Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
For years many of you have heard me close out prayers, both corporate and personal, with the words of Psalm 23:3 lead me, or lead us “in paths of righteousness for your name’s sake.” It’s a prayer that I love, that I feel is important and that I feel is pleasing to God but it is also a prayer that can be costly. Jesus said “narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Paths of righteousness are not paths of common use. The way that glorifies the name of God does not often glorify the one chosen to do the walking. The gate the leads to salvation does not often allow for the baggage of this life or the world we live in to be carried through it. Asking to be led into paths of righteousness is asking to be led out of paths of selfishness, paths of self-consciousness, paths of shame and paths of self-righteousness. Do you notice what almost all of those paths have in common? They are all consumed with self; the path of righteousness is consumed with bringing glory to God. The path of self must be abandoned if we are ever going to walk in paths of righteousness. Last week we saw that meekness is birthed by the Holy Spirit, is based on being loved by God and is the action of following the leading of God at all times, in all things, with all people. In the same way that brokenness leads to mourning and mourning leads to meekness; meekness leads to a hunger and thirst for righteousness. If God’s love has compelled us to do His will, then doing His will creates in us a longing, a hunger and a thirst for Him, for His heart, His character, His ways and His glory. Jesus said that His bread and His drink was to do the will of the Father. Peter wrote that the will of the Father was that none would perish but that all would come to repentance. I believe that part of our being created in the image of God is the hunger that is within us. God hungers for us, He hungers for His children, to pour out His love and to display His righteousness. The place of hunger within us was created by God. The fact that all of us do or have hungered for things other than God’s will and His righteousness is the result of living in a sinful and fallen world; hunger is part of being made in God’s image, hungering for things that are temporary, selfish or lesser is revelation of our sinful condition. We don’t need to beat back and attempt to remove our hunger, we need to train and direct our hunger until we hunger and thirst for righteousness because as Jesus promised; that is the hunger that is filled.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”