Hunger is a powerful thing. Governments have learned that they can control their citizens fairly well until those citizens get hungry. As long as their stomachs are full, they'll put up with almost anything. But when they get hungry, watch out! They will resort to violence if they have to. They will do whatever they have to do to satisfy that hunger. Hungry people are dangerous.
The same thing is true spiritually. The most dangerous person in the world to the devil is the person who is hungry for God.
That's been proven down through the centuries. I've studied it myself. I've read about and examined the lives of people like Smith Wigglesworth and John Lake. I set myself to discover what they had that we don't.
I wanted to know why they had more powerful manifestations of God in their lives than we do. What I discovered was this. They were hungrier for Him than we are. They had a greater craving to know Him and see Him work than we have. They had a void on the inside of them that demanded to be filled.
God always fills empty places. He always supplies what our hearts demand.
He never holds back. To the degree we hunger for Him, to the degree we open our hearts and cry out for Him, to that degree and that degree only can He fill us. If our hunger for Him is a shallow, casual thing that can be satisfied with a nice song service and a couple of goose bumpsthen that's all we'll get.
But if our heart's desire is so deep and wide that we can't bear to live without great manifestations of God—we are sure to receive them. What we have spiritually is always a direct reflection of the degree of hunger we have.
I've been in services where I prayed for God to come in a big way. I've had Him open the eyes of my heart and show me what He wanted to do there. But then I've seen those very services fall far short of what He showed me.
Why? Because the people weren't hungry enough to receive it. When God was just getting started we were already spiritually satisfied. We got a little blessing from heaven and we were filled to capacity. Then we were ready to go home and watch television.
But it doesn't have to be that way! There is more. We can develop a hunger that cannot be satisfied just with blessings from heaven. We can receive from God a hunger that can only be satisfied with God Himself. That hunger doesn't just include God in one big sea of desire. It doesn't say, "Oh, I want a new car...and I want a new house...and I want a new dress...and I want God."
No, that kind of spiritual hunger is so focused on God that every other desire pales by comparison. Nothing will satisfy but Him.
One of the other things I've found that is always associated with hunger in the Bible is fasting. Fasting and strong desire are seen together throughout the scriptures.
I was leading a corporate prayer meeting recently and we were asking God to move on us and speak to us as He did in Acts 13. But when I read the second verse of that chapter again, I realized the people mentioned there were not only praying and ministering to the Lord, they were fasting.
When I saw that I thought, Lord, we don't even qualify to get the kind of answer they got. We want to have what they had but we haven't been willing to do what they did.
I realize, of course, that fasting can be just an empty religious activity. And when it is, it's ineffective. But it can also be an expression of the heart. If you're fasting because your heart is crying out for more of God, if you're fasting because you have a heartfelt desire to be hungrier for Him, it can bring powerful results.
Jesus said that if you fast "unto thy Father which is in secret... thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly" (Matt. 6:18).
Praise God, some people are already doing this. I can tell they are because I'm seeing in many places a new hunger beginning to rise up among people. It's not as strong as it needs to be yet—but it's stronger than it has been in recent years and I'm excited about it.
Friend, if you're not that hungry, pray to get that way. Pray until you're so desperate for God to fill this earth that you're ready to bite the back out of the pew if He doesn't. Then pray for that same kind of hunger to rise up in others.
And if you fast, make sure it's not an empty religious activity but a signal of your surrender to the Lord. When you do, you will find that your hunger for God will increase even more!