Imagine that you've had absolutely no food for thirty days.
None.
You are, in fact, near death.
The body can't go much longer than that without sustenance.
Your hunger is unprecedented.
Even the most famished feelings you used to have don't compare to what you're experiencing now.
You would do anything for even a morsel of food.
You would beg...
dig through trash...
at this point, even give your life.
Then it happens.
There-right in front of you-is a bottle of ketchup.
"Ketchup!" you say to yourself, "Oh, glorious ketchup! I have never been so thankful for you, ketchup!" The thoughts don't even circulate before you've ravenously grasped the bottle.
You twist off the lid, rip the plastic covering from the top, and chug the whole thing without a second thought.
And it was good.
What's that? Another bottle you see? No, two this time! Oh, glory! Let's snatch 'em and scarf 'em! So you do.
Without delay you do.
Both bottles.
Oh, to experience flavor again! It seems like it's been forever! Then the unthinkable happens.
There-in the distance-do you see it? You must be dreaming! It couldn't be! Oh, but it is! A monstrous pile of ketchup bottles! Hundreds of them! Your starving body, weakened as it is, somehow transports you to that pile.
And for the next hour, you feed incessantly on ketchup bottles.
So much, in fact, that you cannot bring yourself to eat even one more...
So you sit.
On one side of you, full ketchup containers; on the other side, devoured ones.
Oh, you can't even look at them! Just the thought of ketchup makes you want to gag.
I wish this story had a happy ending.
But it doesn't.
Why? Because you're still starving.
Did you know that ketchup has nearly no caloric value? Fifteen calories per serving, to be exact.
We need approximately two thousand every day.
That's why I can't just get up and eat some ketchup here in a minute for dinner.
But we do it all the time spiritually.
We feed on tomato paste and sugar.
In fact, some of us eat it for every meal.
(It gets old real quick!) No wonder we're starving! Our spiritual bodies require the meat and potatoes of God's Spirit-that's what we were made for-but instead we run to the ketchup bottles.
We run to the bright, enticing, momentarily gratifying-ketchup bottles.
And what inevitably happens when we run to the ketchup bottles? We binge.
We binge on people.
We binge on things.
We binge on activities.
We binge on feelings.
And the list goes on forever.
We can binge on virtually anything.
So, I guess, here's my question for us: Why do we keep on running to the ketchup when we know we have all the meat and potatoes we could ever want in Jesus?