I wake up hungry every morning. So do you.

We may or may not awake with empty stomachs, but deeper down, our souls growl ferociously. However much we try to satisfy that hunger elsewhere, and however many live in denial, God made our souls to hunger for him, and feed on him.

We want when we awake — and want and want and want. Some turn immediately to breakfast. Others dive right into an electronic device or screen. Some roll over and try to wrestle a little more joy from sleep. Yet the hunger remains. And that is no accident. God made us to start each new day with this ache — as a call to turn afresh to him.

Great Discovery of 1841

In his much-acclaimed autobiography, George Mueller (1805–1898), who cared for more than ten thousand orphans in England throughout his ministry, tells of a life-changing discovery he made in the first half of 1841.

In a journal entry dated May 7, he captures the insight he stumbled into that spring. The entry is one long paragraph of 1,500 words that rewards careful and multiple readings.

Over the years, I have read it again and again and seem to profit from it more each time. Mueller’s life-changing insight has proved significant in my own life. As I again reread this journal entry in recent days, I noticed several distinct aspects of this one lesson, which could be identified and sequenced to benefit readers today.

In short, Mueller’s great discovery was that “the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day [is] to have my soul happy in the Lord.” What a find! Just about any other duty would land as burdensome, but “get happy”? That is a deeply refreshing task.

Mueller restates the point as “the first thing to be concerned about was . . . how I might get my soul into a happy state.” The discovery is set against the backdrop of other things that are not his, and your, first calling: “not how much I might serve the Lord,” not setting the truth before the unconverted, not benefiting believers, not relieving the distressed, not behaving in the world as fits a child of God. None of these real, critical callings is “first and primary.” None of these is “the first thing.” Most important is not pouring out but first filling up. First thing first: get your soul happy in God. Find happiness in him. Obey your hunger for God and feast.

But then we ask, How? How does hunger lead to happiness?

Feed on God

Mueller answers that hunger becomes happiness as we satisfy our empty souls on God — which implies a certain kind of approach to God. We come to get, not to give. Many human satisfactions come from various deeds and achievements. Others come through reception of goods or honor. Still others come through the intake of food and drink. Among these other desires, God made our souls to long for such consumption — to receive God as food, to take and chew and savor. And to receive him as drink, slake our thirst, and revel in the satisfaction.

So, Mueller clarifies his lesson: “The first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.” He draws on the language of both nourishment and refreshment (as well as being “strengthened”). He approaches God, he says, “for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul,” and as he lingers in God’s presence, he tries to “continually keep before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.”

Next, we might ask, Where? Where do you turn to find such food for your soul?

In His Word

Mueller’s answer — simple, and unsurprising, yet profound and transformative — is the word of God. To make sure we don’t miss it, he asks the question for us and answers it: “What is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God.”

“Hunger becomes happiness through satisfying our empty souls on God.”

Now we pick up a vital part of the lesson. Mueller says that for years his practice was to awake and go straight into prayer. It might take him ten minutes or even half an hour to find enough focus to really pray. He then might spend “even an hour, on my knees” before receiving any “comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.” He had the goal right: get my soul happy in God. He had the direction right: come to feed on God. But he had the posture wrong. Or he had the order wrong. The lesson he needed to learn was come first to hear, then to speak. That is, first hear God’s word, then pray in response.

In God’s word, “we find our Father speaking to us, to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us, to reprove us.” God’s word nourishes and strengthens the soul. His word leads, provides, warns, steadies. Then in prayer, we speak to God in response to what he’s said to us in his word.

Through Meditation

At this point, we might assume we know how to take in God’s word: just read it. After all, that’s what you do with a written text, right?

Mueller has one more clarifying word, and it might be his most important for us today: “not the simple reading of the word of God . . . but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.” In other words, he feeds his soul on God’s word through what he and many other great saints have called “meditation.”

