Thirst is something we experience when the pituitary gland secretes two hormones, one
causing a physical reaction in the kidneys and the other in the hypothalamus, which sends
a signal to reduce secretion.
We all thirst for something.
In this episode of Keep It 100, we hit the table to talk about spiritual appetites and
cultural thirst.
The conclusion will change the game for you.
Sean and Christa Smith with the Keep It 100 podcast.
I organizations
about that. Come on. We're talking about what it is to be spiritually thirsty.
And I love where you're going to take us on this episode.
It's going to be really good. You know, it's funny today.
I was looking on the AOL homepage and it said,
strange meals that people actually ate during the middle ages.
And as always, I had that little curiosity.
So I clicked and all of a sudden I found out during the middle ages,
they ate porpoise pudding. Gross.
They ate sheep private parts. Okay. That genuinely makes me like gag.
I feel weird inside. I walked away from the table.
I wouldn't have been with the Knights of the Round Table on that day. Right?
No. They ate beaver tails. Okay.
Texture issues for sure.
Peter, where are you at? They ate rabbit fetuses. What? Yes.
Oh, that's horrible. It was a delicacy during the time.
That is awful. They ate well gunk only because I don't know what else to call it.
But you know, when your cats cough up fur balls,
I guess whales cough up something and they ate it. What? In the middle ages.
Oh, I'm not kidding. This like actually genuinely grosses me out.
All right. You ready for this? Oh, come on. Where are you at? Cheesecake factory?
They had deer organ pie. Oh,
deer organ pie. Oh, in the list. I can't take any more in the list.
I tell you what, I think we can both agree.
That's like disgusting. Number one. Number two,
people definitely had different tastes back in the day. Okay.
So question for you.
What is the oddest thing that you've ever eaten?
Now, at first it was going to say liver, but to many people, that's not odd.
I just have not developed the palate. But the weirdest thing,
I was down with a good friend of mine, ET,
and he took me out in Louisiana and I ate crocodile tail. What?
I didn't even think I would like it. I picture the crocodile. I'm, you know,
a little kid. I'm thinking Peter Pan and the thing that bit Captain Hook.
Right. But guess what? It tastes like chicken.
Oh my gosh. Did it have the skin on it or was it just to me? No, no, no.
They didn't have the skin. I don't know if you get a chew through that.
That's what I was wondering. It was quite chewy, but it tasted like chicken.
It was actually good.
They always say that about like meats. They'd like,
they're like, it tastes like chicken and like weirdly enough it does.
That's like the drawer in the house that you throw everything in that you don't
really put in another drawer. Right. Right. Right. Right.
How about you? What's the oddest thing you ever ate? You know, it's funny.
I don't know if I've eaten a ton of odd things.
I would probably say the oddest thing is like S cargo.
So I did eat snails one time and actually they were just super salty,
but they weren't that bad. When you're a little girl,
do you ever think you'd eat snails? No, you accidentally stepped on them.
Right. That was always me. And then I always felt really bad, but no,
definitely never was I thinking I was going to eat it.
I can't think eating a snail. I mean, they leave what looks like snot tracks.
I know. All underground. This is not good. I know.
What's the weirdest thing you've ever drank? Well,
some people are going to be shocked by this,
but the weirdest thing I ever drank is boba tea. Right.
Some people are like, that's their daily thing and they love it.
I know all you hipsters out there are kind of booing me,
but let me just tell you right now, it is an acquired taste that I have not acquired.
You know what? I would have to be totally dehydrated and thirsty to drink boba tea.
You know what? I kind of have to agree. We're not boba fans.
And I know we might be getting booed right now. Texture. Right? It's all about
it. It is. It's a texture thing for me. I'm just like, I can't do it. I can't.
But what's really interesting about that is there is everyone is looking for
something to refresh them and people are searching for what's that great spiritual
thirst and we're in a world really trying to find out what's going to quench that
thirst. And we all know the answer as followers of Jesus,
but truly there is a collective yearning for the meaning and direction in their
life. No doubt about it.
These latter days are definitely a time of great spiritual thirst.
