“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matthew 5:6
What do you do when you are hungry or thirsty? It’s natural, we go looking for food and drink. But what if we didn’t recognize hunger as a desire for food? What if, when we felt hunger pangs, we tried to satisfy that need with something completely unrelated like watching TV or going for a walk? It wouldn’t take long for our health to suffer with a lack of nourishment.
I think this is the spiritual reality that many of us experience. When we feel a lack in our spirit, it is our spirit longing/hungering/thirsting for God; but many of us don’t recognize it as such. So we sit down to watch TV or grab a book or eat a snack or changes careers. If we are to experience the blessing of being filled like God wants to fill us, then we must learn to recognize the lack that exists inside of us as a longing for God and not for lesser things.
It strikes me that what is necessary is an ever-strengthening conviction that this is the ‘stuff of life’. I must live with the awareness that Jesus and His teachings are the answer to my soul’s sense of need. To grow in His character is what my soul truly yearns to experience. If I can recognize that and actively seek Him to find that nourishment for my soul, He promises to fill me, to satisfy my hunger, to quench my thirst. And so part of this hungering and thirsting is surely meant to imply an active seeking after Him. This is the action that corresponds to what I do in the physical when I recognize hunger … I go find food. So, when I recognize that my soul is experiencing a lack, that is when, by faith, I run to God’s kitchen for sustenance.
So Lord, help us to truly come to recognize our sensations of lack as hunger pangs for You, and help us to run to You for bread.
– Deryk Pritchard, Preacher