Wesleyan Devotional

Matthew 5.5-7
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness; for they shall be filled.

Eating and drinking are absolutely necessary for sustaining healthy human life. Without food, and more importantly water, human life is unsustainable. Even more than our need for food and water is our desire. As is clear to anyone who has ever tried fasting or been forced by circumstances to miss a meal or two, the desire for food can quickly become all consuming.

In his sermon ‘Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount II’ John Wesley makes three connections between physical hunger and thirst and spiritual hunger and thirst.

First, he says that “hunger and thirst are the strongest of our bodily appetites.”

Secondly, “from the time we begin to hunger and thirst those appetites do not cease, but are more and more craving and importunate till we either eat and drink or die.”

Finally, “Hunger and thirst are satisfied with nothing but meat and drink. If you would give to him that his hungry all the world beside, all the elegance of apparel, all the trappings of state, all the treasure upon the earth…He would still say, ‘These are not the things I want; give me food, or else I die.” (II.3)

These three insights hold true not just for physical hunger and thirst but also for spiritual hunger and thirst.

First, human beings are created with a strong, unstoppable desire to love God. We hunger and thirst for the living God all our lives (even if we are too stubborn to admit it!).

Secondly, that hunger has been placed in our hearts by our Creator and it will not subside until we feast upon God’s presence. In fact the longer and harder we run from God the more exhausted we become and the more hungry and thirsty we become for God.

Finally, nothing but God can satisfy our hunger for God. All the pleasures of this world (many of them vain and empty) be they money, power, fame, sex, drugs, children, job security- none of these can satisfy the human heart’s hunger for God.

Although this is often a painful state of being for those who are running from God, Jesus calls this state ‘blessed.’ Wesley interprets the word ‘shall’ as a promise, a recognition that the same God who implanted such a hunger within us is also determined to feed us. We have as a promise from God that the hungry ‘shall’ be filled. He goes on to say, “God shall satisfy them with the blessings of this goodness, with the felicity of his chosen. He shall feed them with the bread of heaven, with the manna of his love. He shall give them to drink of his pleasures as out of the river which he that drinketh of shall never thirst-only for more and more of the water of life. This thirst shall endure forever.” (II. 5)

If you are alive you are hungry for God. I challenge you today to prayerfully consider your diet. What have you been eating lately? Is it sustaining you? Are you still hungry?

Peace be with you~