That reminds me of a quote by Ravi Zacharias. He says,
no matter how much we try to run away from this thirst for the answer to life,
for the meaning of life, the intensity, only get stronger and stronger.
We cannot escape these spiritual hungers.
And then the Bible says it like this in Proverbs 4.23 above all else,
guard your heart for out of it is the wellspring of life.
In other words, your appetite determines your destiny.
If I know the things that you are hungry for that you thirst for,
that you have an appetite for,
I also know what direction your life is heading.
You know, a real key for our spiritual survival is the control,
the regulation and even the redirection of our appetites because the reality is
we crave what we are so used to eating and sometimes those things are not good
for us. But in order to really develop the right appetites for us,
we have to feed on the things that are good for us.
And that might sound elementary, but it really is essential.
What you feed on is truly what you're going to cultivate in your life.
So your spiritual appetite is everything connected to your spiritual relationship
with the Lord.
And that's really what this episode is all about is that you have to recognize the
cultural thirst of today are things that are not good.
And you have to move from those things that are not good for you spiritually to
the things that are good for you.
So let's take a minute just to define what we mean by appetites in this
spiritual sense.
Your appetites are your thoughts, what you think about,
how you process, what you gravitate towards,
what pulls you in, what you're drawn by.
These are the things that we're speaking of appetites and we're saying your
appetites determine your destiny.
We're talking about what are the things that you focus on and what are the
things that are drawing you in right now.
We have certain facts about our spiritual appetite.
One fact is a true spiritual appetite.
We're talking about a true spiritual appetite as opposed to people have a
spiritual appetite.
And as a result of that, some people, they may go to a psychic, some people,
they may pursue some sort of psychotic drug experience.
Someone else may try to pursue a sexual liaison.
It's their way of trying to answer your spiritual appetite,
but a true spiritual appetite is a gift.
When I say it's a gift, it's not so much something that you can conjure up.
You can't conjure up spiritual hunger.
You only can position yourself to receive it.
That's right.
Because true spiritual hunger is a grace.
And as you wait upon the Lord and you're getting around Him,
that begins to develop in your life more and more and more.
And I was thinking about this great healing revivalist during the early 1900s
named John G. Lake.
He actually was a contemporary of W. J. Seymour, a one-eyed black man who's
the catalyst known for the great Azusa Street revival.
John G. Lake, who was used in healing tremendously, said of W. J. Seymour.
He says he was the hungriest for God man that he had ever seen.
He said that he had more in his life than any man he had met up to that point.
And he begins to describe in his book, Spiritual Hunger,
he begins to describe W. J. Seymour.
And he said that he was praying three or four hours a day and he had not yet
received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
And so he upped it to seeking God five to six hours a day in prayer.
And John G. Lake said, when he finally received the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
it glorified him and it also did the same for everyone who came around him.
Is that powerful?
That is so powerful.
I mean, to seek God that many hours and to really see the manifestation of
the intimacy he walked in is truly what propelled the healing ministry within him.
And I think that so many times we forget that personal relationship is truly the
foundation for everything that's seen in public, that the public ministry that we
walk in is just a byproduct of that personal spiritual hunger that we're
seeking in the private place, the secret place.
You know, another fact of talking about true spiritual appetite,
it really must be acted upon or it well-fade.
And here's the truth.
You feed the appetite you do have.
And when you sense the urge to draw near, you got to act on it.
Appetites can be cultivated and dissipated.
So when you're spiritually hungry, we all know you make a beeline for your prayer
closet because you know that's where God awaits.
So you feed what you have and you beeline for God knowing he's what awaits when
you're drawing near.
That speaks volume.
Another fact of spiritual appetites is a true spiritual appetite will release
heaven's fullness to overflow in your life.
Jesus talked about this in Matthew five, six, when he said, blessed are those who
will hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Now, now wait for it.
They will be filled.
And so what he's saying in that is that if you will hunger and thirst for
righteousness, God is going to come through.
He's not going to leave you hanging.
There's even another verse that says God will pour water on them that are thirsty.
Water there is actually referring to a spiritual outpouring.
So the bottom line is desperation determines destination.
And I think of Mariah Woodworth-Ettor who's called the grandmother to Pentecost
because she received the baptism of the Holy Ghost prior to the Zusa Street revival.
