Fourth Beatitude: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
Two of the strongest and most basic needs of human beings are hunger and thirst, which are the desire for necessary food and drink. The fourth Beatitude, found in Matthew 5:6, equates the sincere quest for the knowledge of God in His fullness to hunger and thirst. The individual who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is like a man who is starving for food or craving a drink of water. True hunger and thirst causes us to act in a certain way. A hungry animal will go on the prowl searching for a way to meet its needs.
I had a discussion with someone who God recently called to the ministry as an Evangelist. She said that she is so hungry for the Word of God that after she has studied and put her Bible down she wants to pick it right back up again and read some more. That’s the kind of hunger and thirst that God is talking about in the fourth Beatitude.
The Late Apostle Lobias Murray would tell us how, because he was trying to draw closer to God, he would sit up far into the night, studying God’s Word. Dr. Shirley Murray, his wife, told us that often she would awaken during the night to the sound of the Late Apostle crying out to God and communing with Him about the needs of the people of God. Apostle Herman Murray spoke recently about a time when God gave him an answer to a specific situation while walking through his house talking with God at 1A.M. This kind of hunger and thirst will cause you to roll out of your bed early in the morning when the house is quiet to commune with God. It will keep you sitting far into the night studying God’s Word and it will change your life as He begins to fill your desire for Him.
As a Sunday School teacher, my prayer for my class is that God will give them a greater hunger and thirst for righteousness so that they can be filled. It is very interesting to see the hunger increasing in my students because their behavior will change. They will begin to come to class on time when they were not so careful about timeliness in the past. They will come to class more prepared because they have studied the lesson and they come with questions about what they read. I can see them begin to make practical applications of the lessons as they relate the Word to their own lives. Their involvement in class increases and they increase their interaction with others who also hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some may come to class before class begins and others will stay and ask questions after class has ended. There is often an increased involvement in other aspects of church service as well. They may join the Choir or become members of the Usher Board or Greeters whereas they were only pew members in the past. They may become more attentive during Worship Service and open up and openly praise God with abandon. How beautiful it is to see them grow in God because they hunger and thirst after Him. The Word of God promises us that one who desires the more of Him in this way will be filled. He will fill us with His power, with His purpose for our lives and with His choicest blessings. May you continue to hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled.
