Happy, Hungry, and Satisfied
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
Well, good morning, everyone. We’re about halfway through in our study of the Beatitudes this summer. We’ve come to the fourth beatitude and the fifth message in this nine-part series. We are falling upon Matthew 5:6 that says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled,” or “satisfied.” Most of us who live in America have never really experienced real hunger and thirst. Would you agree with that? Poverty and the life threatening hunger that is associated with that is for many of us sort of locked inside a television screen. We may see images of the Sudan or South America or some other place around the world where real people are really hungry and thirsty every day of their life. But we’re kind of distant from that, aren’t we? Sort of arm’s length from it. Maybe you had the opportunity to go on a mission trip or some other trip with some group of people. And you were in another part of the world and it was your privilege and your opportunity to drill a water well for people who are really, really thirsty and don’t have the water supply that you and I have. Or maybe you distributed food to a group of people who are really, really hungry. You can do that even here in Washington, D.C. But for most us, you know, we come home from a trip like that even, and we come home to a full pantry and a full refrigerator. We can’t think of the last time we missed a meal because, you know, we just didn’t have a food supply or a water source available. And for many of us the closest we’ve come to really experiencing hunger and thirst might be at the last doctor’s appointment we had where on the night before we were told to fast because you were having some test or procedure. And by noon the next day we’re complaining of a headache and loss of energy and blurred vision. And we get through the test and we come rushing out the doctor’s office and go to the nearest restaurant to satisfy our hunger. That’s about as close as we get.
0:02:30.7
And I say all of that because, as we come to this beatitude, it might be difficult for us as Americans sitting in a comfortable church having just finished the morning meal, thinking about the next meal of the day. It might be difficult for us to identify and connect with the intensity that is found in this fourth beatitude when Jesus says, “Blessed are those who hunger and who thirst.” After what? “After righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” They will be filled.
0:03:09.1
Charles Allen was a Methodist minister who told a story about a young man who came to Buddha looking for the true way of life. Buddha grabbed this young man by the arm and took him down to the bank of a river. And the young man though that Buddha was going to introduce him to some kind of purification rite, maybe a baptism of sorts. Buddha led the man out into the middle of the river and suddenly grabbed the man by the back of the head and thrust his head under the water and held him there for what seemed like minutes. And the man was flailing about trying to free himself from Buddha’s grasp, but Buddha just kept his head under the water. And suddenly the man did free himself, came up out of the water gasping. Buddha just as calm as could be looked at him and said, “Now, when you thought you were going to drown, what did you desire most?” And the young man said, “Air! I wanted air!” And Buddha said, “Fine, when you desire salvation as much as you wanted air, then it will be yours.” Now, that’s not exactly, you know, biblical theology and sufferology (?), but it does illustrate for us the intensity that we find in this beatitude. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Jesus begins in the physical, doesn’t He?
0:04:36.6
It’s hard for us understand that hunger and thirst. But He quickly wants us to move to the spiritual. That phrase “after righteousness” is the clue there. And He wants us to make that transition quickly. He wants us to understand that there are people in this world, yes, even ourselves, who are hungry spiritually. That’s why Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” And He wants us to understand that there are thirsty souls in this world. And that’s why He said to a Samaritan woman 2000 years ago by a water well in Jericho, He said, “I am living water. I have living water to offer you.” And yet through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord tells us what the typical response of the average person is out there who may indeed be hungry and thirsty spiritually. The Lord said, “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, to hue for themselves broken cisterns, cisterns that can hold no water.” See, the truth of the matter is that some people, perhaps many of us, are seeking for satisfaction in all of the wrong places.