She's so sought God and so sought for revival that one time there's a story of her
preaching open air and the then equivalent of hooligans and gangbangers
bum rushed her open air meeting to disrupt it.
And they actually were violent.
Like they were coming through with knives.
They were going to hurt folks.
And this grandmother of the faith pointed her finger at them and she says, God will
judge the next one of you that disrupts this meeting.
And they all froze like in suspended animation till she got finished.
And then they got saved and God did mighty things.
But I thought, here's a woman that was so hungry for God that even people who were
adversarial, we're not talking about, they were agnostics or atheists.
We're talking about violent demonstrators got saved on the spot.
That's what spiritual appetite will do for you.
Lord, do it today.
A true spiritual appetite also will influence others for Jesus and impact atmosphere.
And this is something that I kind of want to share a little story.
When I went and planted campus ministry at the University of California, Chico, at
that time, it was the number one party school in America, according to a certain
periodical, it was being advertised at that time by MTV that if you want a contest,
they would fly you and your date for what was called Pioneer Week, a week long of
revelry and party at Chico State.
And all of a sudden I'm watching this CNN report and I felt the Lord call me to go
there and to plant a campus ministry.
When I went there, I began to see people get saved and it was awesome.
And I felt like I had a Solomon moment, Christa, where God kind of came to me and
said, what do you want to be the marking on students that would come up in this
ministry?
And I thought, man, I want them to be worshipers.
I want them to be prayer warriors.
I want them to be evangelistic.
I want them to be strong in the moving of the Holy Spirit and have a value for him
as a person in his ministry.
And I started thinking, I don't know which one I could really put my finger on.
It's that one thing.
And then I had a flash, kind of like the SAT test.
It isn't A, it isn't B, it's in C, it's in D, it's E, all of the above.
I said, God, what would make them all of the above?
And then it dawned on me that the thing that would make them all of the above is
hunger.
And so I said, God, give me students that are hungry for you because if they were
hungry for you, they're going to impact people for Jesus and they're going to shift
atmospheres.
And so that led me to this verse in Psalms 107.
And it basically says in Psalms 107 33 to 38 that when God was going to change the
geography of a land spiritually speaking, he says, I place the hungry there and then
there will come a great harvest.
And so hungry people bring about kingdom activity.
That is so good.
You know, on Monday night, we were in Cedar Hill, Texas, and we were with the
Trinity young adults.
And to date for me, it was one of the most special gatherings I've ever been a
part of.
Yes.
And, you know, we had been invited by Laura and Gabe, we're going to be hearing
from Laura in this episode and she's amazing.
She's just been praying and contending and she's always been one that's been
marked with fire, but she's cultivating an atmosphere of young, young adults and
young revivalists that have the same fire.
When you're around people that have a spiritual appetite, it's contagious.
And so she has run with people that have had this insatiable spiritual appetite
for God, just always going after the more.
And that same atmosphere was in this young adult ministry.
So you and I went on Monday night and there was this incredible outpouring of
the glory of God and the kids just engaged with it.
It was a night of marking.
It was a night of even repentance and exchanging things, things that had been
previously off limits from the Lord.
There was a moment where we just all laid things before the Lord and just said,
God, we choose you.
We put you above all things.
We give you all of who we are.
We fully surrender because we know nothing will ever satisfy because when you
have an encounter with God and he marks you, you're never the same.
And then you never settle for the counterfeit because you've encountered
the genuine love of God.
What was interesting about that night is when I got up, I hadn't even
my sermon planned, but as soon as I got up there, I saw all these little seven
year old Christas in the audience.
And what was unique about that, if you listen to one of our first podcasts, we
talked about those moments that marked us in our own personal walk.
And I believe we called it the fingerprints of God.
And I really began to share because I felt the Lord share through me that
evening on Monday night that when I saw myself in the audience, it was going
to be a night of marking.
What God did in my life at seven, eight years old was what he was going to do
that evening for all these young adults.
Because I remember at seven years old, stepping into the glory of God, being
around the gifts of the spirit and literally making a vow, a godly vow
before the Lord saying, if this is available, I will spend my life pursuing
it and truly I have.
