other words, He's about His Father's business. Even this was the will of why God sent Him. Jesus considered it His "food" to do what His Father willed for Him. It filled Him! It made Him NOT hungry! No food is like our Father's food! And not only that, there's so much more work to be done.

There is a satiating filling in accomplishing the work that God's prepared for you to do. There's a hunger inside us to do! If we're not fulfilling our purpose, accomplishing our work, doing what God has created and willed for us, going about our Father's business...then, we're left lacking. We're empty. We're anxious. We're depressed. Unsettled. Unfulfilled. Unsatisfied. Not happy. We've not really got anything to complain about, we don't even really know why but.......

We're frazzled, not 'right', not filled in our feeling!

You know?

We're not only hungry for the manna of God's Word! But we're hungry to do His work! What's He's willed for us, what He's made and created us for, what He's purposed and planned... the work that God prepared in advance for us to do before we were knit inside our mother's womb (Ephesians 2:10, Psalm 139)!

It's back to the verse we talked about in my last post, "Turn from evil and DO GOOD." We're to turn from.... but then, we're to turn to and in turn do... something good, something useful, something to benefit.

Jesus told Peter, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat, but when you come back, strengthen your brothers." He gave Simon a purpose, a job, a will for His life, a something that God wants done and wants him to do, after he'd returned from his sifting.

Whether we like to think so or not, we're made to labor, we're made to serve, there's fulfillment in the work that God's given and left for us. The harvest is plentiful! We're called to be a worker! We're called to labor the fields! And we'll be hungry, lacking, unsettled, unfulfilled if we don't.

I understand such hunger! Being hungry is good! We need the stirring, the anxiousness, the growling. It points us in the right direction. We need to feel empty, we need to feel lacking, we need to feel some dissatisfaction... so... that we'll feast on the "food" of our Father! First His manna... and then, on the work that He's planned and given us! Not the work that He's given to somebody else. Only our food will satiate, sustain and satisfy. Only what He's purposeably made for us each individually to do.

I like the hunger. It's an invitation. The growling is purposed. Perhaps it's one of the greatest blessings ever for it causes us to be uncomfortable and gets us to search for our 'food'... the feast that awaits us that our Father wants to put on our plates. May I never feel so filled that I miss the ultimate filling!

She's hungry. I am too. We all are. We have need because we're made for something to do....

I'm hungry, Lord! Show me, Father, what You want done!