0:05:47.6
Mickey Gilley, if you’re a county western fan, if you’ve ever been to Houston, used to sing “Looking for love in all the wrong places.” Well, some of us are seeking fulfillment and satisfaction in life in all the wrong places. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones says, “I can’t get no satisfactions.” Okay, Mick. I know why. Because you’re looking for it in all the wrong places. Kind of like the prodigal son. Do you remember when he squandered his inheritance? He took it from his father. Demanded it from his father, went out, squandered the inheritance on riotous living, came to a place where he was hungry. And nobody around him would give him any food, and so he began to eat pig slop. And there in the big slop he realized the error of his ways. By the way, Peter in his second epistle, 2 Peter 2:22 describes the unbeliever. Actually he compares the unbeliever to a dog that licks his own vomit and to a pig that eats slop. Just looking for satisfaction and fulfillment in life in all the wrong places. And this was the prodigal son. And I went back to and read the story. Read it in Luke 15 for yourself. There is an interesting phrase that jumped out to me as I thought about it in light of this beatitude. This prodigal son got to the point where he says, “I’m starving to death.” “Blessed are those who hunger, who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” The world has nothing to offer that will fulfill us deeply. The prodigal son learned that. And some of us who have lived prodigal lives have learned that from personal experience as well. The apostle John said it this way in 1 John 2:15. He says, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.” Why? Because it doesn’t fully satisfy. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life. You can chase it. You can pursue it. You can try to fill it into that God-shaped vacuum inside of you and tame the hunger and quench the thirst, but ultimately it will disappoint. And that’s why the Lord invites us through the prophet Isaiah. Listen to this. “Come, come all who are thirsty. Come to the waters, and you who have no money, come buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread?” Isn’t that question for the ages. “Or your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen,” the Lord says, “Listen to me and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest fare.”
0:08:24.4
A fair question to ask ourselves this morning is, how is your spiritual appetite? What does it look like this morning? Could you describe your disposition toward God as one who is, well, hungering and thirsting after Him? Somebody who has one pure and holy passion, one magnificent obsession, and that is Jesus Christ and His righteousness? Or have other things kind of crowded into your life and into your heart? And if the truth were known, you’d say, “You know, that passion for God has kind of waned. There was a time in my life when I was hot for God. My heart was hot for Him, but some of that has gone away.” What can we say about a person whose hunger and thirst for righteousness and for Christ and the things of God has disappeared? Well, probably two things we can say about that person or speculate. One is that he might not be spiritually alive to begin with. Maybe he is spiritually dead. Now, I want you to think about this in the physical realm. And I don’t mean to be morbid by saying this, but dead people don’t hunger and thirst for anything. You’ll never find anybody putting a food…anybody saying, that is…a food and water supply in a casket. Because dead people don’t have hunger. They don’t have an appetite. They don’t thirst for anything. And likewise, spiritually speaking, apart from Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul describes us in Ephesians 2:1 where he is writing to the church at Ephesus to believers. He is reminding them of who they were apart from Christ. And he uses the word “dead.” He says, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” That’s our spiritual condition. The diagnosis that God gives to a person apart from Christ is that part of you that was created to have a relationship with God is not alive. It’s dead. And just as dead people in the physical world don’t have hunger and thirst, it shouldn’t surprise us that an unbeliever…an unregenerate person who has not trusted Christ as his Savior and been born again…it shouldn’t surprise us that that person has no appetite for the things of God. Now, that’s not to say that God has not kind of woven into the fabric and written into the software of the human heart a yearning for his Creator. That’s certainly there. In fact, God has even written His laws upon our heart so that we instinctively know right from wrong. It’s the moral code that he’s placed there. And there is that sense in which every human being, even apart from Christ, yearns to come home. Doesn't know quite where that is. But a dead person doesn’t have the kind of hunger and thirst for righteousness, for the things of God and for the person of Jesus Christ. And that may be one of the reasons you're sitting here saying, “I don’t have that kind of passion. I mean, I come to church, but I walk about of here and my magnificent obsession is something else in this world.”
