Do Not Lose Your Hunger. Series

I want to start by asking a question today. And the question is this? Have you ever created something with a passion and given up on it? You know, like you were in it for months and years, then after a while, you like,e meh. Come on, be honest. We are all in this together. Great, thanks so so so much for the honesty

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I am a guy who found out a few years ago that I fell in love with running. And I started with a bang. I run smaller distances, like 5km, then ten and then 21.1km. That was the goal. My goal was to hit 10km in under 6 minutes a k or an hour. To do a 21.1km in less than 2 hours. Very close to that one. When I started, I could see the changes very soon. I lost weight. Asthma started to disappear. I got some muscles in my legs; my belly went smaller, but I got bored. I was like ok, this is fun, but what can I do? So I got a mountain bike. And I started mountain biking, and I set a goal of 40km in under 2 hours with an incline of more than 400 meters. And I did that, and then I did 80 km with Arthur. Go to shell ultra city and back.

And guess what. I got bored again. And I was like, man, I want to do something else. And now I am doing CrossFit also. Yes, I love it. Yes, it is intense, and I now understand what it means to die daily cause that happens. Ask my fellow CrossFit people.

Here is the thing, though. I want to use this analogy in my sermon a bit today. The thing is, the same is true for us as Christians in our walk with Jesus. The same is happening in our walk with God. Let me explain.

I have seen, and yes, even in my own life, that my hunger for God seems to die and sometimes starve. I am reminded in verses like James 4:8 (HCSB), 8 Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people! So when we as a staff read this book closer. This verse kept coming into my devotional times. And I want to spend some time on why we tend to lose our hunger for God and how we can guard against it.

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We must be careful of becoming indifferent Christians.

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I was looking at this verse and said Draw near to God. The words double minded just popped up. In the book, we see Revelation.

In the book of Revelation, we see that there were letters sent to the seven churches, and the thing is that these letters even apply to us today. If it did not, it would not have been in the bible. It is still a message for us, and it is relevant for us today. And we need to open up our spiritual eyes because if we are not careful, we can read something and not even think it applies to us. In Revelation 3, we can see that Jesus declared his church to be in a lukewarm state. We see that what was necessary for Jesus was not important to them. We see Revelation 3:17 (HCSB)17 Because you say, 'I'm rich; I have become wealthy and need nothing,' and you don't know that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. We can see Jesus saying, " Hey, you guys, your passion is misplaced. Your love is not in me anymore but in the world.

Now please, I am not talking only about material things. Or that wealth is wrong, or that is the issue. What I am saying is that in these letters to these churches in Asia that they put something above God. They allowed material things to satisfy them rather than God. Let us be honest. For us, it can be so many other things. Alcohol, social media, pornography, WORK, career, hustling.

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Ryan and I were privileged to see Francis Chan in Potchefstroom this year. The fantastic thing is, actually. I was very sceptical. Because it was so poorly advertised. I was telling Ryan, dude, I do not see anything online. Nothing is mentioning him, even being in the country. I was like, this is going to be video based. No offence to you guys online. But we preserved, and man, never mind Francis chan. The number of young people just like worshipping God. Like raw, intense worship. And when I got back, I needed to ask myself some really intense questions? And I needed to ask some of the people that came for help some intense questions. I do not think we always understand the following verse 1 John 5:21 (HCSB)21 Little children, guard yourselves from idols. Now the word little children means teknion in the NT, used as a kindly address by teachers to their disciples. So children listen. People listen. You need to guard yourselves from idols.