“If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great…

…The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie.

It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.

For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.

Jesus said some people hear the word of God, and a desire for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, “as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life” (Luke 8:14).”

Quotes from John Piper’s book “A Hunger for God” on pages 14-15, & 23

You can download the entire book as a PDF book below.

“Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites…to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures…Our hungering and thirsting after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can’t be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value…[Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement…There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.”

-Jonathan Edwards from his sermon entitled, “The Spiritual Blessings of the Gospel Represented by a Feast