The Driving Force of Hunger

Well, this is a good place to be. This is a good place to be. I've been blessed already to be here. Thank you for making this a priority in your world and being present, because we'd look a little silly up here if none of y'all were here. So I appreciate you coming. It's going to be a wonderful time. I give honor tonight, certainly, to your district leadership. Brother Boyd has been a friend to me, and I love him and honor him, and your district board highly. And certainly to Brother Elms, who just took us someplace a little while ago — I thank God for that. Amen. This praise team is amazing. These guys are awesome.

For those of you who don't have quite as many candles on your cake, let me explain something to you. There are moments in life that you really know you're getting older. The doctor starts using the word "cholesterol." You start getting AARP stuff in the mail. Social Security suddenly matters. But I don't know if I've had a moment I felt much older than when that profoundly gifted man who was just up here singing said — and I quote — he's fixing to lead "Amazing Grace," and said, "If you know it, sing it." I don't know when I felt any older than right then. I thought, "You mean there's folks that don't know?" Wow, I may need a nap after that one. I'm hurting bad. And I saw some of the young guys pulling the lyrics up on their phone so they could sing. I'm like, "What is — wow?" That hurt. I'll get over it, but that wounded me deeply right there. I just got to tell you.

I want to direct your attention tonight to Second Kings chapter 7. I'm very blessed to be here. Brother Galoney, so good to see you. My flight was such that I could not get here in time to be with you for your service today. But we have connected before at San Diego, and I just honor him — his service, both, you know what, I'm going to get it in the right order: his service to the kingdom and his service to the country. Amen. Amen.

Second Kings chapter 7 and verse number three: "And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die." Thank you, Sherlock. Appreciate you figuring that out for us.

These guys are driven to what seems a really not very bright course of action. Four unarmed, sick guys go walking out into the face of an army that's almost innumerable. That doesn't make much sense. You know why they did it? One reason: hunger. I'm going to preach tonight about the driving force of hunger. Amen. You can be seated. God bless you.

I will begin tonight by introducing you to a horrific, terrible villain this evening. This horrible one of whom I speak is one of the most reviled creatures in many of our lives. And no, I'm not talking about the devil right now, but one who deserves our loathing almost as much. He is the cause of manifold health challenges and more than a few failed New Year's resolutions. His name is Ghrelin. Now, I realize that most of you have not heard of him, but you've all experienced his attacks. In fact, some of you may be suffering from his assault right now. I have his picture. Can you give me the first image up there? This is him. There he is. You see, ghrelin is the hunger hormone. This foul substance is produced by certain cells in your gastrointestinal tract. And when it is released into your system, it causes your stomach to react and contract, and produce those embarrassing grumbles and rumbles that signify to those seated near you that, as soon as this preacher gets done, I'm heading to the food trucks. It causes that gnawing, twisting discomfort in your middle that promises to be still in exchange for a Snickers.

And here's the thing: it's beyond your control. You don't try to get hungry. Nobody sits down and goes, "Okay, this moment, get hungry." It's not an act of volition. You don't consciously think about feeling hungry. It just kind of comes on you. You ever met one of those people that says — and I dislike these people profoundly — "You know, I forgot to eat today." What is wrong with that person? I might forget where I left my children, but I've never gotten to the end of the day and gone, "So, I've got this nagging thought. There's something I meant to do. Oh, yeah — I haven't eaten." What? Those people — well, I don't like them at all, because something's wrong with them, first of all. But it's just — hunger happens. It just comes on you. Particularly when you come to service and the preacher's ignorant enough to talk about it. Some of you weren't particularly hungry at all about five minutes ago. Right now, you're pretty sure you could eat a fillet of mule if you had some ketchup.

