Monday, April 02, 2007

Soul Cravings

I finished reading Erwin Raphael McManus' latest book entitled Soul Cravings. He breaks the book down into three main sections: Intimacy, Destiny, and Meaning, he then wraps it up with one last section called Seek. Erwin breaks down the three basic cravings that all humans have deep in their souls and then in the final chapter he wraps it up with how we all seek it and that it is within our grasp if we look in the right place.

Here is the book description from Amazon.com...

We can spend our whole lives trying to satisfy the one insatiable part of our being, our soul craving. Our capacity for spiritual experience both proves our need for something greater than ourselves and leaves us wanting when we fill it with anything but God.

Soul Cravings is a powerful, down-to-earth exposition that interprets our need for intimacy, meaning, and destiny as common sense apologetics pointing to the existence of and our need for God. The book will deeply stir the reader to consider and chase after the spiritual implications of their soul's deepest longings.


Intimacy is something that we all crave. Everyone longs to be known and loved. And if you look at many people and the way that they live their lives, it is very apparent that they are searching for love and wanting to be known. But sadly what they fail to realize is that they won't find that in the things they are looking at to bring what is essentially and artificial intimacy.

What is your Destiny? That is another fundamental thing that we all crave. We talk about legacies that President's leave after they leave office and many President's are very concerned about this. And sadly far too many people fail to think about their own legacy or think too much about it and live their lives revolved around it. But instead we need to think about what we are doing know and look for the things that we can can do know that will give us a destiny. Because there is so much more to this life than living and dying and paying taxes.

Meaning is the basic question of every human on planet earth. Everyone wants to know what on earth they are here for and what is their purpose. It has been said that you need to find out what you love to do and then find a way to get paid for doing it. As a man, I know that we primarily find our identities not in how much money we make, but in what we do for our career. And I think in many ways that that is the case for women as well. The basic part of meaning is hope and if we lose hope then we often times lose meaning, because we are no longer striving towards finding meaning.

What do you Seek? Are you seeking anything? To seek you must actually put forth an effort. I can sit on the couch and think about how hungry I am or else I can actually do something about it. But what is even more amazing is that people who starve to death will actually towards the end of their lives begin to no longer feel hungry, but actually feel full. Sadly, that is the state of many people in the world. They have been hungry for so long and haven't bothered to try to find what it is that they are hungry for. And the reality is that God has the food for them and he has been looking for them, so He can give it to them. But instead we sit around doing nothing and just complaining about our situation and God is just wanting to meet those cravings in us and all we need to do is turn to him.

Erwin's has once again broken it down into terms that make it easy for Christ-followers and people who are not Christ-followers to understand our own basic needs, which in reality can only be found in God. I recommend getting this book and examining where your own soul cravings are and how you can meet them.

Labels:

|