How to Cultivate a Hunger for God (and His Word)

Imagine you’re a kid again and its Thanksgiving Day. Your mom is preparing Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings. Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade rolls, pecan pie, and more. She tells you dinner will be in two hours, but you’re hungry now. So you sneak into the pantry and eat a bag of chips. Then you eat some candy. And before you know it, you’ve spoiled your appetite for dinner. You’ve stuffed yourself with junk food, so you no longer have a hunger for the food that actually satisfies. So how do you cultivate a hunger for Thanksgiving dinner? The food is so good it sells itself. All you have to do is put away the junk food so you don’t spoil your appetite.

So too with the Word of God and the God of the Word. This God is so good I don’t need to sell Him to you. All you need to do is stop snacking on the junk food of sin and you will see His goodness! That’s Peter’s point in 1 Peter 2:1. If you study the unit of 1 Peter 2:1-3, verse 1 comes logically last. Verse 3 tells us how our appetite is awakened (taste God’s goodness), verse 2 tells us where we should focus our appetite (hunger for the milk of God’s Word), and verse 1 includes a participle that modifies the imperative in verse 2. It’s telling us how we should hunger.

So how should we hunger? Peter’s answer is surprising. Look at verse 1, So put away [a better translation may be “putting away”] all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. How does putting something away help us cultivate a hunger for God and His Word? The same way that putting away the junk food on Thanksgiving will help you cultivate an appetite for the dinner that awaits you.

Now, I want you to notice something about the sins that Peter lists here. Malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander. Dr. Daniel Doriani of Covenant Seminary remarks, “The sins that Peter names are not the ‘gross vices of paganism’ but ‘community destroying vices’ so often tolerated by the church: malice, deceit and hypocrisy or insincerity.”[i] Dr. Tom Schreiner of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary observes that while 1 Peter 2:11-14 teaches us how to act towards outsiders, here the focus is on church community relationships.[ii]

Isn’t that interesting. So here’s what Peter is saying: if you want to cultivate a hunger for God and His Word, stop snacking on the sin that separates you from God’s people. Let’s examine each of these poisonous snacks that not only spoil our appetites for God and His Word, but kill our relationships with others.

Malice. This is the desire to hurt other people, either with our words or with our actions. We snack on malice whenever we want somebody else to hurt. This doesn’t necessarily mean you want someone to feel physical pain. It could simply mean you want someone else to feel frustrated because you’re frustrated.

Deceit. This is the desire to mislead somebody. We usually snack on deceit to gain some advantage or to preserve some position we already have. We lie on a resume to get a job, or we lie on our expense reports to keep a job. That’s deceit.

Hypocrisy. This is the desire to not be known as we truly are. We snack on hypocrisy whenever we put forward some version of ourselves that’s somehow better than reality. We do this when we pretend we’re holier than we really are.

Envy. This is the desire for somebody to lose something they have. We snack on envy whenever we resent those who have something we don’t. Immanuel Kant said that envy is a wretched vice because it hurts everyone. It torments the subject, who envies, and it hopes to destroy the happiness of the one envied.[iii]

Slander. This is the desire to make yourself look better by making others look worse. We’re usually snacking on slander whenever we say something about somebody that we would not say if they were in the room.

Christian, if you’re not as hungry for God as you should be, ask yourself why. What are you snacking on that’s spoiling your appetite for God?

Am I snacking on malice? Instead of filling myself with the goodness of God’s comforting love in my pain, am I trying to hurt other people the way that I hurt?

Am I snacking on deceit? Instead of filling myself with the goodness of God’s provision for me, am I trying to provide for myself by deceiving my way to getting or keeping what I want?

Am I snacking on hypocrisy? Instead of filling myself with the goodness of God’s acceptance of me in Christ, am I trying to present a more acceptable version of myself to others?

Am I snacking on envy? Instead of filling myself with the goodness of God’s grace—that I am always doing better than I deserve—am I resenting what others have that I lack?

Am I snacking on slander? Instead of filling myself with the goodness of God’s forgiving love, am I trying to make other people pay by hurting their reputations?

  In the summer of 1996, a few years after my first memory of breakfast at Baba’s, me and my brother were there for lunch. I don’t remember what she fed us, but I do remember what she gave us for dessert. Baba made an amazing caramel cake that was legendary in our family, but for whatever reason she didn’t have any to give to us that day. But, being a good southern gal, she knew that dessert was an important finale to just about every good meal. So she searched for something to give to her beloved great-grandchildren. Now remember, she was a child of the Great Depression. She didn’t waste anything. So my brother and I watched as she pulled our desserts out of the freezer: Oatmeal Cream Pies.

Upon careful examination of the Oatmeal Cream Pies, my brother and I noticed that these were not the Little Debbie treats we were used to. The logo looked different. My brother noticed a date on the package: 1984. These were vintage Oatmeal Cream Pies. Needless to say, we were not hungry for dessert that day. When she wasn’t looking, we sneakily threw those antique cream pies away in the trash can. When she went into the other room, we took the remaining cream pies out of the freezer and threw them away too! We wanted to put them all away, we didn’t want anyone to ever be subjected to this mistreatment again!

Christian, that’s what you must do with the junk food of sin. And not just some of it. All of it. Put it away! Confess it, first to God and then to others. Then turn away from it. Biblical counselor Wayne Mack puts it this way, “No matter how many steps you have taken away from God, it’s only one step back.” If you want to cultivate a hunger for God, you must curb your appetite for sin.

  [i] Daniel M. Doriani, 1 Peter, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2014), 60.

  [ii] Thomas R. Schreiner, The New American Commentary: 1, 2 Peter, Jude, vol. 37, New American Commentary (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2003), 98.

  [iii] As quoted in Doriani, 1 Peter, 60.