Hunger for God

Over Christmas I read John Piper's book Hunger For God about fasting. It's a subject I want to learn more about and this book was a huge help. It's a subject that often comes up as I talk to my friends here. They presume we don't fast. How do I answer them in a way that best points to Jesus as opposed to somehow trying to compete with them or even belittle their fasting? Why is it that we hardly ever hear fasting mentioned in sermons or as we chat with fellow believers? 

This book, for me,  is probably one of those 'watershed' books you read every so often. There's so much I'd love to share from it but I'll just share some things. I would though really, really recommend reading the whole thing. It's not just helpful for thinking about fasting but a big challenge to how much we actually hunger for God, do we love his gifts more than we love the Giver?

(The talks that form this book can be found at desiringgod)

Piper:

Christian fasting at its root is the hunger of homesickness for God. Half of Christian fasting is that our physcal appetite is lost because our homesickness for God is so intense. The other half is that our homesickness for God is threatened because our physical appetites are so intense. First half: appetite lost. Second half: appetite resisted.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. Not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our  appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. When God describes what keeps us from the banquet of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, a wife (Luke 14.18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth.

Fasting forces us to ask repeatedly: do I really hunger for God? Do I miss him? Do I long for him? Or have I begun to be content with his gifts? Christian fasting is a test to see what desires control us. What are our bottom-line passions? Fasting exposes all of us- our pride, anger, pain.

C.S.Lewis:

The more deeply you walk with Christ, the hungrier you get for Christ.

The more homesick you get for heaven:

the more you want all the fullness of God

the more you want to be done with sin

the more you want the Bridegroom to come again

the more you want the church to be revived and purified with the beauty of Jesus

the more you want a great awakening to God's reality in the cities

the more you want to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ penetrate the darkness of all the unreached peoples of the world

the more you want to see false worlviews yield to the force of truth

the more you want to see pain relieved and fears wiped away and death destroyed

the more you long for every wrong to be made right and the justice and grace of God to fill the earth like the waters cover the sea.

If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestaion of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.