But see, here's the thing. In reality, our affluence in the US makes most of us relatively unfamiliar with hunger in the truest sense. I know what we mean. I know what we say. We come home, and dinner's an hour later than we thought it was going to be, and we say, "I'm starving." Look around. Most of us are not. And while I recognize that there are some in this country that suffer from its effects — and I don't minimize their suffering — largely it's something that we know very little about in a systemic way. And yet, in spite of that fact — in spite of the fact that the doctor looks at you and says, "You need to lose some weight" — in spite of that, ghrelin plagues us multiple times a day. Every few hours, whether we're actually in need of nourishment or not, our thoughts turn to food. We can't go without it for any significant length of time before our minds are consumed with the idea of sustenance. I've never studied it out in any kind of scientific way, but I am of the opinion, based on a cursory observation, that the second day of a fast lasts 167 hours. That miracle of the sun standing still repeats itself somehow.

Because you see, my dear brothers, there is a compelling force in hunger. And I'm just going to jump right to the point now. I've got you softened up a little bit — got at least three of you smiling. Let me just jump right to the point. I would to God that men in our churches were as hungry after God as we are after fried chicken. I would to God that on a Sunday, if you don't get down in the altar and get doing business with God, you'd leave there, and there'd be a little spiritual ghrelin that would start working on you, saying, "Hey, slick, you forgot something." There needs to be something down in our spiritual belly that rises up and says, "You ain't prayed today." There needs to be something that rises up in us and says, "Hey, you didn't worship like you should have today." You know what would bless your pastor? A bunch of hungry men. You know what would turn your church around? A bunch of hungry men. You know what would change the dynamics and the course of your city? A bunch of apostolic men that are not camping around the fact that you talked in tongues 28 years ago, but you get up and say, "Give me this day my daily bread. I'm hungry." I would to God that when we fail to spend time with Him, when we fail to commune with Him, when we fail to think about Him, we would get to the end of that day and be at least as miserable as we are when we didn't get around to having lunch. Oh, that there would be a spiritual ghrelin which would grip our souls and scream at us and say, "You have not nourished the most important part of who you are. You have neglected to feed properly that eternal part of you this week. I'm going to gnaw at you and bug you. I'm going to keep you up until you get up and pray." "Oh, I couldn't sleep last night. We were on a fast, and I was hungry." Something about that hunger kept me awake. Something about that — okay, let's just be real. You ever laid down in bed and got to thinking about that crate of ice cream out in the freezer? Anybody honest enough to admit you got up out of bed? The others are lying. I was laying there, and I thought I was done, and then something down there growling got the nudge of me and said, "Hey, dude, you're still hungry." And I couldn't just go to sleep and call it a day as long as hunger was speaking. I wish to God there'd be some apostolic that, you'd lay your head down at night and say, "Man, I didn't read my Bible today. I can't go to sleep like this. There's some hunger working in me." You understand what I'm saying? There's got to come something that drives it. It's not guilt. It's not that I feel ashamed. It's that I'm hungry after God. Oh, that spiritual appetite would be born in us.

Without it, we may develop a prayer habit, but we'll never develop a prayer life. Without it, our spiritual man will endure the frightful irregularities of a feast-or-famine regimen, where we're real close to God for a little while, and then He's distant and cold for a long season. Without it, the motivation to serve Him well that is born in a Sunday night service will give way to the busy life on Monday, and we'll find our time with Him less and less common.

God help us as Apostolics. I want to tell you what I'm concerned about among us. We are very experience-oriented as Pentecostals. We remember the night we got the Holy Ghost. We remember the night we got baptized. We remember this night when God did something for us. And those are wonderful high-water marks, and I thank God for them. But folks, I'm a little concerned that we are so experience-focused, we are relationship-weak. I'll show you my proof. I'll show you my proof.

