Hungry: The Spiritual Hunger God Answers

Introduction

Before he begins, Johannes Amritzer tells a family story. He's a first-generation Christian, so is his wife, and he comes from a very humble background. His father was a gangster, who taught him how to break into a car in under three minutes, and who went in and out of prison. His mother left when he was five and spent long years lost in alcohol and drugs. And yet he had the joy of leading both his father and his mother to the Lord: his dad is waiting for him in heaven, and his mom is now part of one of their churches.

He also talks about his Swedish mother-in-law, who came to the Lord in her forties after trying everything life had to offer. It was by following her to church that he met Jesus. This woman was ashamed of nothing: she'd kick off her high heels and dance in the aisles when no one else was dancing, she'd come forward at every altar call, no matter who was preaching. One day he pulled her back to make her sit down and asked her if she was even saved. She answered, "You're ashamed of me?" Then: "Fine, I'll stay seated this time, but try to keep me seated next time."

That's what this message is about: spiritual hunger. People who come to church to receive, not just to sit. The question the preacher asks the congregation in Lyon, and asks you: did you come hungry?

Message Outline

1. An open window in history (Amos 8:11)

• Amos 8:11 announces a famine that is not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but hunger and thirst for hearing the words of Yahweh. And the reality of this text is that the Word will not be found. Israel had a unique season in history when God's Word was accessible to it.
• The preacher believes Europe is living in a special and unique season, and that it is now. We don't know if we'll keep this freedom of religion, expression, and belief for much longer. But we have it today, and we should thank God for it.
• There's good news: more Bibles have never been sold in Europe than today. In Northern Europe, Jesus was the most searched person on Google in 2025, and he was named "influencer of the year" in Sweden. In Britain, a 2019 study of 18 to 35 year-olds found that 4 percent had attended church; the same study redone this year found 16 percent. It has tripled.
• Men and women are hungry for truth and for spirituality. The preacher isn't ashamed to say it: it was the Bible and Jesus who pulled his mother out of alcoholism, not psychiatrists, not medication, not doctors who pulled his father out of a life of crime. His little sister, caught up in the occult and always dressed in black, passed in a single service into the presence of Jesus at a water baptism; she now dresses in white and yellow.

2. A soul that needs more than food (Psalm 42, John 6)

• Psalm 42:1-2: David expresses his thirst and his spiritual hunger. "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God." The preacher believes this hunger has arrived in Europe: people sense deep down that neither sexual expression of any kind, nor any of the exuberant lives they try, satisfies the soul.
• Our soul needs more than food, more than alcohol, more than sex. Our soul needs a living God. We were created for fellowship with God.
• John 6:27: "Don't work for the food which perishes, but for the food which remains to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." And in verse 33: the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.
• Don't miss your opportunity, don't miss this open window in history where you can eat this bread that satisfies, where you can take part in the bread of life.
• The preacher has just returned from Lodwar, in northern Kenya, among the Turkana people. He saw people carrying their sick on foot for 70 to 80 kilometers so they could be prayed for and experience a miracle. He longs for that kind of hunger to seize Europe, and he prophesies that seasons of visitation are coming.

3. Hunger is faith: the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7)

• God responds to faith. Many struggle with this idea: "if I don't have faith, I won't receive, it works against me." The preacher brings this down to a level anyone can apply: spiritual hunger is the same thing as faith. If you came with even a tiny bit of expectation in your heart ("if God is real, does he see me? maybe he can touch me"), that's the mustard seed Jesus talks about. And that small seed can move mountains.
• But it takes a broken attitude. The Syrophoenician woman, whose daughter was tormented by demons, asks Jesus for a miracle. And he essentially answers: should I take the children's bread, the Jews' bread, and give it to a pagan? That was deeply hurtful.
• Why did Jesus speak this way? Because there's something in each of us that needs to be challenged: pride, the "I have my rights." That has to be broken until we no longer care what people think of us, because hunger has taken hold of us.
• The "bombshell" of the message: it's not so much that you won't have the desire to receive God more than your own self, that God will be able to satisfy your hunger. It's when you no longer care what your friends, your family, your coworkers, or your neighbors think of you. Like his mother-in-law, or like his mother, a desperate alcoholic who had reached the end of herself, for whom Jesus was her only hope left. That's when you're ready to eat the bread of life.
• Mark 7:28: "Yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." This verse captures the whole attitude of someone about to experience a miracle. The preacher is sure Jesus called her that to test her heart. Sometimes we'll be provoked, because God wants to see if we're truly desperate, if we really want transformation, and if we're willing to go through it.
• As a pastor, he's met thousands of people who said they wanted help but never followed the advice. You have to get to the place where you can say: "Give me my crumbs. Call me whatever you want, as long as I get my spiritual crumbs." That's the brokenness God responds to.
• His prayer: that this would come to France, to Britain, to Austria, to Germany, and seize Europe, where we know everything about technology, with our master's degrees and our doctorates, but know nothing of our Creator.

