Title: Hunger and thirst after righteousness
Scripture:Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled. – Matthew 5:6
Hunger and thirst are innate and natural impulses God built into everyone. Every living thing in the world has this. God put it there not because he doesn’t want you to die. The instinct leads you to go and get food or water.
Spiritually hungry people long to be filled. The trouble is we don’t naturally know where to go to be filled. It is this that drives us. We all have this hunger. Some of us are better at controlling it and others at hiding it. The bible calls, “lusts of the flesh.” Some of these drives the mentally ill find it harder to control.
[pullquote] “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” CS Lewis [/pullquote]A simple illustration of this is the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32. He took the inheritance his father had given him, left home, and went to a far-off country where he squandered his inheritance money on riotous living, on things that would not satisfy. He was far too easily pleased and fooled into thinking that this was what life was all about, only to fall short. When he had a lot of money, he had a lot of friends and parties. But when the money was gone, so were his friends. At this point in time, he begins to “go down hill” in a major way, to the point of living with pigs and eating the slop they ate.
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. – Isaiah 55:1-2
The question is simple: In your life right now, what are you hungering and thirsting after? Where is your heart? In one sense, it is easy for us as believers to see that we are filled and satisfied when we accept the free gift of salvation, but too often that is where hungering and thirsting stops. Many believers struggle with big areas of sin, and they try to fill a hole with something other than Jesus Christ. Many pastors have fallen to the tragedy of pornography; many families have been destroyed through not hungering and thirsting after righteousness only to end up in divorce.
- Father, create in me a clean heart and renew your spirit within me in Jesus
- Father, let the cord of my relationship with you be solidified in Jesus name
- Father, let me be conscious of my walk with you in every facet of my life in Jesus name
