A Shopper's Guide

Have you ever heard the advice that if you are trying to eat right and keep to a budget, it is best to not go to the grocery store when you’re hungry?  I’ve proven this to be a fact!  Also, sticking to your list is a helpful and useful tidbit. As someone who is always trying to find an edge to my efficiency, and needing all the help I can get to keep my not-so-girlish figure, I think about things like this a lot.

What I’m talking about here, however, is a different shopping mode than the going to the grocery store kind.  It’s about what we do when we hunger for things, trying to calm the pangs that roam about in our being.  It’s not so much as craving for ice cream on a Saturday night, but what we do with the hankering for “something more.”  It’s about what we shop for when our spirits are running low or empty.

It is said that the enemy knows just how to find the crack in our vulnerabilities.  When we are tired or restless, when we have put in a long season of doing all the right things to tend to our lives, our families, our responsibilities, and it seems we are no farther ahead than we were last year, or even the last decade.  That’s when Satan dances before us like a hotdog on a stick enticing us as to how satisfying it would be if we could only take a bite.  We are not prone to disobedience, but goodness… don’t we deserve a little fun?  A little taste?  Haven’t we been doing all we are supposed to do? 

He’s a clever foe, that son of a gun.  Satan knows just the right buttons to push, the right temptations to put before us.  He operates in the world to let us know that “It’s okay.  It happens… Everyone does it…”  Next thing you know, we are engaged in a game of “If Only…” inside our heads, and no matter how much you play or how good you get, it’s a game you can’t win.  Ever.

You know what I’m talking about.

Just like an aisle of Scooter Pies and Little Debbies, there is a non-stop temptation of reasons why we should be allowed to throw into our proverbial shopping carts things that we know are not good for us — that are not of God — but that we think an ideal life should be like. 

Satan is good at what he does.

When we are hungry spiritually — when we’ve given all we have to our work, to others, to having the “perfect” home or family (there is no such thing, by the way) we spin our wheels and lose our traction on the road that God has placed us on.

We become tempted to do and say and act in ways that are counter to who we really are. We go to the store hungry, and come back with more than we intended, and find it costs us more than we could ever know we would pay.  We are in the express line to sin. 

When we manage our expectations as we would a drive-through, we place importance on things that really may not be important at all.  We short change our lives and fill ourselves with the empty calories of faux relationships, latte coffees, and self medicating behaviors that bloat us with false self-concepts that prevent us from seeing that the root of our problems is not lack of time, but lack of Him. 

I have seen lives ruined by lies that say we deserve more.  More what?  More stuff? More excitement?  More of an all you can eat diet of fun, romance, and frivolity?  Don’t get me wrong — all of this, in proper prospective, can be well and good. 

It’s just that when our spirits are full, we seek our truest connections with Him and with each other.  We don’t feel the need to walk down aisle after aisle looking for something that is not good for us and will never fill us up. 

So… what is my point, you ask?  Simply this:  Frustration, overwhelm, apathy, and even loneliness, will cause us to reach for things to soothe our angst and divert our attention.  And though, on the surface, this seems harmless, does it really help or satisfy?  

I have found that this is when God will remind me that He is the Bread of Life.  If I seek Him, if I give to him my cares, my sorrows, my need for healing and strength, He will carry me through it until I am stronger or calmer or able to see that tomorrow all things are new.

When He has filled my spirit with a knowing that He has me, and all that I care about are in His cart, I don’t need to worry so much about my provision, my healing heart, my family. 

We all have moments of splurging, of feeling down and hungry for something we cannot name.  There is nothing wrong with a treat, or even an occasional breakdown in the frozen food section.  It’s just that when we wallow too long, when we forget that the most important things in our lives are not outside us, but within us — within our families, our blessings, our relationships — we are headed for a clean-up on aisle 666.

We need Him first and foremost.  He wants to show you that your life is not on clearance, but that He has great and wonderful things for you no matter how much you discount your situation or purpose.   

Feed yourself on His word.  Trust Him by allowing Him to show you the way.  Don’t go to bed, or to the grocery store, hungry.

Fill your cart with knowing that good things are coming in His Name.

They are.