0:11:41.2
For some of you, you might be a believer in Jesus Christ, and you think back to a time in your life when your heart was really hot for God, but no longer. Maybe you're more like the church at Laodicea that received a letter from Jesus in Revelation 3. And He says, “You’re neither cold nor hot. You’re lukewarm toward me, and I want to spit you out of my mouth,” Jesus said. Or maybe you’re like the church at Ephesus that received the first letter that Jesus wrote in Revelation 2. And Jesus bragged all over them for the great ministry that they were doing and their reputation in the community, for just good works and all of that. But He says, “I’ve got one thing against you. You’ve lost your first love.” Like the Righteous Brothers used to sing, “You’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’.” “Where is the passion and the heart for Me?” It’s gone; it’s dissipated. If that’s true in the life of a believer, what can we say about that person? Well, do you remember the last time you were really sick? I mean not necessarily sick unto death, but I mean you’ve got the flu. You’ve got the swine something, I don’t know. And you were just sick. You lost your appetite, didn’t you? And when you started getting better, the appetite returned. Well, spiritually speaking, similar happens when we become sick spiritually. I’m talking about allowing some area of our life, some in our life that is not rightly related to God, and we don’t deal with it. We don’t do business with God and confess it and repent of it and get right with Him. And we don’t lose our salvation. We don’t love our relationship with Him, but we’re out of fellowship with Him. We’re kind of spiritually sick. And what happens is we lose our appetite for Him as well, our passion for Him. We don’t read the Word of God as passionately as we once did or as regularly as we once did. We don’t say like David did, “Man, I can’t wait to go to the house of God and be with God’s people.” In fact, we kind of want to keep our distance from it because we get around people who are passionately pursuing Jesus. And it just reminds us of how our life is not right with God. Again, I’m a child of God. I’ve got my fire insurance. I’m going to heaven. But I’m really not living for Him, and I’m pursuing the things of the world. This may be our condition.
0:14:05.7
Maybe you’re dead as dead can be spiritually and you need to come to faith in Jesus Christ. Or maybe you are somebody who has wandered away from the faith. And you’re living in sin. And that lifestyle has caused your hunger and your passion for the things of God to disappear. I like to say it this way. When we lose our appetite for what is right, there is something terribly wrong inside of us. And it’s time for a spiritual gut check. Wouldn’t you agree?
0:14:42.6
Now, I love to be around people who are passionate for Jesus Christ. In fact, passion begets passion. You get around somebody who loves Jesus and is passion about Him, and it kind of spills over into your life and kind of stokes your own heart and your own fire. For that reason I’d love to have hung out with a guy in the Old Testament named David, David who was a man after God’s own heart. And you read through his journal in the Old Testament, the book of Psalms. And you get a sense that here was a man whose heart was hot for God. And he loved his Lord, and he followed passionately after him. He found deep satisfaction in his relationship with the God of Israel. For instance, in Psalm 23:1 he says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” “I don’t want for anything in life because He provides me. But not only that, I find complete and total satisfaction in my relationship with him.” Can you say that about your relationship with God? He’s my shepherd, and there is nothing else I want but a relationship with Him. Psalm 73:25 David says, “Whom have I in heaven but you, and earth has nothing I desire besides you.” That’s the confession and the testimony of somebody who has one pure and holy passion, one magnificent obsession, and that was his relationship with God. Psalm 119:30 David says, “My soul is consumed, consumed with longing for your laws at all time.” What consumes you today? What will consume the passion of your heart tomorrow? Anything in this world competing with your passion for God? Psalm 42:1-2. We sang about this a few minutes ago. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” He says, “When can I go and meet with God?” David couldn’t wait for the next opportunity to just meet with his God. Just looked forward to that next time. In Psalm 19 you’ll find that David was passionate about the Word of God. And he called the Word of God “sweeter than honey, sweeter than the honeycomb.” He just couldn’t get enough of this book, which to him was a love letter from the God who wrote it.
0:17:16.1
So Jesus tells us, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” “After righteousness.” What’s that all about? Well, righteousness is a popular theme in the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, if you do a little study of that word through Matthew 5, 6 and 7, you’ll bump into it, oh, four or five times. First here in Matthew 5:6, we’re to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In Matthew 5:10 we’re told that we might be persecuted for righteousness’ sake. We’ll talk about that in a few weeks. Matthew 5:20 Jesus said, “Unless your righteous, [your personal righteousness], exceeds that of the Pharisees, you can’t enter the kingdom of heaven. Interesting thought there. In Matthew 6:1 He warns, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men.” He’s talking about acts of charity and kindness and our giving. And then finally in chapter 6 and verse 33 He sets the priorities of life by saying seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. This comes after a discussion about not worrying about the things that we would wear, the food that we would eat. He says, “Look at the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Don’t I take care of them? And you are far more important to them, so don’t worry about those things. Set your priorities right. Align your passion to Me.” Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be taken care of for you. Isn’t that a great way to live? The righteousness, righteousness. We’re to hunger and thirst for it. What (0:19:00.0) is righteousness?
