Starving for God, But Settling for DoorDash
In this message from Pastor Levi Lusko, we look at gluttony as more than overeating and uncover how easily our appetites can become disordered, asking food to comfort, control, or satisfy what only God can. From Eden to the table of Jesus, Scripture reveals that eating is never just neutral. You either eat yourself to death, or you eat to the glory of God. This message will help you:
- Understand what gluttony really is beneath the surface
- Identify how food may be carrying too much weight in your heart and mind
- See how Jesus modeled both feasting and fasting
- Uncover what your cravings are really trying to tell you
- Redirect your hunger toward the presence of God
Today, we're going to talk about the sin that Jesus was accused of. What do you think that was? The sin that Jesus was accused of. Luke chapter 7, we're told, Jesus speaking, the Son of Man feasts and drinks. And you say, he's a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is telling us, he was accused in his day of being guilty of one of the seven deadly sins, the sin of gluttony. Gluttony. There's still time to leave if you don't want to hear this message, the sin of gluttony. That's what we're going to be talking about. As a guide to our time together, we're going to try and define gluttony. We're going to try and understand what's under gluttony so that we can reorder our gluttony. And then we can learn to actually indulge our gluttony. That's what we're going to do here. That's sort of our outline, OK? So just so you have a sense of where we're going. To frame our thoughts and to better understand how God wants us to think about food, I've had you turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul speaking. He says, so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Our goal today is to understand how
we can move from what is normal in our culture and in our world and in our lives, what our flesh is going to point us to, what will take no resistance. Let me tell you something. You don't have to set out to be a glutton. If you just live in this world following your appetites, that's just automatically like it's like a moving sidewalk. You just stand there and, you know, it's just that's where, that's the default, OK? But we have to be fish swimming upstream to go against the current that's going to be the norm in this world to eat, like Paul says, to the glory of God. So Lord, would you help us to do that? Would you open up our eyes to see the power in your word? Would you give us strength, God, to make the hard yes where we need to? And we pray, God, that you would help us to see that as we follow you, your way is always better. And you have our best in mind. We love you. We thank you for what's going to happen in this time of Bible study. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You know, horses don't know how to throw up. I think that's interesting. They can't vomit. You will never see a horse, ugh.
They don't have the ability to gag. Horses can't gag. Horses can't throw up. There's a number of reasons for that that you could look into if you're interested. But this makes a horse particularly in danger of overeating and overfeeding. They don't know when to stop. They don't know when to say no. If they get into specifically rich food or a lush green pasture, if they find their way to knocking off the lid where the grain is stored, they can eat so much it damages their feet. Or of course, they can actually continue eating until their intestines and stomach burst open. They can eat themselves to death. You know what they call that? They call that grain overload. Or here, this is the craziest one. They call it the buffet effect. The buffet effect. How seen do we all feel? Turns out horses celebrate Thanksgiving, too. And of course, that picture, eating to excess or eating immoderately, is what we all think of when we think of gluttony. I can't be a glutton. I wouldn't eat like that, at least not when anyone's watching, right? But the Bible takes it, of course, deeper.
Here's how the Bible defines gluttony. Caring too much about food or drink. Caring too much about food or drink. If you were with us last week, we discovered you don't have to have money to be greedy. We're like, darn it. I wanted to think the greedy people are all those evil rich people, right? And yet the Bible says you might be greedier than you think. You don't have to have it to actually want it or to love it. It's like that way with gluttony. There are two different ways that we're boiling it down. Throughout church history, there's like a number of them. But you can really boil it down to two categories, two different ways to be a glutton, all right? You can be a glutton by looking at food and drink excessively or obsessively. Now, of course, excessively is like the horse. Om nom nom nom nom nom. Food coming. Nom nom nom nom nom. food frenzy, right? That's excessive eating. Well, quantity is really what we're talking about here. But the second is maybe just as convicting. It's not just about portions. It's about eating obsessively. Are you obsessed with food? To be obsessed, to care too much. Caring about food, great.
