spiritual hunger on Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance gives assent to be who I am—a small, limited person with bents toward sin as well as hungers for holiness—and allows me to live with all my contradictions, because my will, at least on...

Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You ...

Self-indulgence is the enemy of gratitude, and self-discipline usually its friend and generator. That is why gluttony is a deadly sin. The early desert fathers believed that a person’s appetites are l...

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Healing begins at the place of hunger.

AIM Commentary “Mary’s ‘Magnificat’ has been banned from public proclamation in many countries due to the revolutionary nature of these verses. ‘He has brought down rulers from their thrones’? Just...

The more I use stuff to fill up my hungers, the more distance I put between God and myself. And as I continue to fill up my infinite hungers with finite things (when I run through the Starbucks drive-...

“Mary’s ‘Magnificat’ has been banned from public proclamation in many countries due to the revolutionary nature of these verses. ‘He has brought down rulers from their thrones’? Just imagine this plas...

George Fox as a youth was religious enough to meet all earthly standards and was even proposed as a student for the ministry. But the insatiable God-hunger in him drove him from such mediocrity into a...

Our hunger is the exile’s hunger, but it is also the first step in our homecoming. We hunger, and in doing so learn the shape of our emptiness is the world’s great emptiness in or to prepare room for ...

The engaged mind, illuminated by truth, awakens awareness; the engaged heart, affected by love, awakens passion. May I say once more - this essential energy of the soul is not an ecstatic trance, high...

Almighty God, too often we settle for brokenness in our lives. Rather than offering forgiveness, we hold onto offense. Rather than pursuing justice, we turn away . Rather than offering mercy, we c...

People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic securit...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? The Lakeside Community On the Sea of Galilee, it is not unusual to see from one shore to the other.  It is essentially a lake, and as is often the ...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? The Lakeside Community On the Sea of Galilee, it is not unusual to see from one shore to the other.  It is essentially a lake, and as is often the ...

When we are denied the very things our hearts long for, we learn to long for the one thing that will never be denied us, God Himself.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

The soul can also manifest physical symptoms of need. I like to think of it this way: Just like my stomach growls when I’m hungry for physical food, my spirit tends to growl when I’m in need of spirit...

Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites, [instead they ought] to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spir...

If you aren't hungry for God, you are full of yourself. That's why God cannot fill you with His Spirit. But if you will empty yourself, if you will die to self, you'll be a different perso...

Leader: Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! All: Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands...

It works like this: we hunger spiritually and are then filled and become supremely satisfied. The satisfaction then makes way for a deeper spiritual hunger, a further filling and blessed satisfaction....

A hunger for beauty is at its heart a hunger for God.

In The Phantom Tollbooth , there is a special kind of food called “subtraction stew.” Produced by a mathemagician, this stew makes you hungrier after you’ve eaten it. Our three main characters don’t ...

You have made us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.

Everybody’s got a hungry heart.

Leader: O God, you are my God. I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. All: My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land without water. So I gaze at your glory, your presence in every mome...

To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that “something more” is, but they nonetheless desire to celebrate it. They are still hungry and thirst...

I always have a funny story at communion time that underscores that no one is perfect, and that communion is not for perfect people but for hungry people.

TV is imago populi—all of society’s trendy appetites incarnated into visible form and broadcasted.