I pastored for 15 years. I'm a recovering pastor. I'm a morning guy. I got up early one morning. I was driving to work, driving down to our church. It was really early, a little before 6. I'm driving down there, and I pass, on the way from my house to where our church sits, a few different congregations — not Apostolic, just of all stripes. And I drove past a particular church. I will not name the particular group it's aligned with, but the truck in front of me — there was a pickup in front of me — and he turned his turn signal on, was turning in there at about five minutes till 6:00 in the morning. And I looked as he's turning in, and the parking lot is full of cars. I turned in after him. I did. I just wheeled in. He got out of his truck. He looked at me. He didn't know me. He said, "Hey." I said, "Hey, I got a question for you." I said, "Dude, what's going on?" He said, "Men's prayer." Now, he caught me on the wrong day. This was a Tuesday morning. We had just had men's prayer on Monday night, at a convenient 7:00 in the evening. And I didn't have as many men in my prayer meeting as that church that's never talked in tongues had at 6:00 in the morning. You know why? Because they're hungry, and we're satisfied. You know why we're not hungry? Because we went to the Holy Ghost dessert bar on Sunday night, and the choir sang, and we had felt God, and we got so tanked up that we figure we're okay until Wednesday. I'm saying, "God, help us." There's people out there that don't even know truth, and they're hungrier after God than we are. I plead with you, man: let somebody rise up and say, "I'm going to get after God. I'm going to get more of God. I'm going to get hungry. God, infuse our systems with some spiritual growling that drives us to You."

See, I'm kind of all over the map right now, but many years ago I was in the youth department. Many years ago. And I went — my first year there, Brian Kinsey, one of your pastors, was the youth president. I was the promotional director, and he sent me out to 11 district conferences that year. I went to Texas — it was one of them I went to. And they told me, "We'll have a seat for you up on the platform, you know" — it's just metal folding chairs — "and they said, we'll have a card up there in your name." So I went up and found my seat, and I'm just curious who's sitting beside me. Just curious. Now, if these names don't mean anything to you, you will not be able to fully appreciate the impact of what I'm about to tell you. But I look to this side, and it's James Kilgore. He's got stories about sleeping in chicken coops and praying for three days in the attic of his church, and started 400 churches, or whatever. So I'm going to look over here, hoping it's like an axe murderer or something. I look over here: O. R. Fauss. His dad started the other 400 churches in Texas. The man could preach conviction. Just unbelievable. And I'm sitting between the two of them.

Brother Fauss preached that night. I've heard people say, "Oh, he stepped on my toes." No, he didn't. He broke my knees. He gutted me. I repented of stuff I never even did. I come back — he comes back and sits down, because his knees were bad, and he sat down in that chair, and I looked up at him. I said, "Brother Fauss, I've just got a question. There's something I don't know. I need you to help me." I said, "Your generation, elder, has something that my generation doesn't have. It's not the Holy Ghost — we got the same Holy Ghost. It's not truth. It's just, you've got something. Maybe it's just experience." I said, "I know there's no shortcut to experience. What is it that you men have that we don't seem to have?" And he said, "Well, I can answer that simply." I said, "Please, Elder, tell me." This is exactly what he said, man. He said, "Your generation loves the presence of the Lord." He said, "But my generation loves the presence of the Lord." He said, "It's all a matter of how you spell it." He said, "Your generation loves the P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S: a new job, a new car, a new house, a big church. You love it when He blesses. Bless me. Bless me. Bless me. Bless me. He said, we didn't have anything. They were throwing tomatoes at us. They were calling us holy rollers and trying to run us out of town. But somewhere along the line, we fell in love with the presence of the Lord."

I'm just asking some apostolic men to say: you know what I got to have Sunday? I got to have a touch of the presence of God. You know what I got to have on Monday? I got to have the presence of God when I'm driving to work. And if I don't get it — if I don't feel it — I'm going to get so hungry that I'm not going to stop until I get a touch of His presence. Would you let your hunger express itself for just a minute? I don't have to have a present. You don't have to give me anything else. You've already been good to me — but I want Your presence. Don't take Your presence from me. I've got to get into the presence of the Lord.