It's amazing. Caring too much about food, it's disordered, right? So you can be a glutton by eating too much, but you can also be a glutton by eating too little then. You could be a glutton by being too picky, where food just has become too important to you. So our mental model needs to be challenged, because we only look at Brendan Fraser in the movie The Whale, right? My 600-pound life when I was a kid, a show they could never make today, the biggest loser. You know what I'm saying? This is what we think of. We just think, oh, the movie WALL-E. You know what I mean? These people on these motorized hovercrafts, just with their big gulps, just never, their legs don't even work anymore. And it's scary how telling that picture is, like a preview of where culture has been heading. And yes, those things are all, for sure, examples of gluttony. But what about just being a bougie foodie? What about only eating clean, organic, paleo, caveman diet, right? Have the compulsive need to scan every label in everyone's closet, where it's checked against some AI database, where surely they have no dog in the hunt, so you can virtue signal about how you only eat ethically sourced, non-toxic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you religiously smear beef fat on your face.
We get it. You're better than us. I'm out for everybody today. Gluttony, biblically defined, though, is not about how much you eat. It's about how much you think you are going to get from the way you eat. Your way is the way. And how you approach food and drink is going to bring something to you that's somehow going to fulfill you. So we're not talking today about a body type. We're talking about a heart posture. Gluttony is fundamentally idolatry because it looks to food to give you what only God can give you. Looking to food to bring to you what only God can do for you. It's a disordered love. So we would talk about eating disorders, right? And we would think anorexia, nervosa, bulimia, yeah, for sure, but so is morbid obesity. That's an eating disorder. And I would say so is a compulsive, rigid, almost neurotic obsession with calorie counting in whatever regard or whatever way that you would approach eating. These are disordered loves. So here's what the Bible says when it comes to food. It says we have two choices. Every time we think about eating, which is like some of you right now, you're already, even right now,
multitasking about where you're going to eat next, right? We have two choices when it comes to the subject of eating and drinking. We can either eat ourselves to death or we can eat to the glory of God. And you only get to pick one, all right? So every time you eat, you're either moving towards death or eating to the glory of God. Next week, if you want to plan an absence, we're talking about lust. We're going to talk about sex. And I had earmarked one of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes on this subject, but I had to actually move it to this week because there's a little bit of a crossover, right? C.S. Lewis has this great line to help open our eyes up to how whack our sexual appetites can become. He talks about strip clubs. This is where I get the nice letter from somebody who should have checked their kids into church, right? So he talks about paying money to go to a strip club and just look right ahead. No one will know I'm talking about you, OK? So he says, how crazy is it to pay money for an image bearer to take their clothes off of you that you're not married to, right? That's what he's saying. He's like helping us. He's trying to shock us into seeing that's someone's daughter, someone's mom, that's not your spouse,
that's someone's son, that's someone's brother, not your spouse, right? How crazy is it, surrounded by other image bearers, to desecrate and defile the image of God, the God within each of us by doing that and obviously treating sex in such a way other than how God intended it to be treated, right? And he says, imagine you were transported to a culture where people went into clubs and they slowly. They lifted up the curtain. But instead of a naked body under the curtain, there was just a hamburger, a juicy steak sizzling on a grill. And everyone in the crowd was like, ooh, putting dollar bills up, right? Like, ooh. And he says this. He says, you would only have two conclusions you could possibly come to if you encountered a culture like that. You would think, have these people never eaten in their lives? Are they starving to death? Or you would conclude, he said, that something has gone very wrong with their appetite for eating. Now, it's a powerful question, line of thought. But I don't think it lands in our culture today, because he's basically describing the food network, right? How weird would it be if you lived in a culture where like, mm, that's like Guy Fieri, you know?
