What are you craving?

by James Scott, Jr. 0 Comments

We’ve all experienced a craving for something.

Many people have experienced a craving to be loved.

And many more have had a craving to be appreciated.

Some have had a craving just to be liked, others have craved to know genuine friendship.

We can foster a craving for anything, but food is one of the most common types of cravings we experience.

Maybe it’s for sweet foods, or salty snacks. Perhaps it’s a craving for carbohydrates or possibly spicy foods. Maybe you’ve yearned for fatty foods like burgers, cheese, or fried foods; or very differently, you found yourself longing for sour foods. Or caffeine, or chocolate, or …

We’ve all experienced some kind of craving, which is simply defined as an intense desire or longing for something.

For some people, the root of their cravings is found in a serious, harmful eating disorder, as described by Sherm Nichols:

“There’s an eating disorder called pica. Over the years, doctors have reported cases of people with pica eating dirt, chalk, clay, paste, paint chips, paper, cardboard, ice chips, and styrofoam. In one case, a 22-year-old woman showed up in the emergency room with undigested pieces of socks in her stomach. Many of these weird cravings are all caused by the same thing: a lack of iron in the diet. In other words, the body craves iron, and people try to satisfy that craving by eating all these other things, which, by the way, don’t contain iron. Think of it – an inner, unidentified need prompting people to eat all sorts of weird stuff. Even though they crave them, they’ll never satisfy the real need that the body has, which is iron. Once these people start getting enough iron, the cravings go away.”

If you want to really mess up someone’s life, fostering a corruptive or destructive craving within them would be an effective way of doing it. C.S. Lewis understood that fact and used it as part of his story in “The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe.” In that book, the White Witch played on Ed’s cravings for pleasure and importance. She lures him by fostering a craving for enchanted Turkish Delight. He loves it! The more he eats, the more he wants. She promised to make him a king of Narnia, and then he could eat all the Turkish Delight he wanted. Edmund was destined to be a king of Narnia, Jadis knows it! The Witch promised him the same thing, but by the wrong route.

Edmund was corrupted by his craving, like people who suffer from pica are harmed by theirs.

We, also, can be harmed if we allow ourselves to “love the world” because doing so only fosters destructive cravings. It’s a deadly truth the Apostle John warns about:

“Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world,” 1 John 2:15-16.

Like the White Witch, the evil ruler of the fallen world system, Satan, tries to lure human beings away from God by fostering corruptive, destructive cravings in them. In fact, in Matthew 4:1-11 we read about how Satan tries to tempt Jesus himself, and how so? By trying to stir corruptive cravings!

So, John warns that having a love for this world results in the fostering of at least three destructive cravings — sensualism (“… a craving for pleasure …”), materialism (“… a craving for everything we see …”), and a craving for egotism (“… pride in our achievements and possessions …”). Like an iron-deficient person devouring a sock, such cravings don’t provide any positive sustenance to our souls but actually harm us.

The most healthy craving we can have in our lives is a craving for God himself. In fact, that’s a message we can find throughout the Bible:

“Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!” Psalm 34:8.

“As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I go and stand before him?” Psalm 42:1-2.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,” Matthew 5:6 (NIV).

“Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life,'” John 4:13-14.

“Jesus replied, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty,'” John 6:35.

“Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness,” 1 Peter 2:2-3.

“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth,” Colossians 3:1-2.

Like those who suffer from pica lose their odd and hurtful cravings once they have the iron their bodies need, when we fill our lives with a craving for God and His kingdom, our desire for corruptive and destructive diets change to that which can truly fulfill, and nourish, and quench, and satisfy our souls.