Daily Devotions for Difficult Days [100] The Hungry and Thirsty

Today's Guest Devotional is written by Mike Loveridge, assistant pastor of Manor Park Church

Sermon on the mount – The hungry and thirsty

We are now up to the fourth and final beatitude that speaks of our relationship with God that then flows out to those around us:

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." (Matt 5v6)

 So far, we have seen that in our relationship with God we need to be poor in spirit, mournful of our sin and meek in our approach to God. Each of these beatitudes builds on the previous one. You can’t be mournful until you are poor in spirt. You cannot be meek without mourning your sin and acknowledge your total inadequacy before God. In the same way, as we begin to today’s devotion, we need to first realise that we cannot truly hunger and thirst for righteousness until we are poor in spirt, mournful of our sin and meek in our approach to God. Those first three beatitudes have focused our attention on our spiritual condition. We are utterly destitute without Jesus. They have helped us to realise that we are nothing but helpless sinners before God. As it says in Isaiah 64:6, all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. We are all spiritually bankrupt before God. And when we realise this and come to the end of ourselves, we can take up our rightful position of humility before God.  It is only at this point, that we will really begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

So, the question then is what does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness? If you have ever been hungry or thirsty then you will understand these metaphors in that hunger and thirst are two physical needs that when unmet consume all of your thoughts. In our western culture I am not sure we fully understand them. My mum when I was growing up used to get cross with us for saying we were starving when we were merely hungry. She would say to us, ‘You don’t know what it means to be starving!’ and she was right. Or have you ever heard someone say, ‘I am dying for a drink?’ Again, that’s a huge exaggeration as we know that we simply have to turn on a tap and we can have as much fresh water as we like. There are however many still in this world who know what it is to go days without a proper meal and to never have clean water to drink. How privileged we are. True hunger and thirst are excruciating and all consuming. The people Jesus was talking to would have understood this as many of them were living in poverty with hardly any food and in a climate where water was a precious commodity. So, this hunger and thirsting in not the feeling we have as dinner approaches but something far, far stronger.

This great desire for righteousness comes from our realisation that we are desperately needy and that it is a need we cannot meet because we do not have an acceptable, adequate or saving righteousness of our own. We know and understand that our entire salvation and righteousness comes from God and God alone and there is nothing we can ever or will ever do to earn it.

As Christians we should crave righteousness. What is righteousness? Righteousness is to be made right with God, or to use a Christian phrase to be justified. The Bible clearly tells us that there is only one way to achieve righteous - through Jesus. So really the question is, ‘Do you have a hunger and thirst for Christ?’ If you do ,then your hunger and thirst will be to become more like him, or to use another Christian phrase, to be sanctified. Sanctification involves the putting to death of sin, the hatred of worldly desires and a running after Christ.

Each and every day as followers of Jesus we must be seeking to increase in our righteousness which means becoming more like Jesus and less like the world. A good illustration of this is a sports fan. Some supposed fans like to associate with a team. They buy all the kit and know the star players. But they aren’t avid supporters. They don’t always know when ‘their’ team plays, what the result is or where they are in the league table. But a true fan is different. They may or may not be able to afford all the kit, but they watch every game, know who every player is, know every result and live and breathe their team. Jesus isn’t after ‘social’ followers but people who are all out for him. That is what is means to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Are you all out for Jesus?

What’s the outcome if you are? That you will be filled. Filled with what? Filled by a complete satisfaction with Jesus!

PRAYER FOR TODAY

Our loving Heavenly Father,

We thank you for all your goodness to us.

Father we pray today that we will be poor in spirit, mournful of our sin, meek in our approach to you but may we also hunger and thirst for more of you each day and less of this world. I ask that you may show me where I look to the things of this world for fulfilment and not to you.

 Thank you that you are all we ever need as you provide for our every need.

In Jesus name we pray

 Amen.

Photo by Ashim D’Silva on unsplash