This meditation is a crucial aspect of the lesson, and for us, almost two centuries later, it increasingly has become a lost art.

Mueller’s first mention of “meditation” clarifies what kind of reading he means: “The most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it.” He then makes plain that meditation concerns the heart. Mere reading might fill the head, but meditation aims to comfort, encourage, warn, reprove, instruct, and feed the heart.

He doubles back to explain what he means again. “Meditate on the word of God” includes “searching as it were into every verse, to get blessing out of it . . . for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.” Having chewed on one bite and savored it, “I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the word may lead to it, but still continuously keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.”

He comes back once more to say he means “not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.” This series of three verbs may be the most help he gives us as to how we might meditate ourselves and not simply read.

Mueller would have us slow down, pause, and reread so that we might consider what we read, ponder over it, and apply it to our hearts — that is, not only or mainly to our practical lives but first and foremost to our inner person, to our hearts.

Such a deliberate, affectional reception of God’s word naturally leads us into prayer.

Then Prayer

Now, don’t think Mueller, in this life-changing lesson, is eschewing or marginalizing prayer. Rather, by putting prayer in its proper place (in response to God’s word), he helps prayer flourish.

Having heard from God in his word, and considered it, pondered over it, and applied it to my heart, “I speak to my Father and to my Friend . . . about the things that he has brought before me in his precious word.” Meditation soon leads to a response — in fact, “it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.” The time when prayer “can be most effectively performed is after the inner man has been nourished by meditation on the word of God.” Now, having heard our Father’s voice all the way down into our souls, we find ourselves able “really to pray,” and so to actually commune with God.

Communion with Jesus

You’ll find in Mueller’s May 7, 1841, journal entry that “meditation and prayer” is for him synonymous with the phrase “communion with God.” To commune with God is not only to address him in prayer, nor is it simply to hear from him in his word. Communion involves both his speaking and ours. This is a Father-child relationship. God speaks first in his word, and we receive his words with the hunger, delight, and unhurried pace that fits the word of our Father and divine Friend. Then we speak humbly yet boldly in response, adoring our God, confessing our sins, thanking him for his grace and mercy, and petitioning him for ourselves, our loved ones, and even those who seem like enemies.

This hearing from God and responding to him Mueller calls “experimental [that is, experiential] communion with the Lord.” With “my heart being nourished by the truth,” he is “brought into experimental fellowship with God” in meditation and prayer. And not only with God the Father but “the Lord” Jesus, the risen, reigning Christ, seated on heaven’s throne, dwelling in us by his Spirit, and drawing near to commune with us through his word and our prayer.

Afterword

Several times, Mueller emphasizes that such communion with God is never a means to ministry and feeding others, yet God often appoints leftovers. Such early-morning meals, deeply savored in the soul, may “soon after or at a later time” prove to be “food for other believers,” but this is not the goal. Fodder for ministry is not the first and primary business each day, but food for our own souls. The point, and prayer, is soul-satisfying communion with the risen Christ.

Such a hungry and hedonistic approach to each new day was life-changing for Mueller. And it gave him the help and strength, he says, “to pass in peace through deeper trials, in various ways, than I had ever had before.” This approach has been significant for me too. Perhaps it will be so for you as well. As Mueller exults, “How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning!”

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Pastor John, we have over fifty questions piling up and waiting patiently for us in the inbox, all on cigarette smoking, vaping, and nicotine addiction — topics not addressed on APJ to this point. Our questions include things like, Is cigarette smoking a sin? Is smoking a “deliberate” sin, a willful sin, like what we read about in Hebrews 10:26? Is it sinful for someone to smoke indoors, thereby endangering the health of non-smokers inside a home? And of course, we have several emails from parents watching their teens get addicted to nicotine by vapes. Should they be concerned? There’s a lot to cover. In our first venture into these intertwined themes, what thoughts come to your mind?

