Hunger Was God’s Idea

Hunger was God’s idea. He created us with a soul that thirsts for what only relationships can quench. The Hebrew word for soul comes from a word that means “throat”—the organ through which we take in nourishment, fill our hunger, and quench our thirst. The Hebrews used physical body parts to represent immaterial aspects of our personality. Proverbs 25:25 is one example: “Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.”

As the throat craves physical satisfaction, so the soul craves personal, relational satisfaction. We long for and are motivated by a thirst for intimate involvement and union. These longings for relationship are part of our essential being as created in God’s image.

Love is to the soul what breathing is to the lungs and food is to the stomach. Without connection, we shrivel; we starve to death. With mutual, risky, giving, grace relationships we thrive. The exact center of our being is our capacity to give and receive in relationships.

What motivates us to do what we do? What impels us? In training counselors, I like to tell them, “Go where the action is.” The action is relational because we are relationally motivated. We pursue what we perceive to be pleasing.

“We have an immense void inside that craves satisfaction from powers and persons and pleasures outside ourselves. Yearning and longing and desire are the very stuff of our nature” (John Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 48).

As the Puritan writer, Henry Scougal, reminded us, “the soul of man has in it a raging and inextinguishable thirst” (Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, p. 108). We’re motivated to quench our relational thirsts.

Worship: The Holy of Holies of the Soul

We were born desiring worship. In our original design, God implanted in us a fundamental nature that must worship.

When I began working toward my doctorate at Kent State University, I decided to develop relationships as a precursor to sharing my faith. Or so I thought. Two weeks into my initial semester, our professor assigned a paper on humanistic psychology. As the class discussed our viewpoints, our professor encouraged me to share my position. “Bob, you wrote an interesting paper contrasting humanistic psychology with Christian thinking.” So much for my “go slow” approach. During the ensuing discussion, one student was particularly vocal against my views.

About a month later, in a course on counseling the culturally different, a Native American presented the guest lecture. Toward the end of her talk, she invited us to stand to worship the spirit of the four winds. Two students remained seated—myself and the woman who had vocally opposed my views in the other class. As soon as class ended, she marched up to me to thank me for not standing. “You gave me the courage of my convictions. But to be honest, I’m not sure what I believe in. You seem so strong and sincere in your faith. Could we talk about your relationship to God?”

This young woman exposed her fundamental spiritual nature. I could have said of her what Paul said of the people of Athens, “I see that in every way you are very religious” (Acts 17:22).

Amy Carmichael (1868-1951) ministered as a missionary in India for over fifty years, writing thirty-five books. Perhaps her most “famous” and powerful book was the concise “If.” In “If,” Amy asks brief questions about our spiritual life and personal relationships, then asks whether our lives are reflecting Calvary love.

In studying “If” for my book on the history of women’s soul care, I saw a number of striking examples of sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding. I share just a few snippets and samplers with you to whet your appetite.

“If I have not compassion on my fellow-servant, even as my Lord had pity on me, then I know nothing of Calvary love.”

“If I sympathize weakly with weakness, and say to one who is turning back from the cross, ‘Pity thyself’; if I refuse such a one the sympathy that braces and the brave heartening word of comradeship, then I know nothing of Calvary love.”

These are powerful challenges. I am asking myself, “Do I sympathize weakly with the weaknesses of others, or do I weep deeply with those who weep?” “Do I empower others to have a brave heart through spiritual comradeship, or do I shrink away from them and their struggles?”

“There are times when something comes into our lives which is charged with love in such a way that it seems to open the Eternal to us for a moment, or at least some of the Eternal Things, and the greatest of these is love.”

“If the care of a soul (or a community) be entrusted to me, and I consent to subject it to weakening influences, because the voice of the world–my immediate Christian world–fills my ears, then I know nothing of Calvary love.”

I am asking myself, “Am I listening to and speaking the voice of the Eternal Word, or am I listening to and speaking the voice of earthly things?”

“If I am perturbed by the reproach and misundertanding that may follow action taken taken for the good of souls for whom I must give an account; if I cannot commit the matter and go on in peace and in silence, remembering Gethsemane and the cross, then I know noting of Calvary love.”

“If I am afraid to speak the truth, lest I lose affection, or lest the one concerned should say, ‘You do not understand,’ or because I fear to lose my reputation for kindness; if I put my own good name before the other’s highest good, then I know nothing of Calvary love.”

I am asking myself, “Do I have the courage to confront my brother or sister in love or am I blunting the truth out of selfish fear and thus refusing to speak the truth in love?”

“If I do not look with eyes of hope on all in whom there is even a faint beginning, as our Lord did, when, just after His disciples had wrangled about which of them should be accounted the greatest, He softened His rebuke with those heart-melting words, ‘Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations,’ then I know nothing of Calvary love.”

“If I have not the patience of my Saviour with souls who grow slowly; if I know little of travail (a sharp and painful thing) till Christ be formed fully in them, then I know nothing of Calvary love.”

I am asking myself, “Do I see the buried image of God in my spiritual friends and patiently fan into flame the gifts of God in them, or do I impatiently believe the worse about my spiritual friends?”

Some have “accused” Amy Carmichael of being guilty of “counsels of perfection” with these “if/then” statements. That is, they think that she was being too hard on herself and her readers; driving them to perfectionistic Christianity.

I disagree. I would call them counsel of perfections in the same sense that the Apostle Paul used the word “perfection” to mean “the pursuit of Christ-like maturity.”

Amy was passionate about pursuing Christ-like maturity personally and about helping those to whom she ministered to do the same. Am I?

If not, then I know nothing of Calvary love.