By Lori Manry

I stood watching as she sat on the floor of my kitchen eating my peanut butter. Not just any peanut butter. Jiffy. Creamy, smooth, imported from America Jiffy. She took a bite of the homemade tortilla all covered in Jiffy, and I breathed deep, realizing it shouldn’t be this big of a deal. After all it’s just peanut butter, right? A five dollar staple is hardly a luxury in most pantries. But when I packed up my American life and traded it in for the new people, the foreign language, and the unfamiliar smells and foods of Uganda, that Jiffy peanut butter went from something I reached for to spread on bread, to something I reached for to smother my emptiness. It was a taste of home. It was familiar. And eating it with chocolate nearly healed my culture shock woes...for one short moment. So no, I didn’t really want to share this precious food with a little girl who knew not its value. In this moment, this humbling, heart revealing moment, I hungered for more Jesus; to know how to look to Him to fulfill my entire being, and not just what I crave in a moment, but what I need for an eternity. We are flesh and we are spirit, created to be whole. Physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually undivided. Together these unique and separate parts of our created beings are intended to be one but, in our falleness, sin divides us. It compromises our wholeness and causes our spirit and flesh to hunger for separate things. Hunger is both the response of our flesh, and the urge of our spirit. As the appetite of our stomach seeks gratification and pleasure, the longing of our heart seeks fulfillment and a deep desire to be complete. We are a people who are continually emptied, body and soul, in

need of continual replenishing. It’s the way we were created, so we would look to a provider. So we would trust Him. So we would need Him. As a result of our brokenness, we have learned how to supply our own needs. Instead of upward, we look inward and outward for fulfillment. And we don’t just feed our bodies, we indulge, we stuff, we over consume. Truly, many of us don’t even know what real hunger is. At the first sign of it, we fill ourselves. In fact, we often satisfy body and soul out of mere anticipation of hunger. We eat meals before our stomachs need it. We shop or pick up our phones or reach for chocolate at the first twinge of the soul’s need for filling. These are the habits of our flesh that hinder our spiritual awareness and our connection with our Creator, and these are the patterns that prevent us from experiencing wholeness. Rather than consume the manna (Exodus 16:31) provided by God, we find our own daily flakes that falsely satisfy. And with this man made manna we escape our struggles, avoid our feelings, and hide from our brokenness. It’s an easy way to avoid engaging our very self, of not engaging our Creator, the One who knows what we really need.

Do we not believe He will provide? Do we doubt His manna will be good?

This constant feeding of our flesh perpetuates the division within our very self. Our flesh was never intended to be stronger than our spirit. Yet, if we feed our flesh more than our spirit, we can expect our body to dominate, to mask our needs, to quiet our spirit, to dictate our responses, to hinder our relationship with the Father.

I first recognized the division within myself, when I stepped outside of everything I knew to be true and comfortable and familiar. Just when I was getting the hang of motherhood, and right when I finished filling my big home with beautiful things, and just about the time I thought I had marriage figured out – God began to dissemble everything I had built, and shattered my self-made dreams with his vision for our family. He uprooted us from our community, our close-knit family, our home – all the places I ran to to escape motherhood, all the people I depended on to uphold my identity and security – and settled us in Uganda as missionaries. Stripped of my culture, coping mechanisms, and social structure, my naked self followed the orange pitted roads to places of discomfort, and I stumbled to understand the new world around me, and how I belong. Engaging a new culture and people forced me to reconsider the place I had come from and the person I had worked so hard to become. It shined a bright light on dark places of my heart I never knew existed, because for so long I had learned how to hide from them in Target and drown them in a sea of iced lattes. As it turned out, I was more selfish than I ever thought I was. My marriage had gaping holes that desperately needed Jesus, my faith was only as strong as I was safe, and my love had distinct boundaries and reeked of favoritism. In this place of revelation – of finally seeing myself divided by sin – God lovingly showed me how His abundant grace washes over insecurity, speaks truth into the lies of fear, forgives rebellion, comforts the lonely and heals a broken spirit. Feeding our stomachs will never fill our lonely hearts and filling our closets will never clothe us with humility. Drinking caffeine will never wake up our spirits; our brokenness is only made whole through fellowship with the Father.

My four years in Africa were held together by learning to live without, and a pursuit to feast on the Lord. Though I fell deeply in love with the people and culture of Uganda, my days often felt like a never ending fast, a constant abstaining from much of who I was and what I loved. I hungered like never before. My new realities flung me right into the arms of Jesus. I couldn’t cope the ways I always had, so I desperately needed Him in order to thrive in my new environment. I began to realize that fasting is more than a spiritual discipline. It’s a way of living. It’s learning to deny our flesh, saying no to the things we stuff ourselves with, no to that which falsely satisfies, for the purpose of seeking God, for making yourself available to him, for welcoming his redemptive work within you. And in this denying of the flesh, the spirit becomes more alive! It awakens and sees and hears more clearly than when it’s suppressed by constant consumption. My body feels most whole when my hunger is laid at the feet of Jesus, and my fulfillment comes from him. On this journey I have learned to recognize the ways I feed my flesh, the things I turn to to hide my pain, avoid conflict and heal my weariness. I practice surrendering these cravings to the Father by periodically omitting them from my daily routine. It could be food or shopping or social media or agendas – and sometimes all of these at the same time. Removing them from my day alters my rhythm and forces me to step outside my immediate responses and habits in order to embrace new ones. My days are slower, more focused. I notice things — about me, about my family and the way we behave and interact. I connect with God through times of silence, through listening, through worship and prayer. And I notice everything around me — the songs that are playing, the words people are speaking to me, the emotions I am feeling. I look and listen for God in all of it.

And when I open the Scriptures, God meets me. Right there in his story, he draws me in and reveals how his Word speaks to my current realities. I feast on Jesus in my hunger, and through his truthful revelations and faithful feedings, I have come to recognize the fulfillment that comes from him. It sustains me longer and it tastes holy, as my divided person becomes whole through fellowship with the One who created me. Don’t be afraid to hunger, to thirst, to feel empty. For it is only through emptiness that we experience God’s filling, and it’s only after brokenness that we can be made whole. It is weakness that invites the Father’s spirit to be strong in us, to dwell more fully in the temple of our body. Learning to live without teaches us to be more aware of our daily habits that hinder intimacy with the Lord. It shapes in us a longing to know him deeper, and to experience wholeness – to live and relate, worship and respond from a place of harmony within our body and spirit.