Jesus said in Matthew 5:6, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Now this is not a hunger for experiences, nor is it a hunger for blessings. It is not a hunger to have a ministry, and it is not a hunger for a position or a place.
It is not a hunger or a striving to build an image in people’s minds. It is a hunger and a thirst after righteousness.
Deep in our hearts there must be a hunger and thirst for righteousness. It is not only a hunger for God, but also a crying and yearning for the Lord to perfect your spirit and bring purification in your life.
As David said, …he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Psalms 23:3.
There is a need, and when our spirit realizes that need there comes a hunger and a thirst after righteousness.
The Sermon on the Mount seems to hit right at the very heart of it. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness… Matthew 6:33.
It is not talking about experiences, blessings, or any other thing but His righteousness.
Don’t be seeking what you are to eat, or what you are to wear, but seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and the other things will be added.
The mark of a mature spirit is that desiring, striving, and crying after God that is always there present within our spirit.
In Philippians 3:14, Paul told how he was pressing toward the mark, striving and reaching. Oh, how he wanted to be following the Lord!
Then he said, “Let as many as are perfect, or mature, be like-minded…” (verse 15).
The characteristic mark of the mature spirit is the hungering, striving, living on tiptoe, and crying out to God with hunger and thirst.
You cannot love the Lord without desiring to be one with Him, and you do not want that oneness tainted or blemished by the fact that something in your spirit is wrong.
The wrong things in the human spirit ruin marriages, destroy relationships between parents and children, and spoil the oneness in the congregation of the Lord.
Have you noticed how brotherhood, love, and unity thrive as people are all reaching up with hunger and thirst after the Lord? But it is for righteousness: to be righteous in the Lord, to have that righteous spirit, a right spirit before the Lord.
II Corinthians 6:16–7:1 is a passage of Scripture which tells about this righteousness:
16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
17 Therefore
“Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you.”
18 “I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
7 Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God
This is speaking of purification.
“Does that mean we must go back to the old order of things—we can’t touch anything?”
No, that is in the Old Testament. The laws of cleanliness, of the clean and the unclean, are not based on that; they were a type of something to come. It has to do with what your spirit touches.
In Haggai 2:12, 13, the question was asked, “If you touch the clean thing will it make you clean, or if you touch the unclean thing will it make you unclean?”
The vessels had to be purified, and there could be no uncleanness in them.
Likewise, there must be that purification of our spirit, until our spirit does not reach out and touch the contaminating thing. …
2 Co 6:17 touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves of all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
Come out ye from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing—
It is so easy for people to bring that down to a level of do’s and don’ts, and it is not on that level at all.
It means those things which are defiling our spirit. It is speaking about being cleansed from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.
It is a hunger in the heart of the people for righteousness. Everything is judged according to defilement of spirit, so there must be within us this hunger and crying out, “O God, I hunger for Thy righteousness.” For we know our fellowship with Him is related to the righteousness of our own spirit.
Don’t you desire for an end to that in your spirit which troubles and disturbs you?
Don’t kid yourself, though you sweep it out of your mind, it will come up with indicative evidences.
What is it that distracts you so that you don’t focus upon the Word? It is a defilement in your spirit.
What is it that causes you to withdraw under pressure? It is the defilement of your spirit.
What is it that causes you to have bad dreams, and not dreams in which you feel God’s presence? What causes the mind to dream such things?
It is not what you ate before you went to sleep. These are things which come out of the subconscious, and so you cry out, “O Lord, cleanse me of the defilement of the flesh and spirit. Let me perfect holiness in the fear of God.”
How can we perfect holiness? Yes, it can be done, as the Scripture says, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
If you really want to be hungry, to seek God, and to be thirsty after the Lord, here is the secret: change your attitude toward God’s dealing with you. He is focused on your character development, the possessing of his divine attributes.
The twelfth chapter of Hebrews tells about rejoicing when you are chastened of the Lord, because when you are chastened of Him you will become partakers of His holiness.
Do you want righteousness in your spirit? Or do you think your spirit is perfect, by some false doctrine you accepted?
Then quit complaining. Quit being half committed, for the Lord chastens you and puts the pressure on you, because in no other way can He bring your spirit into submission than by His chastening. When He chastens, you begin to partake of His righteousness. You hunger after it. You thirst after it.
