Have you ever noticed the difference in your grocery bill when you go shopping for food hungry as compared to shopping right after you consumed a satisfying meal?  When you’re hungry, everything looks good followed by lots of extras thrown into your shopping cart.  When your gut is full and satisfied, nothing looks very special and rarely do items jump out at you.  Noticeably, you are not fooled by the colorful posters or the, “Buy three, get one free” offers.  “Three…I don’t even want one,” you tell yourself.  You have no appetite and so grocery shopping is simply a necessary exercise.  Without an appetite, your brain is not sending signals to your eyes which otherwise would be busy scanning to and fro for what might taste good immediately.  Your mind knows your stomach is full and satisfied and the need for sustenance is turned off.

Now let’s say your private sin issue is lust of the flesh and you find yourself in the middle of an adult bookstore.  Your eyes are taking in all of the skin exposed in magazines and movies and your brain is in overload recording all of the images.  It is a feeding frenzy of lust and your flesh is hungry for more.  You go deeper into the store where you find the “best of the best,” feeding your soul like it is starved to death…emaciated.  But back up.  If you were “full” rather than depleted would you even hunger for such filth?  Would you have sought out such a seedy, unclean and defiling place?  If your spirit was full of the spirit of Christ and you fully knew His love, approval and acceptance would your lust-filled hunger be satisfied and would this need be turned off?  You and I choose to fill these natural appetites with God or with ungodly, sin-filled desires.  Proverbs says an empty stomach drives us on (Proverbs 16:26b).  What drives you?  What are you passionately hungry for?