Like, what are you talking about? This is Gordon Ramsay here, guys. There are 100 TikTok accounts dedicated to nothing but the food you can eat at Disney World. You see what I'm saying? There is so much food porn online that we just like, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. They call it a feed. And we are consumers. Something's gone very wrong with our appetite. You know, now we're living in a unique moment where there's these drugs you can take, Ozempic and others. One in eight Americans are now taking one of these GLP-1s, many probably for valid reasons, and yet probably some just for like the shortcut. I don't want to have to actually challenge my diet. Is there just a pill I could take? Is there a shot I could? Is there something I can do just to shortcut my way to skinny? I was talking with a friend. And every time I had ever eaten with this friend, they would always order a glass of wine, and they didn't. So I commented on it. And they said, oh, it doesn't taste good anymore, and it doesn't have an effect on me anymore because I'm on this Ozempic. It's awesome. And he kind of quipped, like, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, right? And then I googled it a little bit because I was interested.
Because I know right now we're in this moment where alcohol sales are plummeting, right? Like Napa wineries are scrambling. Everyone's coming out with their NA beer. Spider-Man's got one, Tom Holland. Everyone's rushing to now get in on how Americans are drinking less. And there's actually some people saying it actually could just be because of how many people are on these drugs. What a crazy moment that people are being forced to decide between being beautiful and being buzzed. What a crazy thing that two of our gods are actually competing. And which one will win? In Paul's day, it was this kind of revelry. The Roman Empire was saturated with feasting. Seneca writes, at the Roman feast, they vomit so they may eat. But then they eat so they can vomit. That's what inspired, by the way, that scene in The Hunger Games, where at the Capitol, they drink that pink drink after revelries. So when their stomach's all full of lobster and filet mignon, they can go vomit it out just so they can have the pleasure of eating all over again. Turns out that the puke and rally culture of frat life is nothing new under the sun. Here's my question. Why are we so hungry?
Why are we so hungry? And what are we looking for when we turn to fat, salt, sugar, or bringing that number down one click on our fitness age from our wearable and bringing our sleep score up? Like, just whatever these compulsive things we track that we look to for identity and purpose. The answer might surprise you, but the title of my message, I might as well give it to you now. Starving for God, but settling for DoorDash. Starving for God, but settling for DoorDash. Jesus said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And then he added, for they shall be filled. But there might need to be an asterisk on they will be filled, because he might as well have said, they will be filled when they hunger and thirst for righteousness unless they shove a handful of chips in, unless they mindlessly scroll on TikTok. They will be filled unless they have a protein bar from Quest to grab, because it tastes like cookie dough. Also, no it doesn't. Another name for the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. But how can we ever interact with him if we're looking to food to do his job? And this book presents to us a different theological approach that can lead to a whole different way of thinking about eating. OK, so what I'd like to do is just take a few moments, and let's eat our way through the Bible, starting in the beginning, when the first commandment is ever
given. You know what the first command is? Eat. Some of you are going to say, don't eat. No, no, that's the second commandment. First commandment is, hey, Adam, Eve, I made this whole beautiful world full of food. Go nuts. Eat it. Enjoy it. It's a gift for you. The second command was, hey, one tree, one specific tree, do not eat from this. And guess which one they wanted to eat from? They had access to it all, but they wanted the one they couldn't have. And of course, the devil played on this desire and said, oh, God's trying to keep you back from what's actually going to be good for you. If you could eat from that tree, your eyes would be open. If you could eat from that tree, your eyes, you'd be like God, right? It was the first time a Happy Meal was ever marketed. And he was encouraging them to eat their feelings, and they fell for it. And so we have sin that comes into the world. How? In connection to eating. The first sin was an edible choice. Then you have the flood.
