03 Apr Breathing Room – Day 16
Psalm 145:16 (NLT)
When you open your hand,
you satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.
We have a bit of preoccupation with food these days; gathering up at the grocery whatever we can find, hoping we’ll have enough to last this 30-day Shelter-in-Place (SIP). I wrote yesterday: we’ve got to have food to survive. Likewise, we all have hungry hearts that need feeding. We’re wired by God to be satisfied by God with God himself; but we mistakenly try to satisfy our heart-hunger with things that can’t fill us.
The first verse I ever memorized was Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Young and foolish as I was, I thought that if I just did the right things to “delight” God (like go to church, say a prayer and not cuss) then God would give me what I wanted.
Like a child first learning to talk, I repeated those words without understanding what they meant. My heart was sick, malnourished from feeing it things the world told me I needed in order to be happy and satisfied: love, marriage, money, beauty, popularity, etc. So, I went about trying to find those things for myself, like a pandemic-motivated hoarder running all over town looking for hand-sanitizer, toilet paper and a pound of ground chuck. I was an idiot. Little did I know that God would use the first words of Scripture I spoke to be the living and active catalyst for transformation of my childish, selfish heart.
Friend, it’s not beneath God to allow us to succumb to idiocy in order to learn some things (wait for it), the hard way. So, let me try and help you avoid a little pain and humiliation by exhorting with these words:
❤️ I am the Lord, your God…Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.” Ps.80:10
❤️ Why pay money for something that will not nourish you? Why spend your hard-earned money on something that will not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is nourishing! Enjoy fine food! Isaiah55:2
❤️ My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Ps.84:2
❤️ I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread. Job23:12
Let’s come to God, hands and mouth wide open, asking him to fill our empty, malnourished lives with what our heart truly hungers for: HIM!
I love y’all!
xo P♥️
For more about The Breathing Room, click here to listen to Season 1, Episode 4 of the #LifeOnLife podcast.