Hunger

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for My righteousness, for they will be filled.

Matthew 5:6

I found it so interesting that thirst and hunger were mentioned so often in the bible concerning one’s search for God.  I began to think of how I feel when I am thirsty and hungry.  Usually I can’t stop thinking about it until that need is fulfilled. Sometimes I will go out of my way to find a drink or a bite to eat.  Other times I will complain until I am satisfied.  When something such as hunger is on one’s mind it is hard to get it off the mind until food or drink is hunted down.  Jesus says that when we hunger and thirst for His Righteousness it shall be fulfilled.  So how does our desire to have Christ’s righteousness relate to food and drink?  

According to Wikipedia hunger is a feeling of discomfort or weakness caused by a lack of food; coupled by the desire to eat.  Hunger can be due to a severe lack of food resulting in a strong desire or craving.  Words to describe hunger would be covet, long for, yearn for, ache for, lust for or thirst for.   This search for the meaning of hunger led me to malnutrition and it really caught my attention.  Malnutrition is the lack of proper nutrition, not having enough to eat, not eating enough of the right things or being able to use the food that one does eat.  (Wikipedia)  

Taking all of this into consideration, I revert my attention to using the word hunger in the context of this verse.  Hungering for God and Jesus Christ’s righteousness means to long for or yearn for, to have strong feelings towards being right with God.  When I long for something or ache for something I want it so badly that I won’t stop until I get it.  Hungering to be like Christ should drive us to full submission to His will, we should want to do anything to know Him and follow Him, anything to live a life like Him.  

I came to realize that so many of us are malnourished when it comes to our spiritual lives.  We lack the proper relationship with and the knowledge of Christ.  This may be due to the fact that we don’t have enough of Him.  We don’t take time to read our bibles and spend time with Him in prayer.  Some of us may be doing plenty of ‘good’ works, we may be reading good devotions and blogs but our personal knowledge of The Word is lacking and our relationship with Christ is non existent.  So we are not “eating” the right things.  Then there are those who are reading the bible over and over, those who know Gods commandments left and right but who are not using the information as an outline for living, their bodies aren’t using the food they eat.............all of these leading to malnutrition.  

Eventually malnutrition will lead to starvation which is the state of exhaustion of the body caused by a lack of food (Wikipedia).  I have been there!  Many times I have experienced extreme physical and mental fatigue when I have tried to live my life on my own.  I found myself being so tired and used up.  I was broken down to a point that nothing mattered, my faith was compromised, my morals shot, because without God in my life I just couldn’t make the right decisions. I  have learned that I can’t live without my relationship with Christ, without reading His word daily and spending time with Him in discussion and prayer.  I thirst for Him every day because that dependence on His Living Water and Bread of Life sustains me.  

Continue meditating on this scripture.  Look it up in your bible and read the passages leading up to it and those that come after.  Look upon your own life and imagine yourself thirsting for God and hungering for a life like Christ.  What does that look like?  How does that feel? What might you have to change or give up?  Ask God to show you.  Ask God to give you a hunger for Him.