Spirit Hunger : Filling Our Deep Longing to Connect with God

In this six-session small group Bible study (guide sold separately), Spirit Hunger, Gari Meacham peels back the layers of lesser loves we use to fill our true ‘hunger’ for a relationship with God.It’s often tempting to stay safe with God. Do your prayers reflect the desire you have to communicate with God? Do you listen for God, or talk right over him? What would happen if you truly abandoned yourself to experience an adventure with God? Gari invites you to get gutsy with God. In Spirit Hunger, she journeys with you to the raw places of desiring God and discovering a faith-filled way of praying and believing the God we adore.Spirit Hunger unwraps our heart’s desire to engage God, even when we cover that desire with lesser loves.Meacham writes, “With the authenticity of my own life stories—marriage to a professional baseball player, struggles with severe food bondage, and a father who was a quadriplegic—I came to the crisp realization that my prayer life and the belief needed to match. Spirit Hunger provides a clear path towards matching these heart cries—leading away from crumbs and counterfeit, to a hungering for God.”Relatable and relative, Gari addresses the following topics in Spirit Hunger:Longing and Numbing: Are these sighs of a hungry spirit?Believing: Is our prayer life really a worry life?Travailing and Shouldering: Do we understand how to pray with an intensity and intimacy?Questioning: What about the outcomes we can’t reason with or explain?Sessions include: Hiding, Controlling, and Mocha LattesEngaging God: From Longing to PrayerWhispers and Screams: How Do We Pray?The Guts to BelieveListening PosturesWho’s in Charge?Designed for use with the Spirit Hunger Workbook (sold separately). When used together, they provide users with practical tools that transform their faith. We all have a desperate need for God--not just for following him or being committed to him, but to be intimately connected to him. We long for purpose, for affirmation, for attention, for nurture. But Gari Meacham writes that we fall short of being desperate for God, or we miss the longed-for romance with God we hear about in scripture. We're uncertain how to distinguish our longings from our fears. When, says Meacham, did our longings turn to hauntings? And when did we buy into the counterfeit yearnings for control, and the insecurity, perfectionism and other attitudes that quench Spirit Hunger? The answer to Spirit Hunger is to engage God like never before. In this book Meacham shows through her story and the stories of others how to turn worry into belief, problems and heartaches into a life of intimate prayer, and sighs for intimacy into closeness with God. She discusses her discoveries about prayer including why asking is sometimes hard, how we can notice and track God's movements as we seek his answers, and why its sometimes such a struggle to believe after we've prayed. Meacham writes, "With the authenticity of my own life stories--marriage to a professional baseball player, struggles with severe food bondage, and a father who was a quadriplegic--I came to the crisp realization that my prayer life and my belief needed to match. Spirit Hunger provides a clear path towards matching these heart cries--leading away from crumbs and counterfeit, to a hungering for God." Sighs of a hungry spirit Fighting the dragon with a toothpick Wandering, wondering, and flakes Sacred makeovers A heart that seeks Engaging God? how do we pray? Banging on doors Panting and petition The tension of belief A heart that moves Invited to listen Holy piggybacks Questions and resolve Getting in the parade A note from Gari. We all hunger to be more intimately connected to God. The answer to our Spirit Hunger is to engage God like never before. In this book, Meacham shows how to turn worry into belief, problems and heartaches into a life of intimate prayer, and sighs for intimacy into closeness with God. Explains that the longing for purpose, affirmation, and attention can be solved by engaging God in prayer and believing in that prayer wholeheartedly