The United States Food and Drug Administration has been requiring health warnings on cigarette packages since 1969. As of May 2021, there are eleven approved warnings. Here are six of them. (I just got them off the FDA website.)

Smoking causes head and neck cancer.
Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in non-smokers.
Smoking causes cataracts, which can lead to blindness.
Smoking causes bladder cancer.
Smoking causes type 2 diabetes.
Smoking during pregnancy stunts fetal growth.

It’s not a debate anymore whether nicotine is a harmful drug and whether smoking causes numerous diseases. That includes nicotine in cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes (vaping), and chewing tobacco. Nicotine is harmful — whatever form you choose to put it in your mouth or in your lungs.

When Risk Is Wrong

The Bible is very clear that taking deadly risks is a noble and beautiful thing when you do it by entrusting your soul to Jesus and for the purpose of rescuing other people, especially people in eternal danger.

But the Bible has no praise for those who risk their lives or their health for private pleasure. The Bible calls this a deceitful desire (Ephesians 4:22). It’s a desire that promises one thing and then delivers another. It’s not rooted in or governed by a desire to show that Jesus is supremely desirable to us. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20,

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

“The Bible has no praise for those who risk their lives or their health for private pleasure.”

So smokers need to ask, Is my decision to damage my body, and probably others’, by smoking governed by a desire to make God look glorious with my body, or does it merely make me look self-indulgent? So yes, parents should be concerned, and yes, it is wrong to use a deadly drug to calm your nerves.

From the First Smoke to the Last

But let’s do this. Let’s name seven steps from the first cigarette to the grave and see whether they fall short of biblical righteousness. This might be something parents would walk through with their 13-year-old.

1. Many people, especially younger people, take the first step into smoking because it’s “cool.” When I say cool, I intend three elements in coolness:

Coolness includes a feeling of liberating independence from authority. That authority might be a fuddy-duddy, fundamentalist, blowhard podcaster like me, or it might be parents, or it might be traditions that you’ve grown tired of.
Coolness includes the feeling that you now have an image of attractiveness, for whatever reason.
Coolness generally includes a sense of belonging to a group that you admire.

So step one into smoking is often motivated by a strong impulse to be cool in these three senses.

2. The desire to be a part of a cool group provides the necessary psychological power to deny, at the outset, that you are damaging yourself or others. Coolness empowers denial.

3. After the initial nausea or coughing or dizziness — if you get through that phase — there is the nicotine buzz, which feels, in the context of denial, like a justifiable reward. It feels good.

4. Now comes the pull of the buzz. As it becomes stronger, the desire passes from a chosen pleasure to the craving of a perceived need. This is sometimes called addiction. But I am usually hesitant to use that word because it creates the impression of helplessness, when we all know that if someone puts a blowtorch in front of your face, you will be able to put down the cigarette.

5. As one grows accustomed to the habit, there can easily grow a sense of indifference as to how it negatively affects others, whether at home or in public.

6. After enough time passes, then comes the negative health effect (or effects): lung disease, heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, eye problems. The body eventually signals, with the help of physical pain, the foolishness that we refuse to see in rational or moral argument.

7. Death may come earlier than it would have otherwise, or perhaps more painfully.

Bad Habits and the Bible

Now it doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see that each of these steps involves an inclination or inclinations and actions that are contrary to the Spirit of Christ.

When the desire to be cool overcomes the call to wisdom and humility and freedom and self-control, coolness has become an idol; it has become more precious than the way of Christ. This is the main root that parents should address as soon as their children can talk: What will be their treasure and their guide — Christ or the crowd?

“What will be our children’s treasure and their guide — Christ or the crowd?”

The second step — the one that denies the harmfulness of nicotine — is simply self-deception. The Bible calls us over and over again not to be deceived: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

The third step elevates the physical buzz above moral claims of wisdom and holiness. When Peter said, “I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11), he meant that there are soul pleasures and soul commitments that should govern the desires of the body and keep us back from self-harm.

