Hi, this is Joni Eareckson Tada and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
And I just bet your Thanksgiving turkey was delicious—I can just imagine last Thursday, you walking from one end of your house into the kitchen and inhaling the savory aroma of turkey roasting in the oven. Smelled pretty good, didn’t it? And maybe you checked it in the oven three or four times because your nose kept telling you that, “this bird is done!” Well, not quite! The turkey is still cooking and it was going to have to spend another hour in the oven, and then rest on the kitchen counter; and then, another 15 minutes or so of carving, right? All of this before you actually lifted that drumstick to your mouth. It may smell like dinner was ready, but you knew it wasn’t. It was almost time for supper, but only “almost”, still not quite, but oh, that aroma of sage and rosemary and seasonings. That fragrance alone is so powerful wasn’t it; it has your mouth watering. Hey, you’re hungry! Funny thing is you didn’t know you were hungry before you stepped into the kitchen and inhaled what was roasting. It was that ... hmmm ... aroma of something in the oven that did it.
Friends, that is what it means to have your appetite “whetted.” It happens when dinner smells really good. It also happens when we taste and see that the Lord is good! Here we are almost upon the Christmas season, and we never knew how hungry we were for God until Jesus arrived. To know Jesus, to read His Word, to experience His grace every day—it’s like catching the fragrance of the presence of God. When Jesus arrived on the scene, when we first embraced Him as Lord and Savior, it was like inhaling the aroma of Immanuel, “God with us” and suddenly, we became acutely aware of this hunger deep inside. And we wanted to know more. We wanted to experience more of God. Suddenly, our souls were hungry for more—much more—than this world was able to offer.
For those who embrace the Savior, God has given the Holy Spirit as a guarantee, kind of a down payment or—more in line with holiday turkey dinners—God, with the Holy Spirit, has “whetted our appetite” for something more wonderful to come. You almost have to remind yourself that God is here within us, but He is still coming. His kingdom has arrived, but not in its fullness. We have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, but the banquet, the real feasting is still on the horizon. And this is what the Holy Spirit does in our lives: He whets our appetite for God. And so, in order to satisfy that hunger inside of us, we pray and praise and worship and sing; we read the Word and hide it in our heart; we trust and obey; we seek out the Lord, wanting to grow and change; we look for his grace, his mercies, new and fresh every morning … all in a effort to know God more and to have our spiritual hunger satisfied.
And so, as we get ready to head into the Christmas season, this first Advent, we do so with happy, warm pleasure. I bet with every Christmas carol you hear from here on out, you’ll be breathing in the sweet-smelling savor of His presence and you’ll hopefully treasure the time when soon, very soon, we shall sit down with Him at the wedding supper of the Lamb—the real holiday dinner! Until then, we keep growing and changing don’t we; we keep yielding and submitting; we keep longing for the Lord to satisfy our hunger for God, trusting and obeying all the way and we thank Him for all the blessings of this life that whet our appetite, giving us a taste—a Christmas taste—of glorious things to come.
© Joni and Friends, 2012
Compliments of Joni and Friends
PO Box 3333 Agoura Hills, CA 91376