Words from the Rock
You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
Matthew 5:6 Message
This might be one of the more obvious blessings from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was simply pointing out that we’ll be blessed when we hunger and thirst for God as much as we do for food and drink. Simple enough . . . and yet most of us don’t live our lives like that on a daily basis. Usually our stomachs growl for food a whole lot more quickly than our hearts cry out for God.
But have you ever noticed how many Bible verses compare God and Jesus to food and drink? And do you wonder why that is? Okay, maybe that’s obvious too. Food and drink are things we all enjoy on a pretty regular basis. They’re a part of life and things that healthy people aren’t willing to give up. Think about it. It doesn’t take more than, say, six hours without eating or drinking before we wonder when the next meal is coming.
Jesus was saying that if we desire God the way we long for our next hot meal, we will be really blessed. That’s because we will have more and more of God in our lives—we’ll be filled up with his love, his goodness, his mercy . . . all sorts of amazing things. And that would be an enormous blessing not just for us but for everyone around us.
My Prayer
Dear God,
Please make my heart hungry for you. Make me thirst for you the way I’d thirst for water in a hot, arid desert. Remind me that I can never get too full of you—and that I need to come to you just as regularly as I head for the lunch line or dinner table.
Amen.
Final Word
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
Psalm 42:1 NIV
Stone for the Journey
I am hungry and thirsty for more of God in my life.