The filling...

Hunger is an interesting sensation, is it not?  For some strange reason your stomach begins to twist, and then there are odd noises (which only seem to happen at inopportune times), and then you finally find something to eat.  Thirst is no different, really, except that you begin to experience "dry mouth," and you will tire quickly.  Yet for some reason, we find the means with which to satiate these needs for food and water... but what about when we are hungry and thirsty for Jesus?

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, because they will be filled."

Matthew 5:6

Sticking with our analogy, if you wake in the morning and know that you have cereal in the house, and then you discover your stomach telling you to eat, what do you do?  Chances are that you probably go and fix a bowl, regardless of size, and have breakfast.  And while there is milk in the bowl, most people I know have some other beverage in the morning: coffee, tea, juice, water, or whatever the choice may be.  But you see, there is a present need, a feeling that accompanies it, and action to fulfill it.  The hunger and thirst that accumulates overnight are not ignored, but are removed through the act of eating and drinking.

Have you ever noticed that same feeling in your soul?  That ever-sinking pitfall feeling that tells you that you NEED Jesus?  It comes to all that He calls, whether immediate and powerful or slow and steady in approach, and it reaches us all in the way that we need to be reached... because He meets us where we are, rather than expecting us to leap to His level.  But this hunger is blessedly different in one specific way, and that is that when you begin to feed it, it grows ever-stronger.

In filling the first minor need, you find that God the Father is not a subject one can consume in a single sitting.  He is so much bigger than even the best of us will ever be able to describe or imagine, and so we take in what we can.  But, like any muscle, as we continue to take Him in, we are able to grow in what we take in, how much, and to what degree.  And before too long, we grow from hungering for answered prayer requests to the point of hungering and thirsting for His righteousness to fill us and cover us!  We grow into servant-minded people, seeking the will of the Father first, in all things.

Hunger and thirst for righteousness is to literally hunger and thirst for Jesus and for the Word of God to fill you.  Now I wouldn't recommend that you eat scrolls like Ezekiel, but the symbolic nature of that moment should never escape even the newest of Christians: the Word is what fills our souls!  And in the act of consumption of the scrolls, Ezekiel literally took the Word into his body, into his bloodstream, into all of himself.  As I said, I wouldn't recommend trying this exactly, but here is what I would say you do.  READ!!!  Read the Bible, the living and breathing Word of God, inerrant and perfect as inspired through men by the Holy Spirit.  Read about the righteousness for which we all yearn, and be filled by the Spirit.  

And please notice, like every other Beatitude, this does not say that you "might" be filled, or that you will be filled "eventually," does it?  No.  It says you will be filled, and it is a promise!

God bless you all!!!