When we become physically hungry and thirsty there is only one way to satisfy those naturally occurring needs–by eating and drinking.  When hungry and thirsty one will eat and drink whatever is available, even if one does not particularly like what is available.  “Any port in a storm” is the mariner’s motto when he finds himself in a hurricane.  “Drowning men clutch at straws” is another saying that relates to desperate situations.  These age-old sayings are as relevant today as they were anciently.  And in the spiritual realm, they have eternal applications.

Growing boys are always hungry.  When you mix in competitive sports, the hunger drive increases greatly.  When I was coaching I would tell the kids on Friday to not consume a lot of sweet stuff over the weekend because they would pay the price for it on Monday during ball practice.  Sugar is extremely satisfying to a hungry person because it provides him with an immediate charge of energy.  One can go from weakness to strength in a very short time by consuming a large amount of sugar.  Sugar enables one to go full-blast–temporarily.  I read about a pro basketball player who drank a cup of highly sugared coffee immediately before a game.  By the time the effect wore off the game would be over.  Medically, the effect is known as a “sugar high.”  Such a practice is not good for muscle formation and maintenance.

Also when consumed to excess sugar has a negative effect on the brain.  For this reason during the Korean War American prisoners of war were fed large amounts of sugar in an attempt to make them insane.  Following the war it was found that continued sugar overloading caused significant brain damage in many of the prisoners.  The prisoners had two strikes against them: the liked the taste of the sugar, and sugar was always available to them.   A third problem was that there was very little, if any, nutritious food available to them that would offset the effect of the sugar.  Because they were starving from the effects of having very little real food, they ate what was available, and all of it they could get.  What they could get was sugar.

Another effect of sugar is that it creates a craving for more sugar.  Like the “hard drugs” that have destroyed so many people both physically and mentally, the more sugar one consumes the more sugar one wants to consume.  This is the classic definition of “addiction.”  Drug addicts find themselves needing more and more drugs in order to maintain their “normal” state of well-being.  They continue to increase their intake of the drug to get them back to what is called “normalcy.”  As soon as the drug’s (and sugar’s) effect wears off, their bodies and minds cry out for drugs/sugar so that they can return to their “normal” state.

As I stated earlier, the principle has spiritual implications.  For example, when I was young I would sometimes stay at home on Sunday to work in the fields.  I can remember to this day the feeling of guilt as I watched my mother leave to go to church.  Satan already had me hooked on his sugar.  I needed a periodic “high” which I received by going to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night.  Like billions of other people, I was “hooked on” (addicted to) the good feeling that enveloped me when I arrived at church.  I now recognize that the “drug” that made me feel good upon arriving at church was Satan’s very addictive religious sugar.  I needed a periodic “fix” which Satan supplied on Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night.

And I was not alone.  Over the years billions of people have become addicted to Satan’s sweet, you-want-it-you-got-it religion.  Like me as a teenager, they feel “down” when they cannot get their weekly sugar “fix” of what Paul called their “perverted” Gospel (Gal. 1:6-9) which is, as he correctly stated, nothing more than a false “truth” presented by “another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4).  Like sweets to a hungry boy, Satan’s religious sugar tastes good and creates a religious “high” we all need need.  I lived and ministered on that high for many years before God changed my spiritual “appetite.”  Now my high comes from obedience to God’s Word.  A Biblical high is much sweeter than a church high.

The change in spiritual food from total “headline” fare to an emphasis on the Lord’s “fine print” was not easy.  For one thing, it cost me the ministry that I so much enjoyed.  It also made me a religious outcast to my family, friends and former churchmates.  Prior to the change from serving Satan to serving God I had enjoyed considerable successful.  I was popular and well-known for my healing and deliverance ministry.  But when I came to the Lord I learned how Paul must have felt as described in Romans 7:9: “I was alive (popular, successful) without the Law once.  But when the Law came (was revealed to him), sin revived (he realized what sin was) and I died” (he realized that he was a sinner and was spiritually dead).  Like pre-converted Paul, I had been dining on the devil’s deserts, had become addicted to them and now had to go “cold turkey” mode to get them out of my system.

In Matthew 5:6 Jesus tells us: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”  This is a beautiful and well-known “headline.”  Without applying God’s “fine print” to it the one suffering from spiritual hunger and thirst believes that simply hungering and thirsting for righteousness guarantees that he will receive what he hungers and thirsts for.  Jesus, they believe, suffered and died in order to do the work for them–He is righteous for them, having paid the price for it in their stead.  Therefore, they themselves do not need to be righteous, even if they could, which they can’t, so don’t bother.  Satan then fills their hearts with a “sugar high” for believing that.  Not only do they not need to be righteous by obeying God’s Law, they pay hirelings to tell them what a local preacher told his t.v. audience which I happen to hear: “Don’t even try to be righteous. You’ll just make yourself sick.  You’re nothing but a society of sinners.”  The camera then panned his local audience.  Their nods and smiles told me that those unwitting souls were at that moment reveling in a religious “high” that would keep them satisfied until the next sweet offering from their sugar merchant.  L.J.