Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast. Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Let's turn to Numbers 11. Numbers 11 in the title of today's message, which is a little bit hard coming off of Thanksgiving week,

while I'm sure we're still eating leftovers today. But the title is Kill the Craving. Kill the Craving.

Now we all have cravings. I have a little bit of a sweet tooth myself. I enjoy gummy bears. I enjoy a sweet potato casserole.

That's my favorite dish for Thanksgiving. My mother-in-law does a phenomenal job. I feel like she makes it just for me every single year.

At least that's what I'm going to say, because I'm her favorite son-in-law, so...

But I realized that apparently a sweet tooth was passed down to my children as well.

So we have four kids, Addy, who's eight, Kate, who's six, Preston, who's five, and Jack, who's three.

So Elaine clearly is the real hero in our family. But our oldest son, I know you they say you have sons, and they eat a lot.

And I expected that to come a little bit later on in life. But apparently it started a little bit earlier on.

So I actually gave my son Preston a nickname. And his nickname in our house from me is pantry.

Because if it got quiet at our house, even when he was two years old, I knew exactly where to go find him. He was in the pantry.

And what he would do is he would go in there and he'd grab the Oreos, he'd grab the oatmeal cream pies, he'd grab all of these things that may taste good to you.

But aren't necessarily good for you, and he would go and he would have his secret stash, which I eventually found, with some mold all over it.

And I told him, hey, you can't do that. Man cannot live on gummy bears and oatmeal cream pies alone. It just can't happen.

But we all have our cravings, and what I want to talk about today is just food, but also I want to talk about the things that our soul craves.

We all have cravings in our soul. For some of us, it may be acceptance. We're craving acceptance. We want it so badly.

Some of us, it may be, we want to be known by others. Some of us, it may be wealth. Some of us, it may be different things for all of us.

But we all have those cravings. And what do we do with those cravings is really important for us as we grow in our relationship with God.

And in Numbers 11, the people of Israel reveal a lot to us about how they handled the cravings that they had.

And I believe there's a lot that we can learn from them. So let's jump in Numbers 11, starting in verse 4.

It said, then the foreign rabble, remember that, who were traveling with the Israelites began to crave the good things of Egypt.

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