The flood is arguably the most emblematic, catastrophic moment of God's wrath poured out against unrighteousness. And we think about the exceeding violence on the flood and the wickedness. But it was characterized, according to Jesus, by eating and drinking, a way they approached eating and drinking. Similarly, Sodom and Gomorrah, a time when fire and brimstone rained down on a specific location, we always like, oh, yeah, because they were exceedingly perverted, sexually true. But Ezekiel says it was also connected to how they approached food. Esau sold his birthright, missed out on the chance to be in the Messianic lineage for a bowl of soup. The children of Jacob sat around a pit, and they ate a meal while they watched their brother cry out, whose robe of many colors they had stripped from him. The nation of Israel ended up in Egypt because of a famine. And Joseph, the brother they sold, having the presence of mind to help Pharaoh stockpile food during good years so they would be there during famine years, and fulfilling hundreds of years old predictions, they ended up enslaved to a cruel king in Egypt while God gave the Amorites time to repent. But when time came for Israel to be brought out of Egypt back into the promised land, he did so through a meal. The meal was called Passover, where they ate the flesh of a lamb slain for their sins
while the covering of blood over their homes protected them from the angel of death. They were kept alive miraculously through 38 years in the wilderness heading towards the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey by bread that fell from the sky. And they only one time, and it was not a good day, got quail, OK? So the only two things they ate for 38 years was manna and quail. It was not a good time to be a vegan who was gluten-free. So all they got was bread, and they got a little bit of meat. But the way they got the bread was incredible. They would wake up in the morning, it was there. And they were told, this is all you need. They were certified that everything they needed in that manna. But they were warned, do not try and take enough for tomorrow. Only for today. Don't be gluttonous. Don't, I'm going to get more, because it won't hold. If they tried, it turned to worms in the pot when they went to get it the second day. God was trying to get them to see what we need to do. Give us this day, our daily bread. I'm going to look to you, God, every day. You are my supply. I'm not trusting in my stash. The way they got the quail was they complained against the manna.
They got sick of it, right? Because there's only so many things you can do. But manna pancakes, and mannacotti. So they said, we want onions. We want meat. We, they actually said to Moses, we were free to eat meat in Egypt. You were free to eat meat as slaves? Can we talk about revisionist history, right? And so God gave quail up to their knees, and the people ate it till it spilled out of their nostrils. But God rained judgment down. Many died on that day, and the place where they died was called the grave where you crave in the Hebrew. The grave where you crave. They were kept alive and brought into the promised land, of course. And the manna stopped the day their crops began to grow naturally. God had given them a law to guide their time in the land. A lot of it included ceremony about what was clean, what was unclean, how to eat, how to not eat. He was trying to get into their heads what Adam and Eve failed to get into their heads. And that is we can eat in a way that honors God, or eat in a way that glorifies our appetite. They eventually didn't obey that law, got cast out of the land in a captivity. And there, the Hebrew children. And Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
honored God in a cruel king's land by choosing to not eat the delicacies and the wine that were attached to the ceremonial worship of his false gods. And they chose to subsist on veggie straws. And they were healthier and buffer than all the king's horses and all the king's men, even though they obeyed. Fast forward to the return back to the land, Malachi, just before John the Baptist shows up eating locusts and wild honey, tells the people, you guys stop giving your tithes, your offerings. Now there's not food in my house. OK, now coming to Jesus's time, of course, food's everywhere because Jesus, the son of man, came eating and drinking, so much so that he was accused of being a glutton. He wasn't, but he was accused of it. He introduced God's kingdom one meal at a time. Would sit with anybody. He kicked off his ministry with 40 days of fasting in the wilderness, where the first test was, will you look to earthly food to supply what you need? Turning stones into bread. And Jesus, of course, passed that test, succeeding where the first Adam had failed. His first miracle to kick off the party of 3 and 1 half years was turning water into wine, showing the endless supply of what can be looked to as the best you could ever find, better than anything on Earth,