How does God chasten you? Through the conviction of the Word, the revelation that you are not dedicated to practicing it.
The Lord is disciplining you, that constant reminder that there is a scripture you are not obeying. That is what he does to me. When I write I am basically preaching to myself.
I really believe that the church is too comfortable. That their spirit is basically asleep. The Lord is constantly dealing with me. That is because the Lord loves me and wants me to attain that dwelling place here on earth that he has prepared for me. It is like I hear Jesus saying to his disciple’s when he was on earth “ that where I am, you might be also.”
Here is the passage from Hebrews about loving the chastening of the Lord so you can really love the Lord and walk with purity of heart.
Hebrews 12: 5 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons:
“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; 6 For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.”
7 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? 8 But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. 11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.12 Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.
This is speaking of His righteousness. Chastening yields His righteousness in your spirit.
The sermon on the mount is all about vital, practical redemption. Our appropriation of the divine nature in our spirit, so that the life of God can flow from the kingdom of God inside of us, into our soul and transform it, then out through our body, so that we become the light of the world.
Do you want your spirit to be wholly righteous? Do you want those impurities and imperfections, those propensities and desires, and those things which have come down from Adam, out of your life?
It must be more than a desire; there must be a hunger and a thirsting. The desiring after the Lord, the hungering and thirsting after righteousness, comes through this one attitude when you are going through the pressures: you say, “Thank You, Lord, for what You are putting me through, because I know it is doing the job. It will make me a partaker of Your holiness.”
Somehow, in all the pressures He puts on you, it opens your spirit up with a desire and a crying out after the Lord.
There is a yearning, a crying of your heart for God, a hunger and thirst for His righteousness to fill you when you are tired of the frailties and faults that you see in your spirit, and you want to be cleansed and purified.
You are longing to respond in God to His demands and not respond with the inadequacy of your own spirit.
When God says He wants something of you, respond in God to it instead of responding in your own inadequate spirit.
The world doesn’t seem to change much these days, one way or the other, whether or not you become upset about things. Something in your spirit can go right on walking with God, not reacting to the circumstances, events, and conditions around you.
The cry of my heart is, “O God, get me out of the way, and everything in my spirit out of the way, and move through me.”
This Beatitude holds the promise to you of becoming a pure worshiper, because it is out of the spirit made righteous that worship comes forth unto the Lord.
Pure worship comes from a spirit that is cleansed of its human reactions and responses to the world about it.
It says like Paul of old, “None of these things move me” (Acts 20:24). When you know how to respond properly to the world about you, then you can really worship.
Have you ever come to church and found you were not able to worship very well because you were worried about something?
Someone had insulted or injured you. You were fearful of something happening. You tried to worship and you couldn’t. Response to the things that were going on around you, and the circumstances of your own life overwhelmed you, and the worship was gone.
A pure worshiper ought to be able to worship God in the middle of chaos. No matter what a worshiper is being subjected to—anyplace, anytime, in any situation—they ought to be able to worship God.
There were a few people in Bible times like that. Paul and Silas had that in their reaction to the beating at Philippi, their bodies lacerated by the whip.
In those days salt was rubbed in wounds to prevent infection. You can imagine how that felt!
Their feet were put in stocks in the inner dungeon, and there, not feeling sorry for themselves, they were singing praises unto the Lord (Acts 16:23–25).
Their spirits had been delivered of human responses, human reactions to the environment and the world about them, and even to the reactions of the flesh and its sufferings.
Can you understand that early Church singing and humming when the lions were tearing them apart?
There is only one way you can understand it-their spirits were beautiful. They hungered and thirsted for righteousness. They had become pure worshipers because their spirits had been cleansed of human reactions.
How God loves that kind of worship and praise that comes up to His name! I wonder how many times people have managed to reach up to that kind of worship.
But that pure worship comes from a spirit that has been cleansed of human reactions. It has been cleansed of human responses to the world about it and to the circumstances of one’s life.
This Beatitude is the path to becoming a beautiful, pure worshiper of God.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they will be filled.
The spirit that has been made righteous, filled with His righteousness, is the spirit that can really worship God.
If you want to be changed, this is the path: hunger and thirst after righteousness.
It has been a long time since someone has come forth, like Elijah or Elisha, to bring judgment to the earth, but they were a type of the days we are living in.