In the fourth step, we’re falling into the bondage of a drug. Paul said, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be [enslaved] by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

In step six, as with most bad habits, they’re not just a problem for us, but they begin to be a problem for others. Our indifference to that is simply a lack of love: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4).

Finally, death is appointed for everyone, yes. Hastening it by means of self-pleasure, hastening it by means of selfish pleasure, is not submission to providence but the failure to value a precious gift.

Built into Your Kids

I would say to parents: from the earliest years, with prayer and a thoughtful use of the Bible, build into your children

a freedom from the herd mentality of needing to be cool;
a love of the truth;
a passion for self-control and self-denial for the greater joys of righteousness;
a deep commitment never to be enslaved by anything in this world;
a strong concern for the interests of others, not just our own;
a proper stewardship of the gift of health and life; and
a fearlessness in the face of death, but a refusal to risk it for the sake of personal pleasure.

The sluggard’s Instagram is unforgettable. If you have followed him in the Scriptures, you readily picture this creature sticking his hand in the bowl of Cheetos, unwilling to lift it back up to his mouth (Proverbs 19:24). We picture the man marooned on his bed, energetically telling about all the lions that prowl the streets (Proverbs 26:13–14).

But if you know the man in real life, his comic profile is not that funny anymore. As smoke in the eyes, he comes to irritate us because we have found repeatedly that we cannot depend upon him (Proverbs 10:26). You might roll your eyes at him at first, but soon you give an exasperated, Really? “How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?” (Proverbs 6:9). He refuses to plow in autumn (Proverbs 20:4). His hands refuse to labor (Proverbs 21:25). Yet calling up to us from his mother’s basement, he insists that he is wise and life is right where he wants it (Proverbs 26:16). He is a blend of satire and shame, a tragi-comic figure, as Derek Kidner names him (Proverbs, 39).

So to me, the sluggard was always someone else.

I had never considered Scripture’s testimony of the more sophisticated lazy man — one with his shirt tucked in, going about his work, busily adding events to his calendar. I dismissed the cartoon, never taking time to examine myself against one species of sloth given to us in Proverbs: the man who busies himself with starting many things, but doesn’t bring them to completion.

Hunting Sloth

The wise king of Proverbs shows us this active sluggard. He, unlike the traditional sloth, is up early in the morning. He has his eggs and drinks his coffee. Instead of being discovered in the sloth’s usual habitat — buried beneath sheets and pillows — he is up and about, stalking through the forest, pursuing his prey. He is a hunter.

See him tracking his animal — thoughtful, calculated, alert. He sets his traps and camouflages himself for the kill. He knows his target; he knows his weapon; he lies in wait. While his brother sloth is sleeping in the trees, he is armed in the bushes. While the other excuses inaction by complaining of lions in the streets, he is crouched where lions roar. When he sees his quarry, he times his assault perfectly and springs violently. The king sees this man return in the morning with a carcass draped over his shoulder.

So far, he is full of manful action. But notice where the laziness of this hunting sluggard manifests:

The lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting. (Proverbs 12:27 NKJV)

What a strange picture. The man woke up early. He prepared his tools. He lay in wait. He acted deliberately, forcefully. He took the prize, brought home the meat — but never cooked it. Perhaps he decided he had worked hard enough for one day. Perhaps he realized just how tired he felt. His enthusiasm died before the meal was prepared.

He labored promisingly, for a time. He remained focused, for a while. His was hard but unfinished work. In the end, his plate is just as empty as that of the other sluggard, waking at his return.

Incomplete

Men, how many tasks have you started strong and finished weak (or not at all)? How many deer have we killed but never tasted? How much nourishment has laziness robbed from our souls, our families, our churches, our world?

“How much nourishment has laziness robbed from our souls, our families, our churches, our world?”

