Have you ever noticed how much food teenage guys can pack away?
If you have had teenage males in your house you probably noticed your grocery bills went way up during that time. I was amazed at how much food our guys could consume. They are in their twenties now, so things have slowed down a bit, but they could sure pack it away during their teen years.
I remember when I was in junior high my brother, who was in his twenties at the time, would take me to the Dragon Inn All-You-Can-Eat Smorgasbord. For $2.95 you could pile as much as you wanted on as many plates as you wanted. I seem to recall eating my way through 3 plates full of Chinese Food, when I only weighed less than 100 pounds. I probably ate about a third of my body weight in Chow Mein, Chicken Balls, Sweet & Sour Pork and Mushroom Fried Rice.
We would then go outside after our feast and engage in the brainless pursuit of ‘belly-bucking’ – the details of which I will leave for another time…
Why is it guys at that age seem to have an endless need for food?
I think it’s because those are years of intense growth. Anne figured she could always predict when the guys were in the middle of a growth spurt by the amount of food they consumed. Major growth requires major food intake. If you want to grow you need a big appetite.
You have probably also noticed, if you are middle aged, that our appetites seem to naturally decrease as we age. This, of course, is a good thing to a certain extent because if we consumed food at the rate we did when we were younger we would surely continue to grow – out instead of up.
Appetite is a curious thing. Oftentimes we can have an appetite for the things that are not prudent for us to consume, and we don’t have an appetite for those things our bodies need to be healthy. I remember the boys would come home from school and begin to rummage through the fridge and the cupboards to prepare an after school gastronomic extravaganza. When they would continue to eat closer to the dinner hour Anne could invariably be heard saying…
“Don’t ruin your appetite!”
I know you know the line because we all heard it when we were teens. Our mothers knew if we filled ourselves up on snacks we would lose our appetite for dinner and not be able to eat the balanced meal that would actually contribute to the health of our growing bodies. The only way not to lose our appetite for that which was important was to not consume too much junk food.
There is a profound spiritual principal in there…
Spiritually can consume too much junk food so that we actually start to lose our appetite for the true spiritual food we need to grow strong and healthy. We can start to lose our appetite for God and the things of God.
Have you lost your appetite for Jesus?
We can consume lots of things that cause us to lose our appetite for Jesus: busyness, selfishness, pleasure, laziness, apathy, TV, lust, complacency, greed, money, adventure, popularity, bitterness, anger…there are myriad ‘snacks’ we can consume that cause us to lose our hunger for Jesus.
We can choose to feed on lots of things to try to fill our hunger for life that do not ultimately satisfy – and they can steal our appetite for God. They do not fulfill us of course, and do not lead to strength and health, but we oftentimes continue to try to feed on them and then find ourselves with a very small appetite for the things of God.
Jesus said that He is the only source of life. We need to feed on Him. And thankfully, He can also change our hearts and give us our appetite back. It has been said that it is not really the hungry who seek the Bread of Life, but the Bread of Life who seeks the hungry.
If you find yourself with a small appetite for Jesus I would suggest you pray very simply:
“Jesus, increase my appetite for You!”
And then limit your consumption of spiritual junk food – don’t ruin your appetite!
Psalm 34:8
“Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.”
John 6:58
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
John 20:31
“But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”