And Monday night really was a night of marking.
It was a night of people saying, I'm all in.
And the spiritual hunger was like tangible.
It was so powerful.
It was.
And didn't they do it all night fast leading up to that?
Yeah.
What they had done is because it was Rosh Hashanah weekend and from the
Friday night to the Saturday evening.
So just one day, the whole church had done 24 hours of prayer and fasting.
And they had really created again, a spiritual hunger and a atmosphere and
culture of intercession prayer and worship.
And we all know that pre-seeds revival, that prayer, that hunger, that contending.
And they said they had never before when they have, they've held these
prayer meetings before, but they've never had the response they had.
Hundreds and hundreds of people came out for 24 hours of prayer.
So the attendance, the participation, the engagement and the hunger in the church
was so significant.
So here's 24 hours of prayer.
And then also Laura and the leaders have been getting up like six in the
morning, every morning to pray and they've been fasting once a week.
But the point is the leaders have been praying and interceding and fasting
regularly.
And then we step in on Monday night and it was like the gates were already open.
You know, the portal of heaven was already open and accessible.
It was so powerful.
Oh, it was.
There was one point when Christa challenged people to do this prophetic act
and all of these young adults, which they had their record attendance, all walk
towards the altar and many of them were on their faces.
It was truly profound and it was unbelievable.
It really was a special night.
It really, really was.
And it was so powerful.
I mean, I'll never, never forget that.
That was awesome.
And you know what I saw was in that time of repentance, I saw people laying
down worldliness and in worldliness really is a state of mind in which one's
thinking is governed by the preferences and outlook of the world.
And we have so many people that are under the sway of culture, under the sway
of the world.
There's such a peer pressure in our social culture of so many people believe
what is actually wrong.
They believe is right.
That's the sway of culture.
People's theology shifts.
That's the sway of culture because we know the word of God, it doesn't change.
And so what I love is there was an exchange that night with the younger
generation, this millennial and Gen Z generation where they were laying
down these material things, these belief systems, these compromised lifestyles.
There was exchanges that were happening, but even just a desire for where
they have filled their life with the wrong things and saying, God, I'm all in.
Put in me a fire that burns for you.
Put in me a hunger that is insatiable for the more of you for the presence of God.
And I love that I saw the worldliness get laid down from a generation just saying,
I'm all in.
I don't care if it's cool.
I don't care what it looks like.
I just want more of you, Jesus.
That not only inspires me, it gets me so excited for what God's going to do in this
nation.
It's so true.
This in time place that we find ourselves is really a battle between the spirit
of the age, which is worldliness, it's compromise.
It's, you know, be true to yourself.
Hey, it's my truth, all that kind of stuff.
Right.
It's really a battle between the spirit of the age and the capital S spirit of the ages.
And I feel like even right now that maybe you're listening and you kind of have this
one foot kind of in the world, you're influenced by secular mindsets, secular humanism, and
there's such a mixture that can take place right now.
I just feel that you have to understand you have a promised land address, but you can't
have a promised land address and still keep your Egyptian taste buds because all that
will do is prolong your wilderness season.
And there's a lot of Christians that are staying in prolonged places of wilderness where
they, in the wilderness, you don't have the joy and the wilderness, you don't have the
flow and the wilderness, you don't have the exploits.
You're just kind of going from God breaking in your world, just giving you some water
here, some food here.
You're kind of just on sustenance level, but God wants you to get in the promised
land.
So you got to let go of the Egyptian taste buds.
That's so good.
The next point that I think is so important is to understand the spirit realm wants to
weaponize your appetites.
There's a war over your affections.
There's a war over your desires because what happens is unaddressed spiritual thirst becomes
a greenhouse for addictions, obsessions, and demonic activities.
And there's so many people that don't realize that because they have never truly allowed
their hunger to be completely dedicated to the things of God.
In other words, your thought process.
Remember when we defined it?
The things that you're drawn towards and instead of allowing that to go towards God with
that spiritual appetite, they cater to cultural thirst.
And when you're when you're culturally thirsty, you're always drinking from the wrong
wells, you're drinking from crowd approval, trying to get the likes on social media.
