Becoming Hungry For God

From the Archives: Winter 2012

By Becky Lycan

All Settled In

It is a wonderful thing to have your life all mapped out. Of that I was convinced as a young thirty-ish woman, wife, and mom. For a number of years we had worked for and established a wonderful, stable, solid lifestyle. We were raising our three young children in a stable home, my husband, Scott, had a great job in a growing family business, and we were flourishing in a great established church which my parents and my sisters’ families all attended. We were growing as Christians, and our children were being raised in a prospering and solid community of believers. I was so thankful to God for the stability in our family life and in our faith. All was settled and resolved in our lives. We were putting down roots, and we were thankful. Other people could come and go, but we were going to be part of the local community and church for the rest of our lives. We had healthy kids, and we had everything figured out. It was great.

God Prepares

In 1985 things began to change. The Holy Spirit began to introduce us to a new way of thinking and living. He was on the move in our lives, beginning a process of coming to know Him in new ways. In the spring of 1985, I started becoming aware of the fact that I didn’t really know much about the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. I was pretty solid in knowing God the Father, and I knew Jesus as my savior, yet I knew little about God’s Spirit. So, simply out of curiosity I began to study and read more about the Holy Spirit. I read The Helper, a sweet and simple daily devotional by Catherine Marshall, about the person of the Holy Spirit. It encouraged me greatly and whetted my appetite to know more about God’s Spirit. About that time, Catherine Marshall’s son, Peter Marshall Jr., was in the area speaking. As a historian, he was teaching on the worldview and faith of the nation’s founding fathers. My sister and I attended his lecture, and at the end his program he asked anyone to come forward who needed prayer. At that time I went forward and asked for more of the Holy Spirit, to understand the Holy Spirit, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I really didn’t have any terms or vocabulary to use and just asked in simple prayer. So Peter Marshall laid a hand upon my shoulder and prayed a simple prayer of request. Well, absolutely nothing happened during the prayer, and I headed for home as the meeting closed. Yet, as I got into the car I sensed that something had changed in my life and in my family. When I awoke the next day, I knew that something had indeed changed; the colors around me seemed richer and brighter, the shades of the trees and grass were deeper and sharper. Something had deepened in me that night as a result of the prayers.

The Spirit Guides

The next day I was with my three little kiddos visiting Scott’s elderly grandmother in a nursing home. The kids were wild and wound up; one of them was in a high chair, one of them was throwing food on the floor, and I think another had just spilled milk. I was beginning to unravel and about to lose control. In that very second, I heard an inner voice say, “Look up”. As I looked up I saw an elderly lady eating lunch all by herself at the neighboring table. Then the voice said, “She would love to have these children in her life, she would love to have the activity that you have in your life. Do not wish it away.” I had such a sense of conviction; that I had spoken words that wished away time with my children, time that I could never get back, that I had taken so many blessings from my Father and treated them as curses and troubles. That began a new way of thinking for me. It began a new process, a new walk with the Holy Spirit. Now, I knew that the Holy Spirit always shines a spotlight on Jesus, but I also came to know – we can all come to know – his voice and leading if I make the time to listen, to get quiet, and meet with him. He began that day to making me more hungry for himself.

Prayer Life

Now I was already engaged in a Bible study and continued on in studying the Word, and God began to grow my prayer life. Sure, as a believer I was familiar with prayer, but in this new season Jesus just began to have me spend extended periods of time in prayer as I was asking, ’Lord, teach me how to pray, show me how to spend time with you. Help me find time to spend with you.’

This was the first time that I was just wonderfully, desperately hungry and thirsty for the Lord. For the next year and a half I found myself having wonderful quiet times with God. My hunger led me to get up an hour before my children woke up in the morning, and my kids were early risers. All of us who have ever lived through the experience of raising three children (all under the age of five years) know what a supernatural experience it must be to voluntarily get up an hour before they awaken. But those were the early morning hours in which Jesus was meeting with me. I was studying the scriptures one book at a time, sitting with my morning coffee and writing down anything new that I thought God wanted me to learn. I also began doing something that I’d read about, but never knew anyone who actually did it – to pray on my knees. I began spending extended times on my knees in prayer. It’s funny how such a simple thing as praying on my knees can help to humble my heart. These days were certainly humbling days, days of bustle and activity and stir, but still quiet days for my spirit. I’d known the goodness of Jesus for over a decade, I’d known who he was and asked him to be Lord when I was a teenager. But now I was learning and experiencing what it was tp be in His very presence. The Holy Spirit was hovering over me, just as He was over the waters at creation. He was supernatural, and He was present. It was humbling, awesome, and a bit scary.

Change Is Constant

As I was growing in my trust in God’s goodness and faithfulness, He was preparing me and my family for new adventures, readying us for launching into new directions. We would have to grow and mature in our trust and faith. One night I had a terrible dream; one in which I experienced the panic of having four little children crawling all over me. To make matters worse, in my dream my husband had left the financial stability of his business, taken our chaotic little brood away from all familial support, and begun attending ministry training. It was a bad, unsettling dream, and it took me several hours to recover after I awoke. I was dazed for quite a while.

Well, within the next year and a half my husband had left the business behind, had enrolled in seminary for ministry training, and we had moved to a town eight hours removed from our family, and our fourth child had been born. That earlier dream became a very real source of strength from the Lord to me. Far from a bad dream, the experience was now a comfort to me, the reassurance that God knew what He was doing and that He had us in His care. He was faithful. We were on an adventure with the Lord. I am so thankful that He had taken the time and helped me make the time to drawn in close to Him and to craft a friendship with Him. It made all the difference when our circumstances changed from settled to stirred up. This season was the beginning of a new faith walk for our family, one in which God has been always faithful in every turn of the road. In earlier days, we didn’t need faith for our walk, for it all seemed laid out before us. Since that day, it has been a walk of faith. Rich and deep.

Adventures In The Spirit

In the last twenty-plus years we have lived in many places across the USA and the world, some of them inhospitable and rather dangerous. God has taken us through many changes and many challenges. He’s taken us in new directions we never could have anticipated in our finances, in ministry and in business, in diverse cultures, with our children, and in our church community life. Through it all, He has drawn us closer as a family and stronger in our love and trust of God. Every challenge has presented a new study in the faithfulness of God. It hasn’t been easy, but it has been good. And so, in 2007 the Lord brought Scott and I to the High Country of North Carolina.

I am as hungry and as thirsty for God’s presence as I was 27 years ago, with three little children at my feet. Now I am hungry and thirsty to make Him known to a new generation. Thanks to God’s presence, His very Spirit, we are still on an adventure with God. Press into the Lord, don’t take anyone else’s word regarding a relationship with God, get to know Him. Allow Him to teach you about Himself. Allow the Holy Spirit to craft in you a friendship with God.