Welcome to Daily Grace. We believe the Bible is true, trustworthy, and timeless. And we want to help women like you. No and love God's Word.

The Bible shows us who God is and who He is, changes everything. My name is Shelby and I'm Crystal. And we want to invite you to come join us as we chat about the truth of God's Word in our everyday lives.

Hey everybody and welcome back to the Daily Grace podcast. This is Shelby and I am joined as always by my friend and co-host Crystal. Hi Crystal.

Hey Shelby. And today we also have a very special guest with us. Her name is Amy DeMarcangelo. Amy is the author of A Hunger for More. She's also a regular contributor at the gospel coalition and a graduate student at Westminster Theological Seminary.

She lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three children. Amy, thank you for joining us. We're so glad to have you here today. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Amy, your book is called A Hunger for More. And really it's an invitation for those of us that are longing for something, maybe something greater than what we're experiencing currently.

It's an invitation for us to find satisfaction in Christ. So why do you think we experience longing? Like where do you think it comes from and then what does it reveal about us?

Yeah. So I think we can feel longing in a variety of seasons. So sometimes it is in a hard season and we're feeling the pain of lights in a broken world and we're just longing for things to be different.

We're longing for a redeemed world. But what can be confusing is when everything's kind of going well.

So I wrestled with this longing a lot for a meal. I think I've experienced a lot of blessing. I grew up in a loving stable family. I have a great marriage.

I got to receive a quality education. So there were just all these things that I and I know many other people experience that are good and then we feel confused like, well, why do I feel this longing for more? And isn't single discontentment. So I think a lot of times I'd also assume I must be just simply discontent.

And I think what the Lord has been teaching me is that our longing for more is always going to be there. And it's a good thing. And it's actually a gift from him because it his invitation to know him more because we were made for more God created this world for flourishing, you know, sin entered and

messed everything up. And so now we're going to naturally have this longing for a new heaven newer where things are all set right and just a longing to know God more deeply. So even if we are doing well and we feel like we love the Lord, maybe we're even growing in our desire for him.

But we feel this nagging discontentment that I would say is actually a holy discontentment. It's because it's God driving us to seek more and more of him. So I think that we often will misunderstand it and maybe try to silence it, hush it, numb it, distract it. It's like I don't like feeling this uncomfortable feeling of wanting more. So let me try to settle that down.

And really we need to lean into it and see this longing is here for a reason. And that reason is strong, me closer to God. So what is this maybe this particular thing I'm craving right now? Am I longing for more love? Am I longing for more strength? Am I longing for deeper relationships?

And then what do those longings reveal? Okay, so how does God still those longings? So, you know, our longings will take a variety of forms. But instead of viewing them as this is just needing simply discontent. I just need to seek contentment rather leaning into it and being like, oh, this is here because God wants to fill something God wants to show me more of himself in some way. So how can I lean into this longing?

Yeah, I think you're bringing up such a good point, Amy, even as I, you know, kind of got into your book and read through the introduction. One thing that stuck out to me is I think a lot of us are just content with the amount of God that we have.

Like we're content with what we know of him. We're content with our rhythms with meeting with him and praying and being in the word. Yet there's so much more.

And so what I love about this book and you titled it a hunger for more is it's an invitation to like just that more that we're so longing for and craving.

So your book covers several different things that we crave and even is like if someone were to read all of these, you'd be like, oh, my goodness, yes, I crave all of those things.

So the very first one that I want to talk about is craving wonder. Can you kind of break that down for us and even talk about like some practical ways that we can cultivate the wonder of God?

Sure. Yeah, I think this craving for wonder starts as early, you know, you see it in kids, they crave wonder when they see super heroes. That's what I've got sons who are really into super heroes, super powers, those things that they can't understand and then are just so amazing.

...