what he's about to open up. And then after the wine comes the bread, the largest in scope or scale ministry miracle he ever performed. All four gospels tell us Jesus fed 5,000 out of just a little boy's lunchable. And what happened there? Moses's manna miracle backwards. Moses said, you can't keep it. Jesus said, bag it up. Mine's good tomorrow. Mine's good the next day. Mine's good the next day. Religion will only taste good in the moment. But I'm saying what Jesus does, grace and truth, that's good tomorrow and the next day and the next day. But listen, you can clean your life up for a moment. You can hold it together. You can put your Spanx on and feel good today. But that religion don't play out. But grace is good on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday. It's good every day, right? Trusting in Jesus for what only he can do. This is all to illustrate Jesus showing the church as a table for the world to come in. And that's why he kicked off going to the cross by having a meal. Passover looked backwards. Communion looked forwards to his return. He described the church as a feast
that the whole world is invited to. And after he rose from the dead, he gave Peter a dream where he said, you can eat bacon now, as a way of saying, let's go get everybody. Ceremonial laws are no longer how we approach our relationship with God. First question Jesus asked after he rose to his disciples, once he said, hi, and you can stick your hands in my hole on my side, was what? You guys got anything to eat? I'm starving. I've been dead all weekend, right? And they gave him both something sweet and something savory. And he liked it. But this is only possible because he hung on the cross and said, I thirst. He hung on that cross. He hung on a tree, deprived to make us whole for what we had emptied out in our own hearts and souls based on what we took off the tree. What we took off the tree to eat, gluttony, he hung on the tree to pay the price for. In Revelation, we started in Genesis, but now we're already, can you believe it? We're already in Revelation. Whole Bible in just one sermon. In Revelation, history's last chapter, we are ushered into a party called the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. And we're even told what's on the menu, aged wines
and fatty meats, the likes of which you've never tasted before, as Eden is once again restored. And we have access to the tree of life that has a different flavored fruit for every month of the year, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. And we will be with God forever. He will be ours, and we will be his. We will once again have access to the throne of Almighty God. So the point is, eating is never a neutral action. All across our tour of eating through the Bible, have we not discovered eating's connected to worship? God and the devil both have meal plans for you. Now, I know we're all talking about, we've got to let him cook, let him cook, let him cook. I mean, you better be real careful who you let cook for you. If I can control your food, I can control your future. How you eat, what you look to to put into you, and what that's going to do for you, that is connected to what your deepest cravings actually are looking for. Whole sermon in a sentence. Groceries are good, but they ain't God. Groceries are good, but they're not God. And neither is getting your body fat to the single digits and keeping it there. That's culture. And culture has an end that's called destruction. The Bible says Philippians 3. Living with your God as your belly, flat belly, fat belly,
eight-pack, ab belly, right? Living with your God as your belly, it's destruction. It's shame, because you're living with your mind on earthly things. And newsflash, it will never work. The more you eat the bread of this world, Jesus said it in John 6, the hungrier you become. What's the solution? Well, spoiler alert, the alternative to eating yourself to death is eating to the glory, and fame, and majesty of God. That I'm going to approach how, and when, and why, and where, and with who I eat based on what God thinks. I want to do so as worship. Looking at Jesus, and I sort of just went through the meals in the Gospels, I identified some particulars that stand out to me about how Jesus approached food, always living for the glory of his Father. And here's what I came up with. He looked at food as fuel. He looked at fuel through the lens of stewardship, taking care of his earthly body. It's a temple, right? We're going to look at it in the lens of community. There's not to me this like solitary rush, hurry, grab on the go, just eat at my desk, right? That's missing out on so much that's meant in a meal. The communal aspect of breaking bread to the Jews, when I eat some of a loaf of bread and you eat some,
that loaf is coming into our body. There's a unity to eating together. There's relational beauty. It's meant to be viewed as outreach. The church is this table. The chance, look, look, look, it's so easy, separated by our screens of our phones, to be angry at, I don't like them, I don't like them, I don't like them, I don't agree with them. But who are you bringing into your table who you disagree with on lots of different, that's OK, tell me your story, let me look in your eye, let me care about you. This beauty of dependence on God for my daily bread. The rich man said, if I can just get enough, I'll have so much, I'll never have to worry about it again. No, no, we're not trying to build higher walls, but bigger tables. And I'm dependent on God daily. What about the suffering of those in the world who don't have? How is that factored into what you're consuming? James said, the rich are going to hear on the last day, look, look, look, your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion are witness against you, and are going to eat your flesh like fire. You heaped up treasure in the last days. We're living in light of the Lord's return, so there's got to be dependence on God, outreach, mindfulness of others.
