I am driving across america with a close friend this week.
Not only am I helping him, but I am always raising awareness of our charity’s needs.
This week the pressing need is $1200 cash by Friday to pay our co-laborers. We all live hand to mouth. If we miss payroll, the staff and their dependents go hungry until I can pay them. Thanks be to The Lord, we have never ever missed one bill, but the worst one of all to miss would be payroll.
So speaking of hunger, I am driving with my friend who is a highly successful business man and very skinny. He doesn’t think about food all the time. When he is driving he is thinking about driving for example, not the hamburger stand that he just drove by.
I am fat, and not a successful businessman, nor a very good driver. When I drive by the hamburger stand I am thinking of the hamburger instead of my driving. When I am hungry or thirsty, everything stops until I get a handle on things.
There seems to be a link between being thin, being a successful business man, and even a better driver, and the mental discipline to focus on one important thing at any given point in time.
Matthew 5:5
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
There seems to be a link between hunger, thirst, and righteousness. Although righteousness is neither about food or drink, Jesus was talking about two of man’s greatest needs. Food and water. When someone is really hungry or thirsty, every other priority gets shelved until those two things are handled.
I think you have to be a child living in poverty in a 3rd world country to really understand true hunger and thirst. Skipping breakfast to get a work out in a fancy gym isn’t really hunger. A dry mouth after a mile run isn’t really thirst.
My prayer is that we never forget to satisfy our hunger for God, Our hunger and thirst for His righteousness, and His Word should be like that of the third world child who bites off pieces of their own tongues in an effort to calm the ravaging effects of true hunger.
Desperation is the key word. Third world kids never want to go through hunger again. They have a really disgusting habit of hoarding food. You will find 1 year old half eaten birthday cakes hidden behind books, a moldy bologna sandwich with a big bite taken out of it under their mattresses, and thelist goes on and on.
We must be like children who have suffered true hunger. It is not a given that we will always be able to buy a Bible or freely worship during our lifespans. Someday these great pleasures may just be a pleasant memory etched in our hearts and minds. Now is the time to develop true hunger and thirst for God and His Righteousness. Not only in ourselves, but in our children, and in those who we minister too.
If you put off calming your hunger with such things, it will go away… and that is bad. Eat heartily from the Word of God and drink deeply of His Living Waters and you will be full for ever!
Dean