0:19:02.2
Well, let’s put on our theological thinking cap this morning and explore this good biblical word. As we do, let’s remember that Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the self-righteous.” No, let’s not go there. Nobody likes to be around a self-righteous kind of person. In fact, we know theologically from the scripture that righteousness as we’ll define it in a moment is received by faith, not achieved by our good deeds, all right, or our best deeds. We receive it by faith in Jesus Christ, but it’s not achieved. So it’s not the self-righteous who are blessed. It’s not those who achieve righteousness. It’s those who have an appetite for it. Those who hunger for it and thirst for it and are sort of on the edge of poverty and hunger at (0:20:00.0) all times. I’ll come back to that in a moment.
0:20:03.6
Three ways we can look at this word “righteousness.” First is in terms of being right with God. This is our vertical relationship with Him. You might think of this in terms of a legal transaction. The biblical word is “justification.” You’ll bump into that word several times in the New Testament, certainly in the book of Romans. We are justified, or made right in God’s eyes…declared righteous is the theological idea. And that’s something that God does. He declares us righteous when He recognizes faith in Jesus Christ in us. Okay? And He imputes the righteousness of Christ in us. Our right standing before God has nothing to do with our righteous deeds. In fact, the Bible says that all of our attempts to live righteously are like filthy rags in God’s eyes. Okay. So ours must be a righteousness that’s borrowed, if not imputed, and stamped upon our life. And this comes through faith and faith alone in Jesus Christ. Blessed are those who have a hunger for this. One of the good questions to ask as we go throughout the Beatitudes—and we’ve been asking this question. We’ll ask it again of this fourth beatitude—is this. Is this beatitude for the person who wants to become a citizen of the kingdom, or is this beatitude for the person who is already a citizen of the kingdom. And the answer to that question is yes. It’s both. If you want to become a citizen of the kingdom—that is, to become rightly related to God—part of what’s gonna happen in your life is you come to a point of holy dissatisfaction with you current condition before God. You recognize your spiritual bankruptcy. You recognize that you are poor in spirit. You mourn over your sins. It produces in you a meekness and brokenness and contriteness of spirit as you come before God. And it also yields in you this holy dissatisfaction for you who are you apart from Christ and this deep and abiding hunger and thirst for a right relationship with God. Okay? That’s, if you break it down, how a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ. But as a believer in Jesus Christ too, we hunger and thirst for Him, and so it’s kind of a “both/and” there.
0:22:35.9
So right with God. Secondly, right within ourselves. We go from the legal to the moral. Here we’re talking about not justification, but the process of sanctification in the life of a believer, this process of becoming more like Christ. We are told in the scriptures that we are to live holy, pure, righteous lives. We are to desire to do what is right as it is defined by God in the scriptures. And we need the help of the Holy Spirit to do that, okay. Moral purity is the idea here, and the idea that as we get right with God we begin to grow in a likeness to Christ is the idea.
0:23:22.7
And then thirdly is right with others. This has a social dimension to it. Somebody once suggested that evangelism and missions should lead to social reform. And as I noodled that around a little bit this week, I agree with that. The goal of our ministry is not simply social reform. It is personal transformation through faith in Jesus Christ that yields a believer in Christ and a life that is aiming toward eternity with God forever in a place called heaven. Okay? But as we live out our faith, we love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. That’s vertical. And then there is this horizontal dimension to our faith. We love our neighbor as ourselves. And so in one sense our evangelism and our missions is perhaps not complete until it also does produce some sense of social reform where the righteousness of Christ begins to reign on this earth. Ultimately it will in the new millennium and in the new earth. But these are maybe three dimensions, three ideas where we can hang our theological thoughts on these hooks of righteousness.
0:24:36.9
So what? Where does the rubber really meet the road in this fourth beatitude? Here is where it disturbs my soul, and maybe it disturbs your soul as well. Maybe you’ve come to the place in your life where you are satisfied with just enough Jesus to keep you comfortable, but you're not willing to pay the price for a deep, passionate, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Or as I said earlier, you’re living on the edge of poverty and hunger all the time. Now, in the physical realm we don’t that to happen. We don’t want anybody to live on the edge of poverty and hunger. We want to eradicate poverty. And we want to get rid of hunger in this world. But, friends, spiritually speaking, living on the edge of poverty and hunger is vital to our spiritual life. Living on the edge of this idea that I am bankrupt before God apart from Jesus Christ and I recognize who I am apart from Christ. And I desire something that is so alternative to that. I deeply desire and hunger and thirst after a righteousness with God.