4. H.U.N.G.R.Y.: a portrait of the hungry heart

• The preacher offers a wordplay on the word hungry.
• H for humble. U for urgent: I need it now. N for noisy: have you ever met a hungry crowd? He's seen plenty in Africa, when people fight over a bag of rice and push their way to the front because they're desperate to feed their children.
• G for gutsy, bold: I'll always find a way to get there. R for ready: I'm ready to do whatever it takes. Y for yearning: I long so much that I stop caring about anything else.
• "I wonder if we're going to find that hunger in Lyon. Let's find it here."

5. What hunger unlocks: stories from the field

• The young Polish man. A member of his church, 18-19 years old, newly saved, who kept knocking on his door with questions about the end times and Revelation, who would track him down all the way to the park (one day the pastor hid behind a tree: "Pastor, is that you?"). At the time, he found him a bit unsettling. Today he thinks he needs more people like that young Pole, because hunger unlocks God's power, God's atmosphere, God's anointing. Hunger is what Jesus responds to.
• The "coach" from the Philippines. In a tribe of former headhunters in northern Philippines, an old man, barefoot, wearing nothing but a loincloth and a big baseball jacket marked "coach" that he'd received from an American aid organization, supported him more than any of the Pentecostal pastors he had preached alongside. He shouted "Yes!", he scolded his sister, who was sick in the foot, to get up and come forward for prayer, he was first at every altar call, he slept on the riverbank so he'd be first to be baptized, still wearing his baseball jacket. Coming out of the water: "Preacher, don't you start a single meeting before I'm back." We need people as hungry as him to fill churches in Europe.
• Pakistan. In front of a crowd more than 90 percent Muslim, with flyers reading "free healing for Muslims and Christians," he never saw as many healings as he did among Muslims. 150 soldiers tried to hold back 10,000 hungry Pakistanis who broke through the barriers and threw their sick children onto our cars to stop us from moving forward. That's the hunger God responds to.
• You wonder why miracles happen in Asia and Africa, and so rarely in Europe? There's your answer. Do you want to slip in through the back door? Do you want no one to know you're asking for prayer? Do you keep yourself from telling your coworkers you're going to church? Hunger has to outweigh your dignity. Your faith has to take you to the place where you're desperate.
• Nepal. In the middle of his sermon, about a hundred wheelchairs suddenly appeared in front of the platform, and the guards had to make way. A young man paralyzed from the waist down, with very muscular arms, climbed onto the stage and dropped down beside him shouting "heal me." It wasn't the preacher's faith that brought a total, miraculous breakthrough that day, it was their hunger, which nothing could stop.
• Bulgaria. A woman in a wheelchair to his right kept pushing herself up on the armrests, knuckles white, and falling back down. Everything about her said, "I didn't come for you, preacher, or just to hear a message. I'm here because I believe Jesus can heal me." Well before the final amen, she was walking, saying, "My legs are shaking, I feel the power of God." Not because he preached well, not because of his faith, but because she was hungry.

