Mensa Otabil - A Hungry Heart (10/31/2025)
Matthew 5:6 — Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. We can recognize these words of Jesus Christ as the opening of His Sermon on the Mount or the opening of the Beatitudes, where He taught extensively about the values of His kingdom and how His kingdom functions. Jesus underscored hunger and thirst as foundational to our pursuit of righteousness. This means that if we want to live for God, there must be a hunger for it. This is a very instructive point because when you are hungry for something, your appetite for it is greater. When you’re not hungry, you have no appetite for it. No matter how sumptuous a table is set before you with the best delicacies of food, if you are satisfied, if your stomach is full, you would not eat any of it. But if you are hungry, then you can eat what is set before you.
God is saying that if we are full of ourselves, if we are full of our own righteousness, if we think we are righteous by ourselves, we are okay, we don’t need God, and we can manage with our own life. There is no thirst for us to know God, to serve Him, and to do His will. Then even the death of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice on Calvary, and all that Christ has made available to us is meaningless because we have no need for what He offers us. Therefore, if we want to grow spiritually, increase in God, and become godly in our lives, there must be a permanent hunger in our hearts for the things of God. No matter how much God teaches us, no matter how much we know of Him, no matter how much we have experienced Him, no matter how long we have been Christians and how many years we have lived for the Lord, our hunger for God must be constant.
When we have this hunger for God, a constant desire to say, «Lord, I want to know You. God, I want to understand Your word. God, I want to get close to You,» then anytime you pick the Bible, you will not pick it up and say, «Oh, I know it; I’ve read it for 40 years and I know everything in it.» When you have hunger, even after 40 years, it is still fresh for you, it satisfies you, and it speaks to you. There are people who go to church, and after some time, they say, «Well, you know, I’ve been going to church for a very long time,» and the hunger to be in the presence of God, to be in the company of other believers, and to be in a place where God is worshiped goes away. When you lose that hunger, then going to church will also dissipate in your life, and you can reach a point in your Christian life where you no longer desire to go to church or be among believers because you feel that your hunger has been satisfied.
Jesus is saying, «Blessed are those who hunger and thirst.» No matter how many years you’ve been going to church, you must have a thirst for entering into the presence of the Lord, worshiping with other believers, and being in the company and fellowship of people who love God and seek to please Him. Regarding prayer, no matter how long you’ve prayed and how many times you’ve prayed, if you don’t have a hunger and thirst to talk to God and be in His presence, then after some time, you might say, «Well, you know, I’ve prayed enough to last me a lifetime.» Can that happen?
No matter how much you eat today, the food will digest, get out of your system, and you will be hungry again. The same applies to prayer; no matter how many hours you pray today, it will exit your system-you need to pray again. No matter how much Bible you consume today, it will go out of your system, and no matter how much you attend church and how many hours you are in church today, you will still need to go to church. Whatever we put in gets out, and we need to refill and top up. There is no food that satisfies us permanently, so spiritually, there is no spiritual discipline that we undergo that meets all our spiritual needs.
Hunger and thirst for God must continue. Desire to do His will, desire to live a holy life, desire to pray and be in the presence of God, desire to go to church, desire the gifts of God — your spiritual hunger must always be present so that you will be filled with all the fullness of the Lord. Let us pray. Say with me, «Heavenly Father, I hunger and thirst for You and Your will. Fill my life with Your fullness. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.»