I normally keep my blog for the lighter side of life. I guess I will break tradition and post something of a spiritual nature. This past Sunday I preached on the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. The first four Beatitudes deal with our relationship to God. I covered the first three, but made a heavy emphasis on the last one - "Bless are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled."
As I spoke on each beatitude I did not cover the benefits listed with them, rather I just emphasized what God wants for us as Christians. This 4th one is the key to all the rest. By following this Beatitude it will enable us to be able to easily succeed with the others. God says in both the Old and New Testaments that He wants us to be holy. The best way we can as humans be holy like God is to follow the example of God's son. Jesus Christ gave us the greatest example in the flesh. If you have a desire to be holy like God wants us to, study what He did and what He said. Being holy is being righteous. How many really truly hunger and thirst after true righteousness?
The text was Matthew 5. The context of this verse is very simple. It uses elements of our daily life that help us to understand what God wants for us in respect to being righteous. It says that we need to hunger and thirst after it. It is a concept we all easily identify with. It is something that motivates our fork and our glass many times a day.
When was the last time you went from Sunday morning to Sunday morning with out eating or drinking? Most of us think we are starving if we miss a meal or two. Most of us fare sumptuously at home and at buffets. We cannot do anything in our life with having lunch breaks, eating out, meals, drinking fountains. Without the time taken to fill our bodies with nutrition and nourishment, we would soon become dehydrated and anemic. Yet spiritually we can go from Sunday to Sunday and day to day without filling our spiritual life. How much more we would be blessed if we daily hungered and thirsted after God and His righteousness. What if when we got up we had our breakfast of time with Him. Spent a time during the day reading His Word and even in the evening gathered our families around God's word like we do the table and fill up again. I can tell it is the only way we can over eat or drink without sinning.
May God help all of us to have a hunger and thirst for the things of God. May we not let the many distractions around us get us sidetracked. You will be blessed and you will be filled!! Alright enough of my preaching!
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