Are You Hungry?

God, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure. You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing. Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I’m back home in the house of God for the rest of my life. (Ps 23, MSG).

Not long ago, God turned my world upside down by revealing Himself to me in a way I had honestly run from – as Beloved, Lover, lead in the Dance. He spoke to me about learning to trust Him and experiencing what love is really for.

Since then, I’ve had amazing times of intimacy with Him, times when He has drawn me closer than I believed possible. He also has shown Himself to be more kind and trustworthy than I ever knew.

At the same time, the closer I get to Him, the more He has been able to reveal of what yet remains in me of old patterns that are standing in the way of still greater intimacy.

One of those areas is control. When I was about 10 years old, I experienced a deep trauma that left me grappling to find ways to regain a feeling of control over my body. Controlling what was going on both inside and outside of me was the only way I could think of to feel safe.

One of the first methods I turned to was restricting how much I ate. As I drastically cut my caloric intake, I began to feed instead on the satisfaction I felt at being in control. The hunger pains I felt actually became reinforcers to me: if I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t working at it hard enough. If I did give in and eat more than I planned, I forced myself to vomit it back out, gaining back my feeling of control. I took pride in how little I ate and how small I got, not realizing the damage I was doing to my body.

Now, over 25 years later, Father has revealed that although I stopped the abnormal eating habits after I met Him, those patterns had been deeply ingrained into me – and they went deeper than food.

I remember one church service in particular. The pastor was speaking on cravings, and many of the folks who prayed for those who responded to the message were declaring freedom from those things. When one of them came to me, however, she stopped, looked at me and said, “For you, Karen, it’s freedom to eat!”

As I crumpled under the power of God, she continued to pray: “It’s time for you to enjoy; no more guilt! Freedom to eat and to enjoy what God has for you.” Another person proclaimed over me, “No more starvation diet!”

At the same time, Father gave me a heart for pouring into other people and for intercession. Holy Spirit has been taking time with me and teaching me how to reach in and pour out from the depths of His heart.

I love intercession and praying for others; I love the feeling of life pouring through and out of me. And while I also love the feeling of Daddy ministering to me, it usually is accompanied by voices telling me this “food” isn’t for me, and it’s more spiritual to starve anyway.

But now I have begun to wonder if my comfort with pouring out is because I feel more in control of that than of His pouring in. Beyond that, is the satisfaction I feel at being emptied really just ugly pride again?

In fact, I realize now that I had found a way to almost “ration” myself – I would allow Father to feed me just enough that I felt I could meet the needs in front of me. But at the end of an intense work day I would be so drained I’d be near tears.

Empty, but still in control.

Emptying ourselves for others is part of the life to which Jesus has called us. But Scriptures tell us He took time to be with His Father before going out to minister. Walking around with a few drops of His Presence when the needs around me require saturation isn’t following Jesus’ pattern.

It comes down to this: trusting my Shepherd means letting go of my control to allow Him to feed me however He wants. It means trusting He really does want me to partake of Him.

It means it really is ok to be full.

Forcing myself to stay in the Presence of God and allowing Him to fill me without feeling guilty feels much like the times I sat on the floor weeping into my bowl of oatmeal as He taught me, one bite at a time, that it was ok to eat – and to enjoy it more than the hunger.

But when I look up, I see Him standing there, hand outstretched, inviting me to come closer still. So I take a deep breath, allow my hunger to rumble as loudly as it wants, and then open up as He begins to pour . . .