0:26:05.7
I think the problem for many of us is we’ve come to this place of comfort and complacency in our relationship with God. We’ve come to a place where we enjoy our spiritual hammock, where we’re just kind of sitting in the backyard sipping on a spiritual umbrella drink and taking a snooze in the sunshine. We’re satisfied with what Wilbur Rees called—let’s just put it this way—“Three Dollars Worth Of God.” Have you heard this before? He says, “I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.” And that’s where a lot of us are today. Oh, maybe there was a time in your life where your heart was hot for God and you were hungering and thirsting after Him. You couldn’t get enough of His Word. You couldn’t get enough of being around His people. You couldn’t get enough of God. You couldn’t wait for the next opportunity where you got alone with Him. And other things have begun to crowd out that passion and that hunger in your heart, and you’ve just kind of reached a place of comfortable complacency, satisfied with all the Jesus you’ve got. And, “Oh, come on, Pastor, let’s not get too excited about this stuff. That’s for other people. And besides, I really just want a church experience where I can come and kind of enjoy the warm fellowship, connect with other people that are good for me politically and socially. You know, that’s important to do, isn’t it, Pastor? But I don’t want to be at a church where they expect something of me. Or they want me to become a member. Where they want me to put something in the offering plate as an expression of my love for God and commitment to this church. Where somebody is gonna ask me to serve in a ministry with the children or the youth or teach an ABF class or go on a mission trip. You want me to take my vacation time and go on a mission trip? You’ve got to be kidding me? No, I’m just kind of comfortable with my spiritual hammock. I just want $3 worth of God.” I think it’s so easy for us as followers of Jesus Christ to be at that place.
0:28:33.8
But this beatitude, this fourth beatitude, friends, explodes our comfort zone. It explodes our comfort zone, and it takes the cobwebs of complacency in our spiritual life and knocks them out of place. Blessed. Supremely blessed. Those who experience exalted happiness, Jesus says, are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, those who live on the edge of poverty and hunger before God. You just can’t get enough of Him. And those who say, “Oh, I want to be a Christian, but I’d really like to dink the nectar and eat the delicacies of this world at the same time,” you’ve got one foot in the world and another foot over here somewhere close to God. And you're trying to straddle it. And the truth of the matter is neither will satisfy. We’re talking about one pure and holy passion, one magnificent obsession, and one magnificent obsession alone will satisfy the deep hunger and thirst in your soul, and that’s Jesus Christ.
0:29:53.3
So what do I do if I find that that hunger and thirst has disappeared? Well, let me suggest a couple of practical thoughts that I wrestled with this week. Number one, retrace your steps in the Beatitudes. Remember, these are not to be taken in isolation. They build upon themselves. And maybe there is an area of your life that is not rightly related to Him, or maybe you don’t have a right relationship with God. Either way, go back to step one. Go back to poor in spirit, “nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” Ask God to give you a godly sorrow, a deep mourning in your heart, a grieving over the condition of your soul or the condition of your fellowship with God. Let that produce in you a meekness, a brokenness, a contriteness of spirit. And when you become fully dissatisfied with where you are, only then will this holy and natural hunger and thirst for God begin to bubble up in your life. And you begin running after Him. You begin following hard after Him. He alone become your pure and holy passion and that magnificent obsession. You’ve got to retrace those steps. You’ve got to retrace those steps.
0:31:10.8
Number two, discipline yourself in the reading of God’s Word. I just want to give you a little insight into my spiritual journey over almost 30 years. I have found that my appetite, my hunger and thirst for God is directly related to the time that I spend in His Word. And I’m not talking about, you know, the 20 hours a week that I spend in sermon preparation, all right. That certainly fills my heart and fills my soul, and I love that. But I have to read the Word of God devotionally just like you do. Read it for the purpose of not trying to get a sermon out of it, but for the opportunity to meet with my Savior. One of the places you might want to start is in Psalm 119. It has 176 verses in it, longest chapter in the Bible. But verse after verse after verse David describes his deep love for the Word of God. I mean, you just dip in there any place, and you find that this man after God’s own heart loved God’s Word. He couldn’t get enough of it.