You're you're in the midst of materialism and you're just trying to get the next pair
of kicks that you like or trying to get fitted for your clothes.
And everybody likes a good outfit now and then, but the hamster wheel of trying to keep
up with the latest fad.
And then you have the cult of beauty and people that have obviously overdone it in the area,
either trying to get the right look through plastic surgery or actually having eating
disorders, which my heart breaks over that because they feel like they want to look like
the girl in the magazine and the girl in the magazine.
By the way, she don't look like that.
That's called Photoshop, somebody.
And we have this pool, but those are cultural thirsts of today that there's a way to get
big in the eyes of the world, but it's totally opposite of the way to get big in the kingdom.
Keep it 100 tribe.
We have an incredible person with us today.
I talked about her already.
Her name is Laura already.
We're putting her in the Keep it 100 wisdom window.
Her and her husband Gabe are on staff at Trinity Church in Cedar Hills, Texas.
And what I love about Laura is she is such a revivalist and she has run with generals
of the faith for decades.
This girl has carried movements for women.
She's done walks for pro-life.
And she has just been a voice and advocate for the things of God.
And so we asked her a key question and I want you to hear this conversation between Laura
and I.
Laura, you are one of my favorite human beings and we have this cool kind of prophetic
connection where our paths have crossed.
You've always been a woman.
I've so admired.
I love the fire you carry.
And just being able to even call you friend, honestly, is an honor because I believe God
is raising up women in this hour.
And so to invite you to be on the wisdom window of Keep it 100 podcast, it really is
our privilege because of what you carry in the wisdom that I believe you're going to
impart for our listeners today.
We have a couple of questions for you.
Is that okay?
Bring them.
So the first question that I want to ask you is what advice would you give a young
adult as to how to cultivate a spiritual appetite amidst the cultural thirst of today?
Yeah, that's such a great question.
There are so many things vying for our attention, vying for our passions.
I preached this message recently to our young adults here at Trinity Church in Psalm 16 verse
eight and it says, I have set the Lord always before me.
And because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
And I love that because there are so many temptations.
But if you intentionally put the Lord before you every single day, practice his presence,
it doesn't just happen.
You have to practice it intentionally.
You have to set the Lord always before you.
And, you know, we were actually talking about sexual purity when we were when I was
preaching this message because he's before me and he is at my right hand.
I will not be shaken.
And phrase means I will not be overtaken by sin.
That's what it means in the Hebrew.
I will not be overtaken.
And so I just think you put the Lord before you, you practice his presence, you will not
be shaken.
Also, get next to other people who are burning.
You will catch on fire if you find people who are burning and you just connect to them,
you will burn for Jesus.
I love that.
I mean, the wisdom and the truth you just dropped, if people actually grab ahold of that,
it's a game changer.
It changes their life.
And I know your life was changed because you had those moments where you just got so
marked by God.
I know what happened at five years old, but was there a time when you're like teens or
your twenties that you look back and you're like that shifted everything, that encounter
changed everything?
Absolutely.
There was an encounter in a small church in downtown Houston.
It was an inner city church.
It was an outreach church.
And at the time I was leading evangelistic teams out on the streets to prostitutes and
transvestites.
And my, I had a friend of mine preach this message and I was so marked by God.
It was one of those messages where I was like, Oh, go anywhere, Lord,
tell me where to go.
I remember laying on my face on the carpet, gripping the legs of the chairs with
white knuckles going, I will go anywhere.
And, and I heard the Lord say, this is so random, right?
Little Mexican girl from Houston, Texas.
And I heard the Lord say, I want you to pray for revival in Norway of all places.
Okay.
So I'm like, yes, Lord, I'll go.
I didn't even know where Norway was on the map, but I said yes to the Lord.
And from that moment, it's a long story.
But I literally have taken 20 something trips to Norway, preached in with parliament
members in the parliament, traveled, prayed for revival.
And just like, it was a whole journey that the Lord opened up.
Another moment was when I went to the very first call that Papalu Engel did in the
year of 2000 on the Mall of Washington, DC.
It was a call, an issue to fast and pray for the nation.
And I knew I had to be there and I went and I, I was 100,000 other people.
