Hunger and Thirst

It never fails.  God knows what He is doing and how to stop me in my tracks.  I am booked with speaking engagements this week for Camp All-American, and then I will be teaching twice on Sunday morning in our Kids Church, so I am having to prepare well for the 6 times I am speaking this week.  Well, tonight I began the process of trying to figure out exactly where God wants me to take my talk for Sunday morning, and again, He used what I am to teach on to convict and challenge me.  I'm teaching on Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled," and, of course, He uses the dang kids that live in my house and take all my money to teach me more about my sin.  I honestly believe we have the hungriest kids on the planet.  If you were a fly on the walls of our house, and didn't know anything except what you heard, you would think that we lock our kids in the closet and never feed them.  Starving kids in third world countries don't whine and complain as much about wanting something to eat as our kids do.  Now don't go all crazy on me and accuse me of making fun of kids in third world countries or not feeding my kids enough because that is not the case at all, nor is it my point or intention.  What I am trying to say here is that even though we feed our kids 3 + healthy meals a day, give them an inordinate amount of healthy snacks at their disposal, and rarely make them go more than 2 hours at a time without eating, they still scream what seems like 5 minutes after they have just scarfed down a bunch of food that they are hungry again.  If I didn't know better, I would think the two oldest of our 3 have tape worms longer than the street we live on living inside them.  Those suckers can eat, and eat, and keep on eating.  They are like the Energizer bunny when it comes to putting away some food and snacks.  Our monthly grocery bill could afford me and Kristen a nice Lexus, but so I don't go to jail for starving my kids, I guess I must go without the Lexus and give it all to Kroger and Natural Foods Warehouse (have I whined to you lately how expensive that place is) to feed these 'starving' kids.  I hope you know I say what I say for dramatic effect and I don't begrudge feeding my kids at all (though a Lexus would be nice).  What is say I say in jest, and to hopefully make you all chuckle along with me at this debacle of full blown parenting I am living in, but that I honestly love all at the same time.  Okay,  I digress and must get back to the point I am trying to make.  You see, I started this blog entry almost a week ago, which speaks to my own attention deficit issues, and am just now finishing it because God had some more work (and still does) to do on me where hunger and thirst are concerned.  I'm past my speaking engagements for Camp All-American and Kids Quest, and thankfully I can't shake what the Holy Spirit is cultivating in me regarding hungering and thirsting for righteousness.  Just like my kids can't seem to go 5 minutes without needing food, God wants me to be that hungry and thirsty for His righteousness.  Literally, Jesus would laugh out loud if 5 minutes after I finish a time of personal worship I came back and said, "I need more.  I'm still hungry!"  What would that look like?  I hunger for a house with a yard, an updated car with DVD player and GPS, the latest from J Crew, and the ability to not look the 42 years that I am, and I lose sight of what I really need to hunger and thirst for because I'm so lost in what the world and my flesh says I need.  "Woe, is me!  I am a man of unclean lips and heart..."--that is my version of what Isaiah said in chapter 6.  I can't do this hunger and thirst for righteousness thing on my own.  I can't work it up.  Only the Holy Spirit can give it to me and help me live it out.  In order to do that, I need to look at Matthew 5:1 - 10, break it down, and truly see what God is saying to me.  Here is what I see:

1.  I must realize I am a total spiritual invalid.  There is nothing good in me whatsover, and I can't do anything to be good and right in God's eyes.  That is being poor in Spirit.

2.  I must mourn my sin.  Godly sorrow and mourning bring true repentance, and the ability to see my poorness of spirit and mourn it are all part of the Holy Spirit's work.

3.  I must accept without fighting, blame shifting, or arguing what it is that God says about me and the punishment me and my sin deserve.  That is meekness.

Matthew 5:1 - 6 tell us what needs to happen in order for us to hunger and thirst for that righteousness, and then Matthew 5:7 - 10 tell us what that righteousness is (mercy, purity, and peacemaking) and that we will be persecuted in various ways (big or small) for living out that righteousness by the power of the Holy Spirit.  All that said, it has been made anew to me once again that once I understand, accept, and embrace the fact that Jesus lived that righteous life for me and became the ultimate sacrifice for my sin, then the Holy Spirit intervenes and causes me to hunger and thirst after right living...after righteousness.  And though my salvation was a one time event, my need to come back to the table to be filled is a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute need.  Just like no matter what we feed them, our kids can't seem to get enough to eat, I too pray that no matter how much I am filled with the Good News and the Word, I'll always soon after have an appetite for more.  So, feed your kids, but feed your soul more.  Selah.