He Made The Wanting Too

He is tired in a way that sleeping does not touch, and he has worked out what it is, and it took him about fifteen years.

It is not a hard life. He has a hard enough life and that is not this. What it is, is that he has spent his whole adult existence in a low grade war with his own wanting, and a war that quiet and that long will hollow a man out without ever showing up as an event.

Somewhere in his teens he took in an idea. Nobody put it to him in a sentence and he could not tell you which sermon it came out of. The idea is that wanting is the flaw. That a person's appetites are the leak in the boat, and that the spiritual life is essentially the business of getting them smaller.

So when he wants anything, there is a second beat that comes right after, and it is not gratitude. It is suspicion. He wants a second helping and something goes on alert. He wants to be told he did well and something calls it pride. He wants rest and something calls it laziness and he goes and does another job.

He has prayed about all of this. Out on the water, in the truck, at his grandmother's grave, and in a church with people who love him and have never once known this about him.

And a friend said, meaning it as help: brother, this might be one to fast about.

And what moved in him was not hope. It was a kind of grim readiness. Here was permission for the war he has been fighting all along.

If you have been at low grade war with your own appetite for years, come and sit up here on the porch. I am going to name the wound before anything else, because that is the honest order.

What that teaching cost you

Let us name it before anything else, because it deserves naming.

Fifteen years of treating your own hunger as evidence against you is not a small thing. It does not show up as a crisis. It shows up as a man who cannot enjoy a meal without a running commentary, who cannot accept a compliment without deflecting it, who cannot rest without earning it first, and who is exhausted in a way that no amount of sleep will reach.

And nobody meant it. That is worth saying too. Somewhere back there somebody was trying to teach you about self control and what landed in a teenager was something else entirely.

You are not the leak in your own boat, and the wanting in you was never the fault. That is not a soft word for a tired man on a porch. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit has been reading yours through fifteen years of low grade war and has never once agreed with the terms of it.

Where the appetite came from

There is a line in a psalm about God and every living thing that wants something, and it does not treat the wanting as a problem to be managed.

Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.Psalm 145:16

Look at the two nouns. His hand, and their desire.

The psalm assumes the desire. It is simply there, in every living thing, and God is not embarrassed by it and He is not asking anybody to reduce it. What He does is open His hand over it.

That is a picture of a God who made appetite on purpose, the way He made hands and weather and the tide, and who feeds it rather than shaming it. A creature that wants is not a creature that has gone wrong. It is a creature working exactly as it was made.

You were made wanting, and the making of it was His. I am not saying that to comfort somebody who is tired: it is what the psalm states about every living thing including you (Psalm 145:16), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who turns it from a verse read at harvest into something that changes what a second helping feels like.

So what is fasting, if it is not the war

Here is the honest answer, and it is not what the grim readiness in you was hoping for.

Fasting is not a campaign against your own appetite. It is not punishment and it is not the soul finally getting on top of the animal. It is not a payment and it is not the missing piece. It is the body joined to a prayer that was already being prayed, and it is a person taking a hunger they already have and pointing it somewhere.

Notice the difference. The war says: this wanting is wrong, make it smaller. This says: this wanting is real, and it is equipment, and it can be turned.

You are not being asked to fight anything, and there is no enemy in this. Scripture says every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a straightening of the shoulders rather than a footnote.

And nothing on this page will ever ask you to hurt more. There is no plan here, no length, no kind, no schedule and nothing to complete, and nobody here admires anybody for going without, and there is nothing holy in emptiness. Anybody teaching that the harder the better has handed you the same idea that took fifteen years off you.

Now something said plainly, and for you it matters most of all. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with eating, if you are underweight, unwell or simply unsure, speak to your doctor before you go without anything, and let their answer be the answer. And a man already at war with his own appetite needs feeding, not another campaign. You are not one step further from God because of what a doctor said. Scripture says the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9), and the Holy Spirit has never once come in a smaller measure to anybody on account of a body.

And if this week has more in it than a page can carry, if you are frightened for yourself, put this down and ring somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight. That is not a road around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose.

The hungers that were never about food

Here is where this becomes yours today, with a full plate in front of you.

There is the reach for the phone in the first quiet second. There is the wanting to be told you did well, which has been called pride for fifteen years and is mostly just a person wanting to be seen. There is the pull toward the reply that would end the argument, the noise you put on so the house is not silent, the wanting to rest.

Every one of those is an appetite God made, aimed at something smaller than Him. None of them needs beating down. All of them can be turned.

You have a dozen chances a day to pray with your whole self, and not one of them requires a war. The word says a man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary afternoon on a porch the place it actually happens.