What Do We Hunger For?

I have a sweet tooth. Ever since I was a kid I have loved all things sweet, especially chocolate chip cookies. Just the thought of tasty morsels in a warm, soft cookie gets my mouth watering. But, as Jocko Wilink would say, those are “sugar-coated lies.” They only thing they ultimately do for me is make me want more chocolate chip cookies! In fact some studies claim sugar is as addictive as heroin. I don’t know if that is true because I have never been involved with heroin, but I can for sure say sugar is addictive! And of course, the desire for sugar over the long term has a predetermined result, and that result shows on my waistline!

That desire for sugar reminds me of a quote from AW Tozer in The Root of the Righteous,” For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers.” (p.66). In other words, over time we become whatever our desires drive us to become. Desire too many sweets, and you pay the price later in life. Desire things contrary to the will of God, and we also will reap a certain kind of harvest.

I think one the most misunderstood verses of Scripture is that familiar verse from the Psalms, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4).” Many people interpret this to mean that if I delight myself in the Lord, I will get what I want.

But in truth, it is a bit different than that. When I delight myself in the Lord, what happens is my desires are transformed to be like His desires. God never changes, but my heart can change. And when I spend more and more time with Jesus, pretty soon I find myself wanting the things Jesus wants. And what ultimately does Jesus want? For me to love Him and love others. And what could be better for any of us in the long run, than to love God and love others more than we do now?

So my question for us all to meditate upon is, “What am I becoming?” Because when we look to what our desires and hungers are, we can get a pretty good idea of what we will in the end become. We often say we want to be more like Jesus, but are desiring more of Him and less of us? More of Him and less of sin and self? When Jesus is our delight and desire, the only end result we should expect is that we will in fact become more like Him in every way. And in Jesus, there are definitely no “sugar-coated lies!”