I know of the mercies and the long sufferings of the Lord, yet we have never seen an age of so many people making fun of God or misrepresenting his nature and so few of those who do righteously.
The man or woman who does righteously is hated. Not many hunger and thirst after righteousness. They may know that they are legally righteous in God’s sight in heaven, but no so much interested in the working out of that righteousness in their daily lives, life goes on as usual for them.
The judgments are certainly going to return from the house of God. We are supposed to be changing the world and what is happening in the earth.
We are world changers, mountain “those in authority” removers. The time has come for people to be moved to pray for the judgments of God to be in the earth again, and they will, but they come through us, we are the trumpets now in the book of revelation.
When the judgments of God are in the earth the people learn righteousness (Isaiah 26:9).
That hungering and thirsting in your spirit is very necessary, but Christians seem to be content with the level they have attained in the earth.
The Scripture says if you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you will be filled.
It has both a promise and a principle involved. God promises that the man or woman who hungers and thirsts after righteousness will be filled. Have you ever experienced being filled with the righteousness of the Lord, then you would be knocking over the tables of the money changers in the church.
The principle is, of course, that God always responds to hunger. Intense desire changes things. Hunger opens the container of your spirit, and God starts pouring of Himself into your life.
The hunger and thirsting of your spirit is like a mouth drinking out of an endless fountain.
The hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled automatically.
It is like drinking water from a glass, though there is a limit to that, and that thirst may not be satisfied.
But Jesus said, “He who drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst again” (John 4:14). It becomes to the one who drinks such a fountain of life.
Hunger and thirst are a demand of your spirit to feast on the Lord:
How do we make this happen? Do you want to see its beauty, and learn how to walk in it?
One person asked, “Are you born with a hunger for God, or is it something that can be appropriated?
It is called first love, anyone who has truly been born again has experienced this, they become excited, that suddenly God has become real in their life.
But that love and hunger can grow cold.
The Lord says “taste and see, that I am good”
So, you must make the time to have “a meeting with God”. Having a meeting with God, means that you are encountering his manifest presence. And spiritual things are highly addictive.
Once you encounter God, you are going to automatically want more!
But the problem is that we live in a world of distraction.
I read a little of the old mystic catholic saints, and they lived a very secluded life. Made vows of poverty, celibacy, shut themselves up in monasteries.
Julian of Norwich became an anchoress. An anchoress was a female recluse who lived permanently confined in a small cell usually built against the wall of a church.
But my point is that they had meetings with God. You must do whatever it takes, to have a meeting with God, and then you will have an overwhelming hunger and thirst for righteousness, otherwise it is not going to happen.
You see once you have a supernatural encounter with God, you are going to want more. Then all you have to do is maintain that connection and your life will be transformed.
You must feed your spirit to make it hungry, if you do not feed your spirit, you will lose your hunger.
You see the kingdom is the exact opposite of this world, in the natural world if you go without food, you get hungry. But in spiritual life the more you eat the hungrier you get.
That is why we must eat the word, not just read it. To eat the word means you are partaking of the divine nature and then you want more.
To eat the word means you have a meeting with the Lord in it. Once the Lord quickens a word from the Bible to you, then you don’t keep reading, you meditate on that word, so that you can get every ounce of food or drop of liquid you can get. This is why it is called a feast.
Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled.
We are talking about the vital aspect of redemption, the practical side, what we can walk in every day of our lives.
Now this is Jesus’s righteousness, it is divine and not human. This righteousness is in seed form within our spirit, and must fill our spirit, so that it becomes the part of our being that controls our soul and body.
Now if you have been born from above, your spirit has become alive unto God, and you know whether you are hungry for God or not!
Either the things of this world and this life have our attention, or the things of God.
Now before we can be rightly related to anybody or anything in the world, we must be rightly related to God, and this requires that our spirit is righteous.
Now do not be deceived into thinking your spirit is already righteous, the seed in your spirit, Christ, Living Word, the DNA of God in your spirit is righteous, it cannot sin, but you can have as wrong spirit, a bad spirit, a unclean spirit.
It is only as we continually, 24 hours a day, join our spirit to the Lord’s through awareness, and that vital connection, where his life is flowing into our spirit that our spirit becomes one with the Lord, and our spirit is filled with the Holy Spirit, and we are filled with Jesus’ righteousness.
