Feed the Better Hunger

Someone asked me recently, “How do we remain faithful to the Lord when the world is just so distracting?”

Without saying it, I knew this conversation was about input. Between my phone, computer, podcast app, and television, I can get to the end of a day and wonder what in my life fed my faithfulness to Jesus that day. Sometimes, the answer is next to nothing. I was too distracted.

Where’s your attention?

I feel that everything in the world competes for my attention. Social media. Television. Books, Podcasts. People. Work. Advertisements. Shopping. You name it, I will turn away from the task at hand and look at it if the notification setting is loud enough or the advertisement is glossy enough. Even in the tiniest of margins of my time, I try to give my attention to everything all the time. But none of the things competing for my attention and affections offer what my soul needs. Television might be amusing, but it’s not restful for my soul. Scrolling through social media might give me a “fix” as I see what everyone else is doing with their lives today, but it doesn’t bring me contentment with the life God has given me today. If I never pause the many different streams of input from the world, I will long for those things more than I long for Christ.

So when asked, “How do we remain faithful to the Lord when the world is just so distracting?” I had to consider where I place my attention. What I fill my ears with. Where I set my gaze regularly. How I fill my time.

I replied, “You have to feed your faithfulness, not your longing for worldly distractions. You might be hungry for both, but silencing one isn’t enough. You have to feed the better hunger.”

Cultivating Taste.

In my experience as someone who likes to cook and try new foods, there are many flavors and seasonings that are acquired tastes. The more we partake of them, the more we cultivate cravings for them. Coffee is a good example. I confess I began the habit of drinking coffee at a young age, but I certainly didn’t like it at first. Twenty-five years after that first cup, I crave the dark, bitter brew as soon as my alarm goes off in the morning. Over time, my daily coffee consumption moved from overly-sugared, heavily-creamed cups of weak coffee to dark roast, nearly black cups of coffee from good quality beans. The more I drank coffee, the more I enjoyed it. Sometimes I drink it for the benefits of a caffeinated boost (especially during college!), but mostly, I simply enjoy the comforting, daily rhythm of pouring a strong cup of coffee early in the morning before opening my Bible to read and pray. I enjoy my coffee.

When it comes to our struggles between spirit and flesh, we must consider which one we’re enabling. For what are we cultivating a taste? Feeding the better hunger—the God-given hunger for righteousness and steadfastness—will help us to follow Christ faithfully in a world that competes for our attention and affection. We may desire long-term faithfulness to Him on some level, but in practice, we give all our attention to anything but Him. We feed the wrong hunger. Rather than meditating on Scripture, we turn our face to our screens to be entertained and amused. Rather than seeking the Lord in prayer, we jump up to check our phones for notifications or try to squeeze in a few minutes of work while it’s quiet. Rather than dedicating Sundays to worship God with our church families, we try to wring spiritual rest from sleeping in or bingeing our way through a television series instead. We may not realize it, but we’re feeding the hunger that does not contribute to our faithfulness to Jesus. Rather, we’re growing our tastes for the world and all that it pretends to offer. The truth is, the world offers neither rest nor contentment. The allure of our distracting world, specifically as it calls to us through media, usually cultivates discontent, anxiety, and longings we can’t medicate, no matter how we try. The more we feed ourselves with whatever is being proffered from our screens, the more we’ll hunger for it. We’ll hunger but never be satisfied.

Feed the better hunger.

When we feed the better hunger, the one that is sometimes muted by world’s noise, we’ll find what we’re looking for. When we feed our faithfulness to Jesus with what He has given us, we’ll not only grow in steadfastness, we’ll also find lasting peace and contentment. He has given us His Word and free access to the Father as satisfaction for our souls.

In Psalm 34, David writes: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” Again in Psalm 63, he says, “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.” In Psalm 145, David praises God: “You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing…[you] fulfill the desire of those who fear [you]” (see Psalm 145: 16,19). In Psalm 119, the words of the Lord are compared to honey, rich with sweetness (Psalm 119:103).

The peculiar thing about feeding your faith with the truths of Scripture and prayer is that your tastes begin to change over time. The more you saturate your days with the things of God, the more you’ll long for those things. And, paradoxically, you’ll be satisfied in that hunger. Your faith will grow, you’ll hunger more for friendship with God than with the world, and you’ll find contentment and peace in the saving work of Christ at the cross. The more you memorize and meditate on Scripture, the less you’ll look to the distractions of the world around you. A life saturated in Scripture dilutes a taste for worldly things. When you feed the better hunger, you acquire a taste for the One who never disappoints, never abandons, and never changes. You’ll hunger and thirst after righteousness, and the Lord will satisfy your soul more than anything that this world might promise.

A life saturated with Scripture dilutes a taste for worldly things. Share on X

 

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash