Discipleship at Messiah

Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.-Matthew 5:6

Dr. Joyce Brothers, the psychologist once observed, “I see that people who are good are happy.  People who are happy are people who are good.”¹

            A necessity for health is a healthy and normal appetite.  Though this is a recognized fact, few of us really appreciate this until we experience the loss of our appetite.  That is truly one of the most pathetic situations in which a person can be.  I remember a woman that I once visited in a hospital who seemed to literally starving to death because she had no appetite for food.  It made her sick to look at it.  Each time I visited it became more and more obvious that they were fighting a loosing battle.  Unless she could regain her appetite, it was just a matter of time.
            As vital as an appetite is in the physical realm, so also it is in the spiritual.  Jesus said it is one of the traits of the character of the citizen of His kingdom.
            We might say a good appetite, an appetite for good is necessary for spiritual health.
            The psalmist put it this way: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1-2a).  Jesus affirmed it when He said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (John 4:34)
            The problem is that we have lost our appetite for good, for God.  The old preacher, Clovis Chappell told about a man on his way to a baseball game.  He got on the wrong street car with a group on the way to a revival meeting.  He was next to two old saints who were talking about what the Lord had done for them.  He got off as quickly as possible.  Later he said, “I found myself between two old prayer meeting saints, and I was certainly in one hell of a fix.”  Chappell said, “There you have it.  What was heaven to the saints was hell to him.  He had no taste for such things.”²
            God can restore that hunger and thirst.  Q- [Jesus] is not describing a mere vague preference for “doing the right thing.”  He is not uttering a pious platitude, “Blessed are they who want to be good.  He is depicting a longing which means the difference between life and death.”  A drowning man desires air above all else.  So should Christians desire goodness, God.
            Nothing greater can be imagined than a cool drink to a thirst parched person, or food to a starving person or God to one whose desire is for him.  Read all 8.

¹quoted by Robert Schuller
²Clovis Chappell, Sermon On the Mount, 55

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