We’ve all been there.

Hunger so intense that we passed irritable six miles back. Stomach-growling, sweat-beading, all-encompassing need.

If we don’t eat soon someone will die.

There is a word for this catastrophic state of emergency: Hangry.

This, my friends, was our sermon topic yesterday morning.

When we get hangry, we will reach for the first thing that will satisfy us, even if only temporarily. Fast food, chips, sweets, or whatever. We just have to stop feeling hangry. Often, what is easy and right in front of us is not nourishing in any way, unless we’ve made a plan for it to be.

This totally applies to our spiritual and emotional lives.

When we get lonely, or are feeling unfulfilled, whoever or whatever is readily available will do.

Feeling unloved? It’s way easier to call your ex than to wait on God to comfort you.

Sexually frustrated? There’s Plenty of Fish to meet that need.

Depressed? Meet my friend Johnny Walker.

These solutions usually lead to bigger problems that leave us feeling even more unsatisfied than we were in the first place.

I am certainly guilty of allowing emotional hangriness to cosign on bad decisions.

But I don’t want to be.

Every time we choose less than God’s best, we are taking steps away from God, and the journey to get where we want to be , which for me is faith-filled, happy, and making healthy choices. I desperately want to walk WITH God, not away from Him.

The solution is to be diligent to keep myself filled with good things so that my emotional tank doesn’t get so low. If I am constantly reminded of God’s love and my worth, then I won’t get to a place where I need something RIGHT NOW to feel okay.

I need to remember the gospel, the reality of Christ’s love for me, and I need to be in community and in the Instruction Manual (aka the Bible).

God’s way is the only way that will truly satisfy because he himself IS life and created us to live with him and for him. We (I) have to be diligent not to let that truth fade and slip away.

Hanger is Danger.

 

This has been a PSA.

Ang