Be Hungry
It’s that time of year, the holidays, where families and friends come together to share in times of fellowship and in my personal favorite, times of great food. Since we’ve been married, the holidays have become a time of double dinners, if you know what I️ mean, my family dinner, then my husband’s family dinner. And if you’re like me, you may show up to the first dinner hungry and wanting to be first in line for the buffet because you’ve been starving waiting for that meal all day. But by the time I get to that second dinner, later on, I’m not as hungry. I’m often not hungry at all, so getting in line isn’t very important to me.
We’re not talking about food today, really. This is an illustration of Christians. Matthew 5:6 tells us, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.” We have to be careful as Christians that the hunger we experience when we first come to the table, when we first come to the Lord, isn’t weaning, and doesn’t fade away. Thankfully, being filled spiritually isn’t the same as being stuffed full of awesome Thanksgiving food, as there’s always room for more filling in the things of the Spirit. If we’re not hungry, we won’t want to be fed. And we know from Deuteronomy 8:3 that, “…man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” We should continue to be full, which requires us to continually be hungry.
Back to those great holiday meals…again, if you’re like me, it doesn’t matter if you’re already stuffed full, when you smell that awesome pumpkin pie, you’re all of the sudden hungry again! You want it and you will make room for it. We know by experience how good that homemade pie is and that experience causes us to hunger when we weren’t even hungry before. Psalms 34:8, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.” Just as we can stir that hunger in our appetite for delicious dessert, because we know how good it is, we can stir ourselves up likewise in the things of the Word and Spirit. We can choose to be hungry! We can make room for the things of God, if we choose to. We do this because we know how good He is! Let us taste and see that the Lord is good and let us hunger for righteousness.
Matthew 6:33 tells us to seek first the kingdom of heaven. You know, children have it figured out pretty well. They’ve figured out how to be hungry just for the good stuff. Have you ever noticed that? They want to skip right to the good stuff and forget all about all that other stuff! We could learn something about our spiritual eating habits from our kids. Saving room for the good stuff, saving room for the things of God. So how do we do this? We put the things of the world down to go after the things of God. We can make sure we save room in our schedules for God, for church, for prayer, and for studying His Word. If we’ll make room, we’ll have room for the good stuff!
Be Blessed,
Pastor Renée
