Archive for Spiritual Hunger
Jesus, the Healer of Broken Hearts
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If we believe that God is purposeful in His actions, then how significant is the fact that the first words of the first message Jesus preached were, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because … He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted…”? (Luke 4:18-19)
Jesus came to heal broken hearts and not only as a side benefit; it’s one of his life purposes! That’s good news because all of us who are in this world have experienced the pain of having our hearts broken in one way or another. If we look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels, we find that he moves throughout his days interacting with humanity and healing broken hearts. That healing takes many expressions. Today I want to look at how Jesus healed the heart of a woman as recorded in John 4 and what that healing means for us now.
Let’s take a look at the story.
Jesus was exhausted from his long trip. He had gone to the city well to get a drink of water. However, what followed was not a chance happening at all because we are told that Jesus “needed” to go through the region of Samaria; he was compelled to do so.
Jews did not have anything to do with Samaritans in those days. Samaritans were considered half-breeds and unclean by Jewish tradition. Yet Jesus, a Jew, chose to go through the middle of Samaria instead of making the usual trip around the area as most Jews did in order to avoid the Samaritans.
How Hungry are You?
Posted by: | CommentsWhen we fast, we get hungry. Ravenously hungry. Our flesh screams at us – EAT! Our mind and emotions kick in to tell us why we should break the fast. In fact, it is just plain funny how much hungrier we get if we are fasting than if we just skip a meal because we are busy.
And we become aware. Awareness is one of the purposes of fasting. When we fast, we quickly become aware of the power our flesh has. That is a good reminder for us. Flesh is powerful. Seasons of denying the flesh are profitable for us for many reasons.
Awareness is important for us to live a life in tune with God. As God made us body, soul, and spirit, He created us to be aware of our physical needs, our emotional needs, and our spiritual needs. We have many enemies of that awareness, including busyness which is chief for most of us. We learn to ignore the signals our body sends. We learn to ignore the signals our emotions send, and even more sadly we learn to ignore the signals our spirit sends.
Fasting ups our awareness. Jesus said that those who hungered and thirsted after righteousness would be filled. So my prayer for us all today is that our hunger and thirst would make us aware of our need to depend upon God and of the need for our flesh to be crucified. I pray that our hunger and thirst would increase our desire for righteousness for that desire leads to being filled. And nothing can satisfy us like God for we were created to be filled with Him. Allow your fasting to remind you that there is someone who can fill your deepest hunger and quench your deepest thirst.
