Those who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness (1)
Matthew 5:6 says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Righteousness according to the Webster’s dictionary is acting in accord with divine or moral law: free from guilt or sin.
- The spiritual righteousness
But the righteousness of God is different. Spiritual righteousness is to follow God’s will and all the things that we have to pass until we become a sanctified man. In more detail, a righteous person is he who follows the goodness, truth, and the word of God and acts it out.
The righteous in the Bible are those who completely obeyed God’s Word. And being hungry and thirsty for righteousness is to seek and long to accomplish righteousness just as those who are hungry and thirsty look for food.
An old saying goes, “3-day starvation will drive a person to steal.” Even one who is well-educated and has moral will devise all kinds of ways to gain food if he starves for three days. Of course, our members do not belong to this category.
Some of the old members experienced the spring austerity before. Even if you don’t have such experience, you can see those who are hungry look for food so desperately in movies or novels. If they cannot get any food-like food, they come to eat something not really edible. In the Old Testament, they even ate their own children. Insects, rats, bark of a tree, and roots of plants also look like food. Because they are so hungry, they eat anything they can see.
It is even more difficult to bear with thirst. Some of male members must have experienced it in the army. When you go on a march in a hot summer day without enough drinking water, you will sweat so much and you will be so thirsty.
If there is any pond on the road, they will rush to it and drink in. Even if the water is muddy, it would not matter only if they can quench their thirst. Just as those who are hungry and thirsty look for food and water so desperately, blessed are those who seek righteousness, imprint it in their heart, and act it.
Blessed are those who long to become sanctified, dwell in truth, resemble the heart of the Lord, and participate in the divine nature. Why don’t you hunger for it desperately? Those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness will long for God’s word above all else.
- What does it mean to hunger and thirst for the righteousness?
The Bible tells us what God’s will is and what kind of deed is righteous deed. Those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness will long for God’s word. Psalm 119:123 says, “My eyes fail with longing for Your salvation And for Your righteous word.” Psalm 119:147-148 says, “I rise before dawn and cry for help; I wait for Your words. My eyes anticipate the night watches, That I may meditate on Your word.”
Are you also hungry and thirsty for righteousness? Are you always meditating the words of the Bible and reviewing the sermons you listen on Sunday for the whole week to make it yours? Making it yours is not just keeping in your head as knowledge but to pray on the word, accomplish it in your heart, and actually put it into practice. It is true faith.
When I was a new-believer, I longed for God’s word so much, and whatever I came to realize, I obeyed immediately and put it into practice. So I was looking for the revival meetings where I could listen to God’s word.
It was to realize more things. I wanted to understand more of God’s word and always looked for revivals. When I understood something, I practiced it. When I heard the commands like, “Keep the Sabbath, Give tithes, and keep the Ten Commandments,” I immediately obeyed and gave offerings to God because God says, “No one is to appear before me empty-handed.” So I gave to God at least three times a week.
Because God says, “Love and forgive,” I forgave everybody who had ignored me and given me a hard time while I was ill and poor. I forgave all of them at the first revival I attended since I had so much ill-feeling against them accumulated for 7 years.
I was thinking to myself, “Only if I become healthy, I will not forgive them,” and was suffering within myself, hating them. I was thinking I was never going to forgive them only if I got my health back. I thought I would become rich and pay them back. But as I accepted the Lord and listening to who God is, who our Lord is, and what kind of love God gave us and so on, I repented thoroughly with tears and nose running in each session. As I came to know God hates sin, He has forgiven us to save us, and there is heaven where there is no sin, I repented in each session, and the ill-feeling just melted down like snow.
The almighty God the Creator gave His one and only Son as peace offering and who and what was I to hate anybody? I didn’t have the right to hate anybody. Thinking these things, all the ill-feeling melted down within a few days during the revival. Then I came to think in opposite way about the things that I had not been able to understand before. I came to think from others’ point of view, not from mine. When I put myself in their shoes, I could understand they could have done so. Their thought was different than mine. If I were them, I wouldn’t have done so, but I understood they could act in that way, too. I was trying to understand them all.
I was thinking from other people’s point of view and understanding their mind, so there was nothing that was not understandable. We should not think from our own point of view, but from that of the other person. In our own thoughts, we cannot understand. Everybody’s thoughts are different, so we should understand the other’s thought. So in that way, I understood them all and repented for several days during the revival. Then, my viewpoint also changed. I was rather thankful.
I was thankful to those who gave me hard time or hated me. I came to accept God because of them, so I was thankful. If I had not experienced those things, I wouldn’t have known God. If all my plans went well, namely if received the Ph.D. and earned a lot of money in the world and so on, I could have not accepted God forever. If so, what would I have become? I would have gone to hell and suffer forever. So through those things, I came to know God and accept the Lord, so I was so grateful. So, I was so thankful to those who gave me hard times during my seven sick years.
Since my all hatred was gone, it was rather a condition to be thankful for. So I could forgive even those who looked down upon me and gave me hard time. God let me accept the Lord through those people and also, they actually sometimes helped when I was very much in need.
Furthermore, reading the Bible, I kept the commands of God like ‘do this’ ‘don’t do that’ ‘keep this’ and ‘throw this away’ in my mind and obeyed them. If I could not obey it immediately, I wrote them down on a notebook and prayed about them. So, I could stop the works of flesh immediately. I could just not do it again. I threw them away immediately because I just didn’t do it again. For example, I quit drinking at once during the revival.
I quit smoking immediately when I was told God dislikes it. The speaker said God dislikes it so I just quit. I could start dawn prayer immediately. I did what I could do immediately and stopped what I could stop immediately.
But there were things that I could not stop immediately. It was the sinful things in my heart. Even though I tried to stop them or not to think about them, they were reminded in my mind again. I wrote these things down on a notebook and prayed about them every time. I prayed so that those evil minds could be removed. The longest one lasted for 3 years. Other things were cast off quite soon, but the last one took 3 years to be removed. That one thing was pulled out completely after 3 years of prayer. I was checking my heart looking at the notes, and if I was sure I did not have a particular form of evil in my heart, I crossed it out with a red line. So, it took 3 years to cross out all my notes. It was fun in fact. Reading from the New Testament and Old Testament, I noted down what I was not doing right according to the Word.
There weren’t so many things actually since I had already cast off all the works of the flesh and had only sinful things of flesh in heart. I wrote them down and cast them off one by one. It took 3 years to throw away all of them. Because I was so thankful to God for His grace and love of healing my body that had to die, and because I loved God the Father so much, I was thirsting to learn His word, know His will, and act according to it to please Him.
If you truly know the love of God, everyone of you will hunger and thirst for the righteousness. The one and only Son of God Jesus, who was blameless and spotless, suffered the pain of cross and was despised for us who are sinners. If you truly believe in the cross, you cannot but live by the Word. You will long to pay back the love of the Lord and please God and to accomplish God’s will. You will ask for the righteousness of God like a hungry and thirsty person.
Therefore, as you listen to the word, you will obey it, cast off sins, and practice the truth. 1 John 3:9-10 says, “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed (namely God’s word) abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.” If anyone hates, judges, condemns, or slanders somebody else, and spreads rumors to others not loving that person, he is not born of God. You can discern in this way.
When we obey and act the righteous word of God hungering and thirsting for the righteousness, it is the evidence that we belong to God.