Day 7 | What are You Hungry For?

“What are you hungry for?”

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That's the question the counselor would often ask . . .

Several years ago life came crashing down.  My perfect little world I had constructed was shattered into a million irreparable pieces.  What’s worse it was my own doing.

So it was that I entered into counseling and began the arduous task of unraveling the fabric of my life.  It was like deconstructing a house, gutting it out and tearing it down to the foundation.  It was hard, bloody, confusing, grueling, often filled with tears and raw emotion, and above all humbling.

Through the process the counselor would often ask, “What is it you’re hungry for?”

I had no answer.  I didn’t understand nor could I rationally grasp why I would engage in self-destructive behavior…behavior that would result in throwing away all that was meaningful and precious in my life.  It made absolutely no sense.

A day came when I was home alone.  Alone was not always a safe place for me.  Like a tsunami beginning to surge I felt the hunger rising up in me.  The selfish desires were welling up within me like floodwaters and I began to panic.  I began to cry out, “What am I hungry for?!  What am I looking for that is driving me to seek the very thing that destroys me?!”

And it came to me.

In that moment I suddenly realized I had an overwhelming desire to be desired.  I wanted to be wanted.  And I was trying to fill that need…that hunger…through ways God never intended.  It was consuming.  And now it scared the spit out of me.

Then came the Voice.  The voice of God.

“Who wants you more than I want you?  Who desires you more than I desire you?  I gave my Son for you.  Is that not enough?  What more can I give to show you how much I love you?”

I collapsed on the kitchen floor and began to sob uncontrollably.  For the first time I “got it.”  For the first time I began to understand who I was, where my worth was, where my identity was.

For the first time I realized I mattered because I was His.

For the first time I began to grasp how much God desires me.  So much so that He gave His one and only Son.

I say “began to grasp” because I have yet to fully understand this kind of desire…desire that required such an unimaginable sacrifice for a sinner like me.

And for one like you.

What are you hungry for?

For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.  John 3.16 (NLT)

-Kevin Baker