All right, watch. So the land of Israel, at the time of our text, is under siege from Syria. The city of Samaria has been surrounded by these pagan people, and the inhabitants contained for a lengthy season. Trade had been cut off. No one could come or go. Supplies no longer rolled through the front gate. Their fields surrounding the city were not accessible for them, either for agriculture or for tending and harvesting their flocks. And so conditions in the city grew more and more dire. As the rations ran low, desperation set in. Things previously unacceptable for consumption were now fought over and highly desired. Give me the next slide. So hungry were the people, that a man would part with 80 pieces of silver just for the privilege of picking the flesh and the hide off the head of a dead donkey. Five pieces of silver would gladly be surrendered just for the privilege to dine on about a cup of dove's dung. You see, my dear brothers, unsatisfied hunger leads to terrible consumption. Unsatisfied spiritual hunger will point us toward carnal pursuits. If my spirit does not passionately pursue the holy things of another world, then my flesh is given to gravitate toward the putrid things of this world. And as terrible as that sounds, the horror in Samaria did not end there. Pacts were formed in which parents would kill and eat one's child on one day and the other's child the next day — because people with unsatisfied spiritual hunger often turn on and consume their own.

But outside the gates there are four men equally hungry, but not morally adrift. They were lepers. They had nothing going for them. No one wanted them around. "Popular" was the last adjective to be applied to them. They sat outside the city, and their hunger began to speak to them. "I'm miserable. I could seriously do some damage to a Double Whopper about right now." Another one dreamily said, "I can almost smell brownies coming out the oven right now." Third guy just kind of whimpered to himself and said, "Fresh baked bread. Fresh baked bread." "Fresh food trucks. Food trucks." But then the fourth guy said, "I can't live like this another Sunday. I'm tired of feeling like this. There's got to be more somewhere than what I've got. And I'm not going to sit here, and I'm not going to sit on a church pew and backslide. I'm not going to sit on a church pew and die. I'm not going to sit here, just because I got friends with me, and continue to deal with this hunger. I don't want donkey's heads, and I don't want dung — but I do want something. And so I'm going to rise up, and I'm going to march out in the face of the enemy. I don't know what it might cost me. I don't know how it's going to turn out. I don't know if any of you are coming with me, but I'm too hungry to sit here." "Are you crazy? There's an enemy out there." "I know — but if I sit here, I'm going to die. If I don't do something, it's going to be over for me. I can't keep this up any longer. So I don't care if you come. I don't care if you stay. It's not about your hunger. It's about mine. And as for me, I'm not going to let the enemy hold me hostage in my hunger. I'm going to rise up and march. I don't know what God might do. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I'm not living like this anymore."

The fascinating thing about this story to me is: it is their motivation that interests me. They didn't go because they were brave. They went because they were hungry. They didn't go because they were curious. They went because they were hungry. They didn't go because they were adventurous. They went because they were hungry. They didn't worship because they were showing off. They worshiped because they were hungry. They didn't go to the altar because peer pressure took them there. They went because they were hungry. They weren't faithful because they were trying to score brownie points with heaven. They were faithful because they were hungry.

I don't want to shame you into doing anything, but I'd like enough hunger to rise up in you that says, "You know what? I'm getting to that altar tonight. He may be done. He may not be done — but I'm not going to sit here and die." I'd like hunger to rise up in you that says, "I'm going to worship. There ain't no music playing. It doesn't matter. I'm hungry. I'm going to get in touch with God. I'm just too hungry to live." You don't understand: I've been sitting on the back row, like he preached, letting the women carry the load. Not any longer. I'm hungry. I know it's easier to just sit there. It's easier to try to tune it out. It's easier to just fit in with the others. But at some point, sir, you've got to rise up and say, "I can't live like this. I can't do this. It's been too long since I talked in tongues. It's been too long since I felt the touch of God. It's been too long since I prayed on my way to work. It's been too long since I got my Bible out and put the sports section away. It's been too long since I turned off the football game and tuned into heaven. I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I'm hungry."

