Its always amazing to me as I re-read the story of Easter in the bible each year and something different jumps out at me based on my circumstances or life. Last week on Palm Sunday, the kids and I were reading in Matthew 21 about the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. Its the following day that picks up at verse 18, that I was struck by this year. Its the day after the city welcomed him like a king. The day after the party was over. The day after “Hosanna” and palm tree branches and the celebration and recognition of Him as the Messiah.
Just one day later, he is coming back to the city with the disciples….
Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered. When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” they asked. (Matthew 21:18-20)
These verses were always lumped into a category of “odd” and I glazed over them. But last Sunday the phrase “he was hungry” popped out at me. He was Lord. He was King. He was the Messiah, but he was hungry.
I don’t know where you are in your faith journey or your healing road in chronic illness, but I have felt a lot of “I am hungry” moments. My flesh is weak and I feel like I cannot go on. I feel like I cannot take anymore. I feel like I’m not strong enough for this. My flesh is just plain hungry. Hungry for normal. Hungry for stability. Hungry for attention. Hungry for strength. Hungry for sleep. Hungry for healing. Hungry for provision. Hungry for love. My hungers are vast and varied and run deep.
My hungers get in the way of my emotional and spiritual strength. My hungers suck from the well of my human emotions and come up empty. It is only when I am full spiritually from God that my fleshly and emotional hungers can be filled.
Sometimes even Christ has a flesh need that he wanted filled. He understands the immediacy of your hunger needs. Your flesh dominant needs. He was facing a week of literal torture and hell and that morning he simply wanted a delicious filling breakfast but it was not to be.
Don’t deny your hungers exist. There is no sin having them. No sin in wanting healing now. No sin is being desperate for hope. Hungers are part of us, part of you, part of your flesh. Don’t deny their existence or shame yourself for having them and not being faithful enough. Having faith and a belief in God is not being perfect spiritually. I am definitely not perfect spiritually. I have doubts and anguish and pity parties and hungers that are raw and desperate. But I have Jesus first. I have Jesus to give them to. I have Jesus to fill them and not the world.
You see, it was not the season of the fig tree to bear fruit. It wasn’t time. It might not be time for your hunger to be filled or satisfied just yet. It might not be the season where true healing comes to light. It might still be winter and you are desperate for spring.
There are times I have felt I was stuck in the permanence of the Narnian winter cursed by the White Witch. Never to see Spring again, but the thaw even came then to end the long seemingly eternal winter.
I know it seems like too long. It seems like it will never come. God has shown me over the years that Spring comes in full for some and slowly for others. I might not be in a bumper crop kind of year, but I am not stuck in the drab days of winter any longer either. It has been a slow walk out, but minute by minute and day by day progress is made.
After the astonishment of the disciples seeing the tree wither, Jesus answers them with this:
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” (Matthew 21:21-22)
I don’t know what your mountain’s name is or how many you have. It doesn’t matter. Take that mountain and verbally out loud this week declare “in the name of Jesus and by His blood and power I throw you ________________________ into the sea.” Do it. Say it. Say it again. Keep saying it. There is power in His name. There is power in declarations. There is a renewal that happens in your own flesh and your own hungers to hear this and speak this and eventually believe this.
Don’t be afraid to take the chance. He is faithful. He is able. He does not fail. Your Spring will come and it might look different than mine, but it will arrive.
Remember the tomb is empty. Hope is alive.
Blessings and healing,
Janice Fairbairn – The Lyme Evangelist
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