I think this spirit of so-far-and-no-farther plagues our generation. We recreate at life; we rarely commit. Manhood seems less tethered to follow-through, to roasting the meat we hunt. Consider just a few examples.

Relationships: date, but never marry.

Some men enjoy the chase of dating without taking any real steps toward marriage. They love the excitement, the hunt, the thrill, the flirt, the challenge — but lazily want nothing to do with lifelong commitment. Covenant panics them. They live unwilling to vow,

I take you to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honor, comfort, and cherish you, and forsaking all others to keep myself only unto you as long as we both shall live.

So they date for fun; they go hunting but never roast. Their catch-and-release policy might be less offensive if it didn’t leave behind a trail of pierced and discarded hearts. They put in effort to get to know daughters of the King, but never know the feast that marital love provides nor the lasting fruit it bears.

Church: attend, but never join.

How many men can leave their local church without anyone noticing? They never joined, never served, never devoted themselves to God’s people. Their schooling or career earned their talents and commitment. Their intramural basketball team or local gym received their dedication and time. While they placed their bodies in the church on Sundays, their hearts remained in the world.

Such are the many who know little of belonging to a local church. They come, but bolt at the soonest opportunity. They will listen to the sermon but search for any excuse to stay home and watch the livestream. They disappear for weeks at a time to their cabin or vacation and never get around to joining because of the weight of expectations. These play at Christianity, hunting theological game but never roasting it.

Work: labor, but for appearances.

How many men really commit themselves to excellence, to comprehensiveness in their work? How many drape the kill of their life’s work over their shoulder and take pleasure in the careful roasting of the meat? To the Christian man who found himself a slave in the early Colossian church, Paul instructs, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:23–24).

Work heartily — literally, “from your soul” — even in this, the most unpleasant of work situations. How many of us are eye-pleasers in our work — working hard when others watch us, but switching tabs and scrolling Twitter as soon as they walk away? How often have you and I stopped short of cooking the meal God would have for us?

Great Hunter

Where would we be if Jesus were the hunter many of us have been? If he came and lived a couple of decades among us and called it quits? If he fell upon his knees in Gethsemane and went no farther, or felt the first nail through the wrist and summoned his army of angels? What if he came to save as an eye-pleaser, a hired hand who turned tail and ran when Satan, our sins, and God’s righteous wrath bore down on him?

If he stopped short, if he left even one step of the journey for us alone to achieve, we would be lost. If even one ounce of atoning blood needed to come from our veins, we would have no hope. If even one perfect work was yet required to fulfill the law on our behalf, all would remain undone. If Jesus somehow proved only a partway Prophet, a mostly Messiah, a nearly sufficient Savior for us — we all would submerge beneath the burning waves forever.

But oh for a thousand tongues to praise the completeness of our Mediator’s work. Our Shepherd did not bring most of his sheep nearly all the way home. He fulfills: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one” (John 18:9). This great high priest “saves to the uttermost” those who draw near to God through him (Hebrews 7:25). “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). His towering declaration from the height of the cross dealt not with nearlys, almosts, or mostlys, but rather — “It is finished!” (John 19:30).

Finishing with Feast

Brothers, our work is not his work, but let us learn from our Master, who embodied the second half of the proverb perfectly: “The lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting, but diligence is man’s precious possession” (Proverbs 12:27 NKJV). Where are the men of diligence in the church today, men who follow-through, men who sprint through the finish line? Athletic men in the world exercise self-control in all things, but do so for a perishable wreath — should we not much more do so for the imperishable (1 Corinthians 9:25)?

“May we enjoy the feast from the good works for which we labored.”

Let’s be the few men on earth known for finishing the good we start in our families, our work, our churches, our communities, our nation, our world. Let our “yes” be yes and the quality of our commitments never be questioned. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). You serve the Lord. Let each of us, in our own ways, end our lives saying after our Master, “I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do” (John 17:4 NKJV).

And may we enjoy the roasted feast from the good works for which we labored with all our might.