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CHAPTER
5 None But the Hungry Heart Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness; for
they shall be filled. Matthew
5:6 Because
you say, I am rich, have
become wealthy, and
have need of nothing, and
do not know that you are wretched, miserable,
poor, blind, and naked. Revelation
3:17
May we become genuinely needy in our hearts and spirits, and may
this neediness lead us straight to the source of supply, our almighty
God. May we be humbled to acknowledge our need of the Lord alone, our
hope, our life, our all. May we invite Him to produce in us a spirit
that is truly dependent, reliant on Him for all we need. May our hearts
be open to receive His gifts of love, especially Himself. Oh,
To Be Hungry
How pathetic is that picture of our lovely Lord as He stands
outside the closed door of His church, meekly knocking for admittance.
This is the Creator of all the universe who, loving and lowly,
sacrificed Himself to redeem us at such awesome cost. Outside the church
door, he calls to those within who haven’t eaten so much of this
world’s husks that they have no hunger left for Him: Behold,
I stand at the door and knock. If
anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I
will come in to him and
dine with him, and he with me. Revelation
3:20
Quick fix, big thrill, power-hungry Christianity has been in
vogue. God’s people have preferred showmanship to genuine spiritual
power, instant gratification to the slow-growing fruit of the Spirit.
Look around you at the results.
The fruit of the Spirit grows with exposure to the sunlight of
God’s love and to the rain of divinely permitted trials. As we spend
time in communion with Him in humility of spirit and allow Him to use
trials and tribulations to turn us sweetly to Him from the still-present
sin and self, his fruit in us matures. Hungering
for Him
Within us is a holy hunger for our gracious, wonderful God.
This hunger was placed there by the Spirit when He came to dwell in our
spirits when we first received Christ as our Savior. But, most of us
haven’t been in the habit of adequately feeding that hunger for Him.
Many of us have been starving our spiritual longings after the Lord.
Let me ask you: how much of your praying is for the things of
this life and how much for the next? Do you ever take time just to love,
worship, and adore your lovely Lord? Do you take time to see Him as He
is in all His wonder and glory, in all His perfection and beauty, in all
His grace and mercy, in all His kindness and love? Do you take time to
meditate on His magnificent perfection?
I don’t blame folks too much for their wrong praying. You see,
if you look around in the Lord’s church, it’s hard to find anyone
who sets an example. To learn without good models to copy is very
difficult. Who,
Me?
Let me challenge you, then, to become an example for others to
follow. Who, me? you
yelp. Yes, you! No
matter how unspiritual, how much of a failure you feel. In fact, just
because you feel so unspiritual, such a failure, you qualify. Others
need to learn from just such a model as you who can admit to being
needy.
Jesus said in the great Sermon
on the Mount that blessed are the poor in spirit, the mourners,
the meek, the hungry, the thirsty. You qualify only as you realize
something of just how poor, how mournful, how hungry, and how thirsty
you really are. So take in hand the little sense of neediness you have,
thank God in your heart that He has given you even that little bit, and
go to Him.
As you look to Him, little by little He will increase that small
sense of neediness. At length you may come even to glory in the very
neediness that once frightened you so. Ultimately you may see yourself
in Him, resting and remaining there, content for Him in you to satisfy
all your needs. An
Appetizer
Now, before I begin to lead you into the way this can come about,
let me whet your appetite a little. Listen to David, that sweet singer
of Israel, a man after God’s own heart. Let his words sink deep into
your heart. Let them begin to induce in you a perhaps unfamiliar
response to your lovely Lord’s longing love for you. For
He satisfies the longing soul, and
fills the hungry soul with goodness. Let
the hearts of those rejoice who
seek the Lord. Seek
the Lord and His
strength; seek
his face evermore. The
young lions lack and suffer hunger; but
those who seek the Lord
shall not lack
any good thing. I
sought the Lord, and He
heard me, and
delivered me from all my fears. The
poor shall eat and be satisfied; Those
who seek Him will praise the Lord. My
heart and my flesh cry out for
the living God. O
God, You are my God; early
will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my
flesh longs for You in
a dry and thirsty land, where
there is no water. As
the deer pants for the water brooks, so
pants my soul for You, O God. My
soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When
shall I come and appear before God? Selections
from the Psalms
The answer to this question, When
shall I come and appear before God? Any time I will! Yet we take
such sparse advantage of this wonderful privilege of appearing before
the omnipotent God of all the universe. What fools we mortals are.
This God of love promises us: You
will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
(Jeremiah 29:13). His perfectly spotless Son, our Savior and our
God, often found it wise to retire from the pressing crowd. In the
mountain or place
apart, He would hold
sacred conversations with His Father.
Our quick gimme prayers grieve the God of love who longs to
fellowship with us in the intimacy of exchanged love. The psalmist king
was a man after God’s own heart just because nothing was, or ever
could be for long, as important as his intimacy with God. He said: One
thing I have desired of the Lord, that
will I seek: That
I may dwell in the house of the Lord all
the days of my life, to
behold the beauty of the Lord, and
to inquire in His temple. Psalm
27:4
Oh, may we seek Him so. May He become adorable to us. May His
beauty draw us to Himself in the longing of love so nothing else but He
can fill our growing hunger for Himself. |
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