6. God isn't explained, he's experienced

• You need to come to church for more than a preacher, more than the music, more than fellowship. You need to come because you want to encounter God, to touch Jesus. If it were about good sermons, far more people would be healed in France, because there are plenty of good sermons. If it were about the music, there would have been plenty of miracles.
• Church isn't the best worship team or the best sound system. The preacher has been to church under a tree, and that's where the ground shook, because people came hungry to meet the living God. Europe needs more than good music and a good message.
• God can't be explained. God has to be experienced, touched, felt. If you came expecting everything to make sense, it won't, because God is bigger than what your brain can hold. God is beyond our logic. But God is here, his Spirit is here.
• When Jesus came to die for us, God didn't come to flirt with humanity or with our modern logic. Who wants to believe in a God nailed to a cross? Paul says this will be a stumbling block to intellectuals and foolishness to those unwilling to believe, and at the same time that the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen is the power of God. What Europe needs is the power of God: not relevant shortcuts, but a message that provokes.
• God provokes our reasoning. 1 Corinthians says God frustrates the intelligence of the intelligent. The preacher didn't come to church at 20 because the music was the best or every message made sense, but because he knew he'd die if he didn't come, that he had no future left. He didn't come to follow a preacher or join a denomination, but to be touched by the finger of God.
• Jesus is the bread of life that came down from heaven. Jesus is the only hope.

7. Conclusion: a hunger touching all of society

• The preacher has seen this hunger in Europe, in prisons, among the poorest and the outcast. But it seems to have now reached every part of society. People are tired of "wokeness," of answers that aren't answers, of exploited pleasures, of intellectualism. People are hungry for the living God.
• He gives an invitation, but without trying to convince anyone or repeat it over and over: "We're not going to flirt with you." If you have hunger in you, you don't care about the preacher, his suit, his style. "I'm just a man. I'm not the message, I'm bringing you the message."
• You don't have to like the messenger, or Pastor Mat. You have to read the letter. You don't come to church because you love the choir, but for what they're singing about, for what's between the lines: the water of the living God poured out in the house of the living God.

Key Takeaways

• Europe is living through an open window in history: the Word is accessible and the freedom to believe exists. Amos 8:11 reminds us this hasn't always been true and won't always be true.
• Your soul needs more than food, alcohol, or sex: it was created for fellowship with the living God, and only the bread of life satisfies it (John 6).
• Spiritual hunger is faith. Even a tiny bit of expectation is a mustard seed that can move mountains.
• God responds to brokenness: the Syrophoenician woman accepting the crumbs, the mother-in-law dancing without shame, the woman in the wheelchair rising to her feet. Hunger has to outweigh your dignity.
• God isn't explained, he's experienced. Church isn't about good music or a good message, but about encountering God.

Personal Application

1. Did you come to church this Sunday to receive, or just to sit? What are you really expecting from God as you walk through the door?
2. Does the opinion of your friends, family, coworkers, or neighbors keep you from coming forward for prayer, from dancing, from saying you go to church? What would it take for your hunger to outweigh your dignity?
3. What are you trying to satisfy your soul with today? Food, alcohol, sex, science, technology, intellectualism? What is it really producing in you?
4. Reread the six letters of HUNGRY (humble, urgent, noisy, gutsy, ready, yearning). Which one are you missing most? Which one can you ask God for this week?
5. When God provokes or unsettles you, as he did with the Syrophoenician woman, are you ready to answer "give me my crumbs" rather than defend your rights?

Scriptures Cited

• Amos 8:11: the famine of hearing the words of Yahweh
• Psalm 42:1-2: as the deer pants for the water brooks
• John 6:27-35: the bread of God that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world
• Mark 7:24-30: the Syrophoenician woman and the children's crumbs
• Matthew 17:20: faith as a mustard seed that moves mountains
• 1 Corinthians 1:18-25: the cross, foolishness and a stumbling block, yet the power of God

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the famine announced in Amos 8:11 mean?

In Amos 8:11, God announces a famine that is not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Yahweh, and the Word will not be found. Israel had a unique season when the Word was accessible to it. Johannes Amritzer applies this text to Europe: we are living in a special season of religious freedom and access to the Bible, and we don't know how long it will last. We need to make the most of it now.

Why does Jesus speak so harshly to the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7?

According to the preacher, Jesus spoke this way to test the woman's heart and challenge what needs to be broken in each of us: pride, the sense of having rights. Her reply, "yes, Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs" (Mark 7:28), shows the attitude of someone about to experience a miracle: a hunger that outweighs dignity and outweighs what others think.

What does Johannes Amritzer's HUNGRY acrostic mean?

The preacher built a wordplay on the English word hungry: H for humble, U for urgent (I need it now), N for noisy (like a hungry crowd pushing its way through), G for gutsy and bold, R for ready to do whatever it takes, and Y for yearning, a longing for God so strong you stop caring about anything else.