And the Lord marked me that day, set me apart.
And ever since then, I've just been running hard after the Lord and not looking back
and letting Jesus write my story.
Like, let listening to the Lord practicing his presence and let him tell me what to do
and then just do it.
Let him write my story.
And man, it's been a God adventure.
I loved it.
Yeah.
It has been so fun to watch from afar because I've known who you are and you've
led movements, you've led marches, you've led, you've done gatherings for women.
Like you've been such an advocate for God's plans and his purposes for women,
but also for a generation.
And so I just want to thank you for your sacrifice because your yes has changed
lives.
It's impacted my life.
And, and I know you even being asked to lead the young adults here at Trinity
Church in Cedar Hills, Texas, you and Gabe are like this powerhouse couple of what
you carry.
There's a deposit of heaven.
And I just feel like our listeners need to be reminded one encounter changes
everything.
One encounter when you get marked by God, you're never the same.
And our lives were created to impact other lives.
Laura, thanks for being with us.
I love you guys.
I love you.
It's so fun to have you.
What an honor.
I love you guys so much.
Thank you so much, Laura.
Come on.
Wasn't that just so powerful?
That woman has such a rich revelation of God and what it is to go after God.
Her life has been such a testimony of one that has been filled with a spiritual
hunger for God.
Yes.
I agree with you.
She was powerful.
As always, we have a call to action for our Keep It 100 tribe.
And this week we're focusing on how to cultivate your hunger for God.
The first thing we want you to walk away with is feast on the lamb.
Exodus 12 talks about this and this whole principle of what it is to feast on
God's word and his presence.
In the natural, the more you eat, the less hungry you are.
But in the spirit, the more you eat, the hungrier you get.
We all know when we go after God, the deeper we go in the things of God,
the more we read his word, the more we worship, the more we pray,
the more we spend time in his presence, the more hungry we get and the more
there is to know about God.
And so the more you experience them, the more you crave it.
Friends, we're calling that feast on the lamb.
That is so good.
Feasting on the lamb in that Exodus 12 is so important because as they were
coming out of Egypt, they had to pass over and they were told to cook and
feast on the lamb and it would give them the strength they needed for the Exodus.
And I think there's so many people that are spiritually weak and spiritually
in this place where they don't feel the spiritual energy to do the things of God.
They feel a lack of inspiration, but a large part of that is they're not
feasting on the lamb.
That's a great point.
Another way to cultivate a hunger for God is expose yourself to the moves of God.
Expose yourself.
And one of the things that I do is get in services and where God is moving
go to places, take in conferences, invest in your spiritual walk.
Get around those who have had encounters.
Seek the Lord for your own encounter with God.
And I think this is so important is that part of that exposure is who you're
running with, right?
So you want to run with people that make you hungry for God, not people that dull
you. Your crew should have your chew.
In other words, that they should have the same taste for going after God.
And again, I'm an evangelist, so I'm going to have people that I have
relationship with that don't know the Lord.
But when I'm talking about the people who are in my inner circle, the people I run
with and are tight with, I want people that make me hungrier for God.
Because if I'm not more hungry for God now than when I first came to Christ,
by definition, then I've gone back in the other direction, which the classic
O-timers would call that backslid.
Or I'm backsliding if I'm not more hungry for God now than I was then.
The next way to cultivate a hunger for God is consecration,
repentance and obedience.
That if you want to grow in your hunger for God, you need to have a consecrated
life. You need to have a life that's set apart under the Lord.
Somewhere in there, there probably needs to be some repentance because the closer
you get to God, the more you begin to discover the things that are running
interference and you certainly don't want them in your life.
And of course, obedience.
I had this prophetic sense that in this season, very much like when you go to a
doctor and the doctor sticks that wooden, I think of it as like an over-salt
popsicle stick, but he looks down your throat and he asks you to cough and then
he takes a stethoscope, he checks your heart, checks your pulse.
I kind of feel like God is doing that to the body of Christ that he's giving us a
checkup and evaluation.
And after you go into the doctor and you have your annual checkup or whatever it
is, that doctor, he or she gives you prescriptions.