When you are so disturbed by thinking that you are not hungry for God, that is hunger in itself. It is a mourning, a longing in your spirit. It is a hunger and a thirst in your spirit.
Psalm 63:1 says, O God, thou art my God; earnestly will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, in a dry and weary land, where no water is.
Can you understand what the Psalmist meant by the “dry and weary land where no water is”? He meant the hunger and the thirst, the crying out for God to meet your life.
It is like the Forty-second Psalm, As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God… Psalm 42:1, 2.
The person who does not hunger and thirst after righteousness is not demanding of the Lord.
When they read the Scripture, they are impressed, and they study it. They learn it factually as they would learn any book. They may read it for a little inspiration and an incentive for their prayers.
When the listen to sermons, they are interested in the doctrine and the structure of the sermon, to find the principles behind it, to see what clues will help them experience a better life. When they pray, they are concerned about the things of their life, the things of the world.
They are concerned about their own little world, concerned about their church, and they pray about the needs that are obvious, only asking God for answers: for a change of circumstances; for guidance, for direction.
When they minister, they are seeking God for things for people. When they receive ministry, they are concerned about things that must be done for them or to them.
But there is a peculiar quality about the person who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. They never open their Bible to read it without hungering and desiring to appropriate what is in it. That silent cry goes on in their spirit, the prayer without ceasing, “Fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me…” It is the hunger that transcends all other appetites and all other desires.
When they read the Word, their spirit says, “Feed me, feed me—I hunger, I thirst.”
When they pray, they are also concerned about all the things everyone else is concerned with, but their spirit is carrying on a prayer of its own with groanings which cannot be uttered, “Help me, fill me, fill me, feed me, feed me, feed me.”
When they receive ministry, they are concerned about what their ministry would be and what they are going to do, but they are not only looking for answers and guidance; they are saying, “Feed me, feed me, feed me—I hunger, I’m hungry.” The hunger is always there.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
It is the utmost longing that nothing else can really satisfy. It is that importunate knock that comes at midnight, “A friend of mine has come on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him” (Luke 11:5–10). It knocks and it knocks and it knocks. It is a wail and a cry, yet it is a demand on divine promise: “Complete it! Complete what You’ve begun! Finish it! Finish, O God, that which You began in Your handiwork within my life. I hunger for it! O God, leave me not in the spiritual state I am in, I want to go higher ! Shape me, form me, change me, transform my life into the likeness of Jesus Christ! Shape me into the vessel you want me to be! Fill me! Fill me!”
It is the hunger that seeks first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, even if it means ignoring every other human need you might have in your life.
I have seen it a few times, in people’s lives, usually the saints of old. I have seen men and women walk away from good jobs, which they worked all of their lives to build up, and go off in the hills to pray and wait on God, because His Spirit is weighing do heavenly on their life, and they know they are called to make a difference in other people’s lives, and they know that they know that they have the anointing abiding upon them to do it.
I have seen a desperate quiet come over people. You speak to them, and they are somewhere else. They are searching; they are climbing a mountain to meet God.
When a young person is hungry and thirsty, looking to the Word, receiving all the help they can get, all the time reaching to the Lord, then the perverse things in their spirit will go. That person will be filled with the righteousness of God.
It is not enough to be a so-called good Christian. You must deal with the perversities in your spirit that make you an ineffectual Christian. You want to be a channel of the Lord. You want to be a believer through whom His love can flow. Therefore, you hunger and thirst after His righteousness. That’s what you reach for.
Sometimes people get discouraged and start to back away from it. Don’t. There is no great problem to walking with God if you hunger and thirst after Him.
You may ask, “Did you have a lot to give up?” It cost you everything. “I was happy to do it,” is the way I feel about coming into a walk with God.
I walked away from everything of the old church system. I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I was thrilled, because I wanted an end to it. I had long prayed for it.
Then I went into some of the most difficult years in my life with no one to blame or complain to whenever I reacted a certain way because pressures were upon me.
I had to look at my own spirit with an honesty of heart. That is the best thing that can happen to you—get a good honest look at your own spirit. Then you start hungering and thirsting for righteousness, a desire that is deep down inside; nothing else will satisfy it.
