November 2020 — pg. 29
My wife, Barb, and I have a terrible time
choosing a restaurant. Even pre-pandemic,
when it was an “easier” task, we had
difficulty arriving at a mutual choice. Barb is a lover
of Mexican cuisine, and I am into Italian fare. Usually
eating out means one of us caves and lets the other have
their way.
There are certain foods either of us will not eat.
Barb is a Hawaiian pizza afficionado. I, however, am
so appalled at the thought of pineapple on pizza that I
would have to be literally starving to eat it. Otherwise,
no sirree — not in a million lifetimes would I touch
something so sacrilegious to the sanctity of pizza.
“I would have to be starving.” Hmm. I’ve never
starved in my life. I don’t know what it means to be
starved of food. I’ve heard stories of people who are,
and they will take just about anything offered to them
to ward off the certain death they face without food.
Have you ever starved? No, I mean really?
When it comes to spiritual hunger, we’re still in the
“restaurant preference” phase. We want what we want,
but aren’t ready to receive whatever it will take to satisfy
our hunger. We’re sharing the driver’s seat with God,
and, like Barb and I, we’re insisting we have our say in
what we receive. Speaking frankly, desperate times call
for desperate prayers, but they must not have any terms
or conditions attached to them.
Think of manna.
It wasn’t what the Israelites wanted. It wasn’t what
anyone ever imagined. It wasn’t based upon their
preferences. It was food — God’s food — not theirs,
not Egypt’s, and not what they could even conceive.
Israel cried out to God with their own menu choices.
“The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the
Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat
and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought
us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to
death’” (Exodus 16:3).
Now think of our prayers that surround the
pandemic, the election, and our social struggles. We’re
bickering over pineapple on pizza. We’re “praying” our
menu toward heaven and expecting God to serve us
what we believe will satisfy our limited understanding
of hunger.
Hear the Lord.
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I will rain down
bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out
each day and gather enough for that day. In this way
I will test them and see whether they will follow my
instructions’” (Exodus 16:4). Do you and I even know
what prayer is when it’s rooted in spiritual starvation?
Can we craft language for prayer that doesn’t make any
demands of God, offer suggestions for how to fix the
world, or embody our personal ideologies or agendas?
We will know prayer that is truly rooted in hunger
and thirst when we see outside ourselves, looking upon
a spiritually famished world, look upward as a beggar
in need, and say, “Father, we will accept from Your
hand whatever you would feed us. Feed us rebuke or
correction — struggle and challenge — whatever You
will, but we’re starving and recognize that only You
have the answers.”
Feast on humility.
“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then
feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your
ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not
live on bread alone but on every word that comes from
the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3).
Friends, it’s time to stop insisting that we have a say
in the “restaurant” of our choosing. We’re hungry —
starving really — but are we hungry enough to “eat”
whatever is set before us?
And that’s my viewpoint.+
Brett Heintzman is the publisher of LIGHT +
LIFE through his role as the communications
director of the Free Methodist Church –
USA, which he also serves as the co-director
of the National Prayer Ministry. Visit
freemethodistbooks.com to order his books
“Becoming a Person of Prayer,” “Holy People”
(Volume 1 of the “Vital” series), “Jericho: Your
Journey to Deliverance and Freedom” and “The
Crossroads: Asking for the Ancient Paths.”
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