Bible Study: "Abundant Provision for the Thirsty"

Matthew 5:6 "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."

"Hunger and thirst, in the natural, are indicative desires that show you are alive and not dead. Though you might not be saturated yet, but when you hunger and thirst after righteousness, it shows that you are spiritually alive.

True spiritual yearning and thirst for God’s righteousness moves the believer into the action of prayer, and into places where he can be satisfied. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1, 2). The spiritually alive manifests a longing, a passion and a desire to possess the nature of God. Like the hart, when your longing for the sustaining water of life is a consuming one, you will leave everything you do to seek it and run after it. Physical thirst has the power to redirect your thoughts, imagination and feelings and get them focused on the possible solution. Then, you passionately seek to satisfy that quest. So also is hunger for righteousness. When the thirst or hunger for righteousness is in you, material things, friends, people, opportunities and privileges will not be important to you at that moment.

Why are many people so indifferent to spiritual things? They are not thirsty and hungry for them because they are satisfied without the river of life. Even when God wants to fill them with His righteousness, He does not find them thirsty. How can they be made thirsty? It is by waking them from spiritual deadness through salvation and restoration. The passion of the thirsty is an

(i) individual desire, (ii) internal desire, (iii) intense desire, (iv) increasing desire, (v) incomparable desire, (vi) interminable desire, and (vii) instructive/influential desire.  

“For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring ” (Isaiah 44:3). He does not grant righteousness, as an experience, to just anyone. He gives to those who manifest and reveal their heart-hunger and earnestness for it. The only thing that satisfies a child of God is righteousness. There is something deadly wrong with a Christian who is not thirsty after the righteousness of God. God’s promises to fill the thirsty with righteousness are great. But we must thirst and respond to His call so He can fulfil them in our lives.

He has given His Son, Jesus Christ to atone for your sin and make full provision for your righteousness. If you passionately desire His righteousness, “…he shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37:4). God imparts His nature of holiness to those who are alive in Christ and thirst for it. And if we have not experienced the promised fulness of righteousness, it is because we have failed to do our part of passionately desiring it. If we desire and seek Him with faith He will fulfil His promise. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” He will fill us with His righteousness. When God makes promises He fulfils them, when the conditions are met: “… for he is faithful that promised ” (Hebrews 10:23)."  

-  from outline.

Please listen to this week's Bible Study.

May God so fill us with hunger and thirst after His righteousness and may we be filled with inward righteousness as well as outward in Jesus' name - amen. 

God bless,
-Charity