It is not enough to work around problems and situations; be concerned about your own spirit in every one of them.
Be concerned about your own spirit in every relationship, in every decision, and in everything that you do.
Take a good look at yourself and say, “Lord, I hunger and I thirst for Your righteousness.”
Otherwise, you will go on with those same traits, characteristics, habits, those same little things that are like land mines and booby traps; you walk along not knowing when they are going to explode.
You never know when the thing that is in your own spirit is going to jump out, or what can happen to you with just the right combination of circumstances.
Have you ever wondered how strong you are, how much you are really set in a walk with God?
It is said that everyone has a price; everyone has a situation in which they can break, If I give you a billion dollars will you compromise your dedication to the Lord? If I threaten to kill you, will you deny the Lord?
Except when the grace of God comes that impels you to walk with God, he has worked that dedication in your heart, and you know it is there.
I have never seen a man or woman hungering and thirsting after righteousness whom the devil was able to break.
The only person the devil can break is the person who is looking for something else in their life. Then the devil can frustrate them on that until their hopes are shattered.
But the person who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness seems as if they never fail, though they may go through all kinds of situations, they never fail to do what YHWH tells them to do.
Hunger and thirst is a demand- “O God, finish what You have started in my life. You are the Author. Be the Finisher! Don’t leave me half perfected in spirit.” Hunger and thirst cries out to God for a completion of that which He has begun.
Hunger and thirst for righteousness seems to be the lubricant which keeps us as new wineskins before the Lord.
We need that which keeps us from being a stiff old wineskin (Matthew 9:17). What is an old wineskin?
One who is satisfied with the experience of yesterday: “Let it ferment and work a little more, but it’s pretty much set now and there will never be much change.” There are certain wines that may improve with age, but most wines do not. After processing they are bottled, and at that particular point they are not going to work anymore. They may keep their potency for several years, and some wines may improve with age, but old wineskins do not get any better, and chances are the wine could grow sour.
So, if you want new wine, then you want to be a vessel able to handle it—a new wineskin, flexible for all that God will bring forth in the earth.
If that is your desire, then apply generously the lubricant of hunger and thirst after righteousness, because an old wineskin is one who is satisfied. They hunger no more.
This hunger and thirst after righteousness is the only way, or you will be swallowed up by your own shallowness and your own emptiness. What a terrible thing!
Do you know your own emptiness? Do you know your own shallowness? Do you want that to engulf you? Then hunger and thirst after righteousness.
You may say, “I’ve failed God so much. I lack so much.” Don’t confuse that with hunger and thirst. Self-condemnation is unbelief. In heaven we are already perfected in Christ, these messages are about being perfected here on earth here and now.
Here is one more description of hunger and thirst. The hunger and thirst after righteousness is so great that it does not despair over your failures or your lack, but it believes for your emptiness to be filled with His righteousness.
It is no longer concerned about your shortcomings, because it wants an end to it. It wants His righteousness to fill you. You are not asking to improve yourself; you are asking for His righteousness to come and fill your spirit. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Sometimes, despairing over your own failures is but an indication that you feel you could do better, and you are just about ready to make a gigantic effort to correct the thing in your own self. Don’t be so foolish.
That would be trying to perfect in the flesh what was begun in the spirit. You cannot do it.
The hunger and thirst for righteousness is for His righteousness. It is not an ambition to change things in your own self by your own efforts, by your own wisdom and your own disciplines. It goes beyond that. It is a longing and crying to God for His righteousness.
Nothing else but His righteousness will satisfy you, because that brings the answer to your emptiness and shallowness. Nothing else can do it.
We want our spirits to hunger and thirst after righteousness. We read in the Old Testament, …the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed. I Samuel 2:3.
He knows all that we do, but He goes beyond just looking at our actions; He weighs them.
When He weighs them, we want Him to find a right spirit behind them. We want Him to see the cry of our spirit after righteousness.
We must help each other. I believe coming into his righteousness on planet earth in our daily lives is a collective experience, a local body of Christ experience. There is a corporate anointing on each of us to help one another.
We cannot be critical and absorbed in it just for ourselves. We must cry for all of us to be met by God, for a hunger and a thirst for the Lord, for His righteousness to rain upon us. The objective of our hearts crieth, “Early will I seek Thee, O Lord.”