And then listen, this is such an important part, eat the donut later, joyful dependence. That as we eat, there's a joyful celebration. There's a joyful, how good is God that he gave us honey? How good is God that he gave us sweets? They're unnecessary. They're extra. There's a beauty to something that's savory, right? So everything in moderation, including moderation. The fasts ended, and there's feasting that began, to the glory of God also. So a few closing thoughts. Don't eat to be alive. Eat because you are. Don't eat to be alive. If your go-to thought is eating, eating because I'm low. Eating, eating, I just feel angry. I feel lonely, right? If you find yourself, I didn't get invited, I'm in the scroll, everyone's doing stuff without me. I'm just going to just mindlessly eat. I'm feeling sad, just automatically pull through the drive-thru again. We're not eating our feelings. We're not looking to happy meals. No, no, listen, we're looking to be fully alive people, eating because we are. GK Chesterton said, it was specifically about alcohol, but I think it applies to a larger way. Never drink when you're sad.
Only drink because you're happy. We're not looking to take an edge off. We're not looking to get through the week. We're only, he said, turning to these things as the gift of life because we've done deeper work and actually look to things that can actually connect some dots and bring some healing. And then and only then we're looking to these things, not as numbing agents, not as medicine, not so we can be enough. But once we are, then we can, yeah, we can enjoy the gifts of God freely, richly to enjoy. Here's to the King. Here's to our coming King. Here's to what he did. This is the basis for joyful celebration. And then we fast. We don't just feast, we fast. We fast because the Bible says we will never experience some breakthrough without it. Jesus, don't make Jesus a liar. He said, when you fast. He didn't say if you fast, did he? He said, when you fast, so he presupposed, if you don't ever deprive yourself of the gift of life, Have yourself a physical food for a season, you will never be able to fast. for a time for prayer. You've made Jesus a liar in your life. He said, when you fast, so he presupposed,
You're not doing what he said would bring intimacy if you don't ever deprive yourself of the gift of life, and closeness to your bridegroom in the season of separation you will never be able to fast. before he comes back, before the wedding supper. Fasting reveals attachment and enhances intimacy to Jesus. Richard Foster, he said, fasting will show you what you're under the control of. Woo. You don't know what you got till it's gone, right? And then you find out. It's like Paul said, look, I can have, I can not have. I just don't want to be under anything. It's power. And if I remove it for my life, for us, the season between now and Easter, we're going to say, hey, let's give ourselves over to fasting. Let's pull food out of our diet. And again, there's lots of different ways to approach it. You can pull food out sunup to sundown. Some people say the best one is to eat lunch and then don't eat again till the next lunch. That'll give you 24 hours, but half of them you're sleeping. That's the training wheel, see what I'm saying? Or you could choose to say, I'm not eating anything at all Wednesdays and Fridays. Or you could just pull all meats, sweets, and alcohol out of your diet. There's lots of ways to approach it. But again, if you're not actually
getting hungry and pulling some things out, you don't ever get to explore what you're under the power of. And when we have attachment revealed, we get to go, oh, I'm actually more dependent on this than I thought. Wow, I'm going to re-examine that carefully and prayerfully in community moving forward. But whatever you find, listen, here's the caution. Once you get excited, the next temptation is to become the Pharisee. The Pharisee started out good. Always remember that. So whatever you discover that's now your new passion moving forward, just don't turn your personal conviction into heavy-handed legislation. Because God's going to give you some personal revelation. And the next thing is, it's good because it starts out evangelistically. But then it can end up like, oh, well, I guess you're not as spiritual as some of us. I think, quite frankly, microplastics, non-GMO, I think Red 40, it's the new food sacrifice to idols. We think we're better because we give our kids whatever you give your kids that tastes nasty. And I'll give my kids a Capri Sun. You know what I mean? Don't come at me. It is what it is. I don't like paper straws. I'm just saying, don't turn your personal conviction now into how everybody should see.