Right now, I feel like during this quarantine and this entire season, God is
checking us up and evaluating us and there's a prescription.
And I think it's so important that if you want to grow in your hunger for God,
you have to fulfill the prescription, right?
You take that prescription, your doctor writes out to the pharmacy and they're
the only ones who could read the doctor's hieroglyphics because his handwriting
is like very complicated and they give you whatever medicine or prescription that
you need to have.
God's prescription for you in this hour is something that if you will follow,
you will grow in the area of hunger for God.
So good.
I tell you what, that is rich and that's deep.
You know, another way to cultivate your hunger for God is stop feeding on the
things that take away your spiritual hunger.
Sounds obvious, but so many of us have competing things and then we wonder why
our hunger has kind of gone away, why it's waned away.
And it's often because we've allowed other things to replace it or we've been
feeding the wrong thing.
So one of the keys in this is starve competing thirst.
So those things that you're craving, one of the best ways to do it is to starve
it out of your life.
Don't allow the things of the world to dole your appetite.
So some of those things are simple, but there are not things that maybe we take
as serious as we should.
The music we listen to, the conversations we engage in, the movies we watch,
what do we watch on Hulu or whatever platform that you stream on.
You know, really what you allow your eye gate to watch, your ear gate to listen
to, your mouth to speak about and to have a conversation with.
Those are the things that you're putting into your life, into your mind, into
your spirit, into your emotions, and they're going to come out in some way,
shape or form.
And so let's not, you know, let's not get it twisted.
Let's understand what you put in is going to come out.
So if you're putting in things that are not pulling you closer to God, you're
putting in things that aren't actually cultivating the hunger within your life,
then those are things you need to consider taking out of your life.
Yeah, such a great point.
There are people that there's certain foods they won't put in their body.
Right.
Because they're trying to stay fit.
They're trying to be healthy.
And obviously we live in a more health conscious world today than let's say the
last generation, but it's funny how people will have disciplines on their
physical diet, but they won't have disciplines on their spiritual diet.
Like they won't binge out on certain foods, but they'll binge out spiritually
speaking on certain movies or music or other things that they know that
spiritual are unhealthy.
But like you said, if you're going to grow in spiritual hunger, you have to
understand and delineate those things that make for spiritual health versus
those things that rob you of spiritual health.
Amen.
Lastly, how to cultivate your hunger for God.
Set a vision before you.
God wants to give you a dream for your life.
And so many of us have lost sight of who God has created us to be and what he's
called us to do.
When you have a vision, when you know where you're going, you're going to
train like an athlete.
You know, the word of God talks about that we are trained as athletes to go
after the things of God.
And so there's a discipline that comes when you have a vision.
If you know where God's colony, if know who you are, I know that I was always
in Nazareth.
I knew I was always called to be set apart.
So I knew there were things I couldn't engage in, not out of legalism, but
because God had put a hunger in me for the things of God.
I believe he's done the same thing for you.
For many of our listeners in the Keep It 100 tribe, he wants to give you a vision
for where he's taking you in your life.
And with that vision comes a spiritual hunger.
God wants to be the pinnacle of our inner longing.
And I believe that only comes when we're putting him first and foremost in our
life. He is the number one thing that it gets our attention.
And I want to tell you friends, you want hunger for God?
Make him number one.
That is so good.
I love that.
Keep It 100 tribe.
We love being with you.
I've so enjoyed this conversations week and we always pray that you not only get
something out of it.
One of these becomes a revelation that transforms your life.
If you want to stay connected with us during the week, check us out on
www.SeanAndChristaSmith.com, of course.
And then find us on social media.
We're always here to get connected with you.
And remember, don't forget to rate, review and share this podcast because we want
to impact as many people as we can for Jesus.
Next week, Keep It 100 tribe, we're going to tackle the great
conversation I've created for influence.
I don't know if I've ever seen a generation of influencers like I see right now.
They're bloggers, they're creatives, they're fashion drivers, social media voices.
But we want to talk next week on how to be the ultimate influencer as we hit
created for influence.
All right.
Keep It 100 tribe.
We'll see you next week.
Keep It 100.
And remember, relief may change your circumstances, but a revelation can change you.