I Am Because You Are September 1, 2025 Devotional

NUMBERS 11:4-6 | ⁴ The camp followers with them had a strong craving, and the Israelites also wept again and said, “If only we had meat to eat! ⁵ We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic, ⁶ but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

The manna God provided for Israel sustained His people in the    wilderness. It was a daily gift and perishable, but soon people saw it as monotonous and complained about the lack of variety. In Egypt they had fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. Gratitude for survival turns to resentment over lost pleasures. This scenario is a reminder of the problem with physical, sensual satisfactions—they are inherently temporary and unstable. Satisfaction always gives way to hunger and hunger grows into a series of changing appetites for more and different pleasures.

There are only a few ways to handle this reality. One is gluttony, the self-defeating, health destroying attempt to find satisfaction in excessive pleasures. Another is to become a connoisseur, and to forego more for more sophisticated or exotic pleasures. But the most mature response is to recognize that though we cannot live without bread, we cannot live by bread alone. We have hungers deeper than the sensual ones.

How have you handled the problem of sensual desires?

Gracious God,

Help me to discipline my desires rather than be mastered and finally disappointed by them.

Amen.