I can't help what you do. You can visit, and go to the back, and go to the food truck. I can't control what you do. But as for me, I'm not going to live like this. And watch, even better: I'm not going to die like this. Your pastor ought to struggle on Sunday to get to the end of his sermon, because a bunch of hungry men rise up and say, "I got to touch God. I got to touch God. I got to touch God." When the first note plays on Sunday, you ought to be out of your pew with your hands up — not because you're putting on a show, but because you're hungry. And if you get hungry and you start marching, God will make the difference. You don't have to be scared of your enemy. God will make the difference. You're going to lead that whole city into something. Those four men brought a blessing on their whole city, because they let their hunger drive them to do it. You could turn the spiritual tide of your entire church. You could turn the spiritual climate of your entire city, if you just get up and say, "I'm not going to sit here and die hungry." You keep going — I'll say what I want.

You know why the prodigal came home? You know why the prodigal son came home? It's not because the hog lot stunk. It's because he got hungry. If you've been away from God, we're not going to make you miserable by condemning you. But if you get hungry, there's not a force in hell that can keep you from running back to the Father's house. If you get hungry, there's nothing in your past that can stop you. If you're hungry tonight, God will be waiting on you. Just run to Him. Run to Him. Run to Him.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." Get hungry. Get hungry. Get hungry. Get hungry. Come on, my brother. Push a little bit. Push. Fight through that thinking habit. We've got two minutes — let your hunger drive you. Let your hunger drive you. Young boy — I get it. I know how we're geared. So many of you are looking at me right now going, "I wonder what he's going to do next." That's not the question. Heaven is looking at you saying, "I wonder what he's going to do next." I wish you'd just get lost in this moment. I wish — not just the few that are right up at the very front — I wish from here to the back, for just a moment, every man in this house would let your hunger express itself for a couple of minutes. Whether that means walking off in the corner of the building by yourself, where nobody can hear what you say to God, or whether that means getting on your face, or throwing your hands up and hollering, or shouting. I don't care what you do. But I wish everybody in this house, for just a few minutes, from the front to the back, every man would set this place on fire by expressing your hunger.

Hey — the good news is, he might have been willing to go alone, but he didn't have to go alone. They went together. They expressed their hunger together. I wish you'd connect with some guys around you. Join up together. Let's express our hunger collectively. They went out into that battle together. "You pray for me; I'll pray for you. Let's worship together." You need to get some men in your church and rally together and say, "Sunday morning, you and me, we're going to lead the worship. You and me are going to be the first ones in the altar. We'll do it together." Come on, men. Even — I'm glad you're willing to go alone, but you don't have to go alone. Join up with somebody near you and pray for them like you'd want somebody to pray for you. Lift your voice like a bunch of Holy Ghost Apostolics know how to do, and pray ye one for another. Hunger, hunger, hunger. Go, go, go, go, go. Hallelujah. It's okay. Turn around. Turn to somebody else. It's all right. It's all right. It's all right. Pray for somebody else in your church. Pray for somebody from another church. It's all right. We're going after this thing together. We're in this thing together. I'm desperate. I'm desperately hungry.

"God, take me out of my comfort zone. Rearrange my priorities. Change how I spend my days. Change what I have appetite for. Change what I gravitate toward. Change what I fill my mind with. Change what I feed on in this world. Change what I love, and change what I hate. But God, I'm hungry after You. Change who my closest friends are. Change who I run with. Change what I talk about. Change how I live. Change how I worship. Change how I give. Change how I pray. Change how faithful I am. God, I'm hungry. I'm hungry. Nothing satisfies unless I get in Your presence." Go, go, go. "What do You want me to do while I'm here? There have been too many donkey heads in my life. Too much dove's dung that I've been dining on. I've been pumping that into my— That's not what I'm hungry for. That's not what You designed me for, as an apostolic man. I'm not supposed to be feeding on corruption of this world. That's not what I'm hungry for. God, help me turn my diet away from those nasty things of this life, and set my focus on You."