8 Encouragements to Grow Your Appetite for God’s Word

One summer, I was responsible for a team of high-school-age summer missionaries. They were helping with children’s outreach opportunities through area churches, so I would drop them off at the church on Sunday evening and pick them up after their last kids’ club on Friday. After a few weeks of regular contact, I began to notice an alarming weight loss in one of the girls, but when I asked her if she was okay, she assured me that she was. I wasn’t convinced.

My young friend had an eating disorder that stifled her appetite and caused the mere notion of eating anything to be a horror to her. Obviously, I had to notify her parents, and she was unable to finish out the summer with us.

God has created us with built-in appetites, designed to keep us healthy, but the existence of eating disorders of all kinds proves that our appetites are malleable. We can suppress them, let them run wild, or ignore them—all to our eventual harm. However, we can also cultivate our appetites in ways that lead to robust and vibrant living.

When we see the suppression of a normal, healthy appetite, we respond with alarm and horror. Medical intervention becomes necessary. But what about our spiritual appetite? Are we ever alarmed by a listless appetite for God’s Word?

When we see the suppression of a normal, healthy appetite, we respond with alarm and horror. Medical intervention becomes necessary. But what about our spiritual appetite? Are we ever alarmed by a listless appetite for God’s Word?

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Hunger for the Bible is a powerful metaphor supported by God’s directives to Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the Apostle John to “eat this book.” Psalm 63 speaks of soul satisfaction using food imagery: “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night.”

Certainly, this is biblical permission to pay attention to the health of our soul’s appetites and to meet that hunger with what Eugene Peterson described as “spiritual reading, reading that enters our souls as food enters our stomachs, spreads through our blood, and becomes holiness and love and wisdom.”¹

The book provides first-person testimonies from people who have learned to dig into the life-giving nourishment God provides, step-by-step help for getting started, and a list of resources on the nature and trustworthiness of the Bible and how to study. Devoting one chapter to each form of encouragement, Kristen Wetherell graciously walks her readers through eight appetite-stirring helps for the hungry soul:

1. The vision begins with recognition of our lack of hunger. (“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” Psalm 34:8)
2. God wants to answer the prayer for a robust, holy appetite. (“Incline my heart to your testimonies.” Psalm 119:36)
3. Our time in the Bible is actually time with Jesus. We meet with a divine Person in the pages of scripture. (“[God] has spoken to us by his Son.” Hebrews 1:2)
4. We have lost sight of the privilege of reading God’s Holy Word. (“But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.” Psalm 81:11)
5. We feast on the truth most effectively when we receive it in community. (“Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching…” 1 Timothy 4:13)
6. Creatively change up your reading routine and spend ample time thinking about what you have read. (“Whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.” John 6:57)
7. Be patient as you wait for the effects of biblical nourishment to take hold in your life. (“I am watching over my word to perform it.” Jeremiah 1:12)
8. Pay attention to the rumblings of spiritual hunger every single day. (“Your words were found, and I ate them and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.” Jeremiah 15:16)

Walking in the way of Jesus, the believer needs continuous contact with the source of soul nourishment. Like any growing organism, if a Christian develops more activity than her roots can support, life will fade from sheer starvation. Paying attention to our spiritual hunger and meeting it with regular and robust intake of the nourishment God has provided is the joyful path to satisfaction in Christ.

Holding you in the light,

In Help for the Hungry Soul, @KLWetherell points the soul-starved to the Bread of Life. @crossway

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1. Eat this Book. Eugene Peterson, Eerdmans’s, 2006. ↩︎

Tomorrow! The Newsletter: Living Our July Days

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Many thanks to Crossway for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.