Article

You’re Not You When You’re Hungry

07.21.2022
6 min read

Adapted by our team from Camilo Buchanan’s message from Summer in the City, You’re Not You When You’re Hungry.

 

Have you ever seen the commercial from back in the day where the man comes in with a bad attitude, is handed a chocolate bar, and everything is magically okay again?

 

That’s me. I’m not me when I’m hungry. And you’re not you when you’re hungry.

 

We’re all hungry, searching for the things of this world to fill us when there is only one person that will ever satisfy us.

 

The book of Colossians was written by Paul, a zealous Jewish pharisee that hated any departure from the pharisaical code. Paul had an encounter with Jesus that changed him forever. He went from persecuting Christians to planting churches and preaching the gospel. He penned a letter to a church in Colossae, a new and young church trying to follow the way amidst a culture and a people against them. 

 

He wanted to make sure that we know who it is we have in the person of Jesus and to warn us of the things and people around us that will distract us from where we find our true fulfillment.

 

in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now this I say lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words.

Colossians 2:3-4

 

We easily fall because of persuasive words. Some of you have gone on dates with deceitful men or have gotten caught up in a pyramid scheme. Or maybe, like the people of Colossae, you were easily deceived by a false promise of enlightenment. 

 

But talk is cheap. Paul wants to cover the deceit we encounter with a revelation of who Jesus is because he knows from personal experience that Jesus changes everything. It is in HIM that we find all that we’re looking for to fill us up.

 

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

Colossians 2:6-8

 

Some of us think that Satan wants us to stop trusting God so that we can trust him instead. But he actually wants us to stop trusting God, and instead trust in ourselves. He knows that if we trust ourselves, we will destroy our lives on our own. It’s empty deceit—attempting to take you back to who you were before you knew Christ. 

 

in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;

Colossians 2:9

 

The logic of man is empty because it is not according to Christ. It doesn’t depend on Him. But Jesus is complete, and any teaching that detracts from Christ being enough is not only wrong but ineffective. 

 

You can’t add to the person of Jesus without simultaneously subtracting from His exclusivity in creation and salvation. In Him is the fullness, in you is the emptiness, so only in Him, are you complete.

 

I love my wife, but she does not complete me.

I love getting to minister to people, but my job does not complete me. 

My account balance is important, but it does not complete me. 

Because I am already complete in Jesus. 

 

For so many of us who have put our faith in Jesus, the last thing we feel is complete. And the reason we don’t feel complete, rooted, and established, is because we’re not full. Our diets are lacking.

 

We may believe in Jesus, but our belief in Him is paired with hustle, striving, or crystals. What we’re eating isn’t filling us up. We’re still hungry. 

 

And you’re not you when you’re hungry. 

 

So let no one judge you in food or in in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths

Colossians 2:16

 

The people in Colossae believed in Jesus, but they wanted to bring their religion, traditions, and their legalism with them. The same thing can be said about our generation. We want legalism disguised as a spiritual discipline. But when our spiritual discipline becomes the goal instead of a tool, we have missed it.

 

How do we know when that has happened? When we start doing what the church in Colossae did. We start judging others for not having the same spiritual disciplines. We talk down to people with a later bible study time than you or for not knowing all the lyrics to a worship album.

 

Paul counters all of that by focusing on who Christ is and what He has done for Him. His bread’s name is Jesus, and he feasts on Him daily. 

 

Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.

Colossians 2:18-19

 

You can lose your arm, leg, or eye, and still, grow. You cannot lose your head and still grow. We are letting go of our heads to cling to religion and spirituality, and because of that, because of that, we stopped growing. If you want to be nourished, you have to hold onto the head that is Jesus.

 

Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations—“Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

Colossians 2:20-23

You have tools, but they’re ineffective for your battle. You fill yourself with disciplines, ideologies, practices, causes, and experiences, hungry for wisdom. Going back to verse 3 of Colossians 2, we see that wisdom comes from Him. In Jesus was actual wisdom, not simply the appearance of wisdom. It’s in Him.

 

In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,

Colossians 2:11

 

In this time, circumcision was a covenant between God and His people. Even though the people of Israel never held up their end of the covenant, God never forsook His end of the covenant. 

 

He brought us into His family through the circumcision of Himself, dying on a cross for us.

 

buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Colossians 2:12-14

 

Sin does not make you bad, sin; sin makes you dead. Jesus made you alive by forgiving your sins. He canceled the requirements set against you, got rid of your charges, took your certificate of debt with your name on it, and nailed it to the cross.

 

It’s done. 

It’s gone.

It’s paid for.

 

You can’t offer up up your debt to the cross and nail it yourself. You don’t have what is needed. Everything you did, you’re doing right now, or you’re going to do is is now gone because He nailed it to the cross in His power.

 

Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Colossians 2:15

 

After the Romans conquered a city, there was a victory parade. The general who won the battle would ride ahead in the victory parade, and behind him would be everyone who had been conquered. This is what Jesus is saying He has done.

 

When the world watched Jesus stripped of His clothing, shamed in his nakedness, and led in procession to calvary, the opposite was happening. Satan and his demonic forces were actually the ones being humiliated, stripped, and were led to captivity.

 

Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.

Psalm 46:10

 

Striving was in the processions. All of our efforts were bound up and held captive. All my efforts, all my religion, failed. 

 

One time I was going to an event in Jamaica with my brother where you had to pay to get in. All I had on me was American money, and they only accepted Jamaican currency. So, my brother paid for me. It would have been silly to offer to be the dishwasher or bus boy to pay him back. There was no striving. I didn’t even have the right currency.

 

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 

Romans 8:1

 

Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

Romans 8:33-34

 

Condemnation was also in the procession. Condemnation was been bound up and there are no more charges. 

 

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, 15and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. 

Hebrews 2:14-15

 

Death was in the procession. The reason He sacrificed Himself, was because you couldn’t. 

 

You can’t fill yourself. Jesus’ death on the cross is what saves you and His resurrection is what fills you. So, feast on Him. If you’re hungry, eat. Don’t be deceived and taken captive by something already captive. Come to the one who is a fountain of living water. Someone who is the bread of life.

 

He alone will satisfy. 

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