What is on the menu?

 

Last night we had dinner with our son and his fiancée. Hubby and I shared an order and we were satisfied after eating it. Today’s verse is: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6) I’m thinking it is easy to overeat, but I can never do that with Jesus. He is enough and yet that hunger for Him is much like He is — endless. As the psalmist said, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:2) And Jesus responds:

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” (John 7:37–38)

While bread and water, meat and potatoes, salad and vegetables, are all needed for good physical health, the righteousness of God is the way to not only have enough food, but the way to be totally satisfied. Jesus made a promise about daily needs: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33) The OT writer says, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread” (Psalm 37:25) also tying righteousness to daily bread, but this is more than bread. It is about satisfaction of soul, about contentment of heart.

The NT urges righteousness to be pursued because it is vital. “So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” (2 Timothy 2:22) Even with a pure heart, there is an empty place, a longing for perfection, for love, for unending happiness, or an unnamed something that eludes the human soul. However, those who turn to Jesus with this thirst for whatever it is find out that only Christ can satisfy our deepest needs. He said:

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. (John 6:35)

The prodigal thought having his inheritance and doing his own thing would work, but sinful pleasure made the hole in his heart grow bigger. The rich farmer thought if he could tear down his barns and build larger ones to store all his grain and goods would make it possible to take his ease, “eat, drink and be merry” but that didn’t work either. Those who lay up treasure for themselves and are not “rich toward God” eventually lose everything.

Pursuing righteousness involves poverty of spirit, mourning for sin, and meekness. The rewards are great even though the process is often painful at first. However, ignoring Jesus and trying to fill that void with temporal goals and pleasures deepens the hunger and adds to spiritual blindness. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)

Lord Jesus, this makes me think of today’s deepest needs. What do I hunger for? I have challenges that seem impossible so my empty spot is about wisdom, strength, creativity, all things found in You. I cannot fill the demands on my life without You and the leading that You give. Your answers to my prayers may be unexpected surprises, but that is fine with me. I’m running to You to fill my need for righteousness, not only the rightness of being morally acceptable to You, but the rightness of recognizing my tendency to fill that empty space with all my ‘good’ ideas. Instead, I want Your wisdom and Your power, Your thoughts to govern all choices throughout this day and every day. Quickly reveal self-centered errors and open my eyes to Your gracious rightness in all things. Satisfy both my hunger and thirst, I pray.

Read Luke 18:9-14. How was the Pharisee trying to fill the empty place in his heart? What did the tax collector do? How does this apply to the idea of having a hunger and thirst for righteousness? What satisfaction did these men experience?

 

 

Super Satisfaction

 

St. Augustine said of God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

C. S. Lewis wrote it this way, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” Both knew the reality of an empty human heart and the fullness that only God can bring. He alone SATISFIES our every need.

Note, this is not ‘our every greed’ or assumption that more of anything else will satisfy. I once wanted a big, fancy house. Been there, done that — not satisfied. It is true of all things. Even at the dinner table, if I eat what I want instead of a well-balanced meal in proper proportion — not satisfied. This is so true in spiritual matters. Matthew 6:33 tells me to “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Experience tells me, ‘herein lies contentment.’

In the OT, satisfy is about having enough and being filled. It applies to food and nourishment, but also death and destruction. Several verses compare this hunger to that emptiness when people feel as if something is missing and they do not have enough. This emptiness, usually vague and unidentified, explains many actions of ‘driven’ people and the motivation behind power trips and wars:

Proverbs 27:20. Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man.

Habakkuk 2:5. “Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest. His greed is as wide as Sheol; like death he has never enough. He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples.”

Ecclesiastes 1:8. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

However the OT people of God knew where to go regarding the yearnings of their hearts. Psalm 81:16 tells how God can “feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

If the need is emotional, physical, or any other desire, wisdom turns to the promises of God:

Psalm 90:14. Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Psalm 145:16. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Isaiah 58:11. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

Psalm 91:16. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

Jeremiah 31:25. For I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish.”

The NT also speaks of physical appetites concerning food, but uses this hunger to tell how God satisfies our longing hearts, as long as that longing is not misplaced. He says:

James 4:1–3. “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

Instead, Jesus says in Matthew 5:6, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Instead of seeking ‘bigger, better, and more’ in worldly goods and prestige, I am to seek becoming more like Jesus. when I do that, God satisfies me.

Paul learned that contentment, and it is a learning process. He said in Philippians 4:12, “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.”

This is contentment. Whatever God gave was enough and he was satisfied. He adds in verse 19, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” This contentment is in knowing Jesus and knowing He will grant to me whatever is necessary for that deep and full sense of satisfaction.

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. Focusing on Jesus and eternal matters helps. So does looking at my home, family, all situations and thinking of God’s sovereignty. He is in charge and if I need anything, He has or will supply it. I trust Him to keep His promises and in times of needs, I can with confidence draw near to the throne of grace knowing His mercy and experiencing His grace will always satisfy me.