Is that, are you hearing my heart? I just don't want you to turn into a jerk. And lastly, we close here. Don't try to suppress your appetite. Indulge it. You know, the intensity almost always leads to, like, binging anyway. You know, I'm never doing that again. It's like, 12 minutes later, you know? But when it comes to these appetites, that's why I said, we're trying to move from defining it to indulging it. The question is, what's under it? Lennox, my seven-year-old, he's eight now. When he was seven, we were at a restaurant. I could not get the server to bring the check. And I was doing all the things. Every time he came by, knife and fork across the plate, folded my napkin into a swan, you know, everything. I couldn't get him to come over. And Lennox goes, dad, sit back in your chair. Puff out your stomach. Then he said this, like a bloated buffalo. I didn't have to try hard. He said, and then rub it and make, like, a pained expression and just rub your stomach. And he goes, just trust me. So I was like, weird, but I'll try it. So I did it. I'm not joking. I opened my eyes.
The server was there with the check. I didn't even ask for it. He's like, are you done? And Lennox just sits up in his chair and goes, works every time. I'm like, works every time? You have no life experience. What do you mean? You've never paid a check in your entire life. He was using his stomach as a signal. Like, you say, hey, listen, listen, your stomach, which wants to be your ruler, it's speaking to you. It's telling you deeply. Because what you're craving for is not another slice of pizza. What you're craving for is not one more dress size down. What you're actually, my friend Lisa Turkers likes to say, you actually were made to crave, but not food on Earth. You're deep down craving for, I could just get the perfect meal, the perfect diet. It's not anything on Earth, because man was not meant to live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God. What you're actually craving is Him. What you actually need to sink your teeth into is His presence. It's His glory. It's His holiness. He is the bread of life.
And if you feast on Him, you'll never hunger again. What you're actually hungry, what you should be looking for is to seek Him in a sanctuary. His loving kindness is better than life, better than marrow, better than fatness, better than filet mignon. There is a sweetness. His pleasure is fullness of joy evermore. So the next time you're thinking of turning the door dash when you're feeling low, ask these three questions. What am I trying to fill myself with? Why doesn't it ever satisfy me? And what am I really hungry for? I think you'll be surprised that it's actually God's presence. It's actually God's presence you're craving, but not just his presence, also his work. We close with wild horses. Why don't they die at the buffet? Why isn't that island on Flathead Lake called Dead Horse Island? Because they're just running around with no one to go, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. Why aren't they eating themselves to death? Here's the answer. I googled it. The answer is movement. Wild horses don't overload on things. They don't got time for that. They're always moving. Come on, you were meant to move. You were meant to serve. You were meant to give.
We've got a world to reach. We can't just sit around being Jabba the Hutt or Skinny the Hutt. We got a world to reach. And so, Father, I pray you'd help us to delight ourselves in you, what we're truly starving for, and not be settled for any counterfeit pleasure, settled by any counterfeit pleasure. If you needed this message, could you just raise up a hand? Just let me know I'm not alone in my gluttony. Thank you, Lord. Thank you. I pray for those who got their hands raised, like me, who are just realizing we look more to this world and to the things in it than we do to you. And I pray, God, repenting of my gluttony, caring too much about what I eat, how much I eat, how I feel when I eat, how much better I feel when I've been able to be sticking to an eating plan, all of that, God. I surrender it at the foot of your cross. And I just say, you're enough for me, God. You're enough for me. Thank you, Jesus. Open our eyes. We don't need to eat to have. We have, God. And so once we have, we can eat. Bless your people now. Bless, I bless your people in Jesus' name.
You can put your hands down. I want to invite anybody who's never said yes to Christ, you've never given your life to Him, to make the most important decision of your life. I'm going to pray a prayer. And if you're ready to give your life to Jesus, if you don't want to keep heading on the way to death, on the grave where you crave, heading to hell, that's where sin's taking you. If you want to go to heaven, which Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the life, all you have to do is ask. He'll give it to you. Give your heart to Him. Pray this prayer. Say, dear God, I know that I'm a sinner. I can't fix myself. But I know you can because of Jesus. So I ask you to do it now in Jesus' name.
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