0:32:26.8
Where are you in your Bible reading? I know we’re Immanuel Bible Church. And I hope that you crack open this book more than just once a week when you come to church on Sunday and you hear a sermon or a lesson in a Bible study class. Is it your one pure and holy passion? If it is, if Jesus Christ is, it will lead you to a disciplined reading of God’s Word.
0:32:50.4
And then third and finally…and this may seem a little bit out of left field, but hang with me on this. It brings us full circle in this beatitude. Explore fasting as a spiritual discipline. Yeah, fasting. Just sounds weird in the 21st century, doesn’t it? It sounds like something that, you know, the monastics did years ago. And it just doesn’t seem like something for us. But I want to suggest to you that fasting as a spiritual discipline is one of the most underutilized spiritual disciplines among followers of Jesus Christ in the 21st century. And yet every significant spiritual leader that has challenged me and that I respect, you look deeply into their life and they quietly practiced the discipline of fasting.
0:33:40.5
You can find it in the life of Jesus. And I want you to think about something here. Jesus began His ministry in hunger, and He finished it on the cross by saying, “I thirst.” He began in hunger where the Spirit of the Lord led Him into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. And He fasted for 40 days and for 40 nights. And the end of that time, the Bible says that the devil came and tempted Him. Now, I can just imagine the conversation in the heavenlies. You know, the devil looks at a few of his minions, his demons, and says, “We got Him now. He is famished. He is starving on the inside. Listen to this, guys. Hey, Jesus, why don’t you take those rocks over there and turn them into bread. You can do that, can’t You? You’re the Son of God.” And do you remember who Jesus responded? He said, “Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Now, I want you to think about that and His ability to resist temptation. But also that after 40 days of fasting, He was more hungry for God than He was for bread. How is that true? That’s the power of this spiritual discipline. As we say no to our flesh, as we choose to do without food for one meal or 40 days or somewhere in between…hey, you just explore it where you can fit in there…there is something about that that deepens our hunger and our thirst and our passion for God. It happened in Jesus’s life. And if it was good enough for Jesus as a spiritual discipline, it ought to be good enough for us as well. I will tell you, I have a long way to go in the practice of that spiritual discipline. But it’s something that we as believers in Jesus Christ need to explore. That is, if you want to be happy, hungry and satisfied.
0:35:52.8
Hunger and thirst after righteousness, Jesus says, and you’ll be blessed. You’ll be filled. You’ll be satisfied. As you live on the edge of poverty and hunger and you cry out to God and say, “I want more of You. I want all of You I can get. And if there is any bit of complacency in me, any part of this world that has caused me to get comfortable in my relationship with You, God, take it out of the way. Because You and You alone are my pure and holy passion, my magnificent obsession. And in You I will be happy, I’ll be hungry, and I’ll be satisfied.” Let’s pray together.
0:36:35.0
Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for teaching me this week, for filling me with a fresh vision for who You are. For reminding me of even those times in my life where my heart was even hotter than it was today. And for all of us in this room, Father, I pray that You would bring us back to that place where we are singularly focused and hungry and thirsty for You, and that we find our true satisfaction in life in You. Keep us on the edge of poverty and hunger, and then show us how deeply You satisfy the hunger and thirst in our souls. I pray for that person too whose here, and maybe like the prodigal son, has squandered his inheritance, his wealth on riotous living and finds himself eating pig slop. And He says, “I’m starving out here, spiritually speaking, and I want to go home where the Father can feed me.” And if that’s the cry of your heart this morning, hey, He’s already running after you. He’s running towards you. Just cry out in your soul and say, “God, I am so poor and bankrupt. I made a wreck of my life. I have nothing to bring to You. I just simply cling to Your cross in Jesus Christ. Forgive me. Cleanse me. Make me new. Fill me with a new pure and holy passion and an obsession that is found in Jesus Christ and a satisfaction that’s found in Him as well. God, thank You for the work that you're doing in our midst right now in drawing men and women and young people to You, of making this a day of salvation where folks are coming to faith in Christ and finding a fresh new passion in their life that’s centered in Him. And we pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.
0:39:05.0