Happiness Through Hunger Series

A woman leaving church said to the pastor, "Thank you for that

sermon, it was so helpful." The pastor said, "I hope it was not as

helpful as the last one." "Why what do you mean," she asked.

"Well," he said, "that last sermon lasted you three months." On the

other hand, there's a pastor who told a woman how glad he was to see

her so faithful in attendance each Sunday. "Yes," she said, "it is such

a rest after a hard week to come and sit down and not think about

anything."

These two cases are extremes, but nevertheless they are typical

attitudes which are happiness killers for many professing Christians.

A poor appetite means trouble in the body, and a lack of craving for

spiritual food is a sign of an unhealthy soul. Jesus says in order to be

happy we must hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is not enough

to nibble at it at your convenience. To hunger and thirst is a painful

experience which motivates a person very strongly. A craving for

food and water makes a person desperate and leads to revolutionary

action. Nothing matters to the person who is starving or dying of

thirst but the satisfying of that burning desire.

David entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence

which was unlawful, but he did it because he and his men were so

hungry. The Bible tells of two mothers in Samaria who, when the city

was besieged by Benhadad, made a pact to eat their own babies. This

has happened many times in history, and even here in America. The

Donner party on its way to California in the frontier days got

stranded in the mountain snows. Even though they represented the

best of American life, hunger drove them to eat the flesh of those that

died.

Thirst also drives men to desperate measures. People who heard

Jesus knew more about real thirst than we do. The hot sun in the

desert made water more precious to them than we can realize. Rider

Haggard in King Solomon's Mines tells of three men and their guide

who are running out of water. The Zulu guide says, "If we cannot find

water, we shall all be dead before the moon rises tomorrow." One of

the men reflecting back on the torture of thirst and the hallucination it

created said, "If the Cardinal had been there, with his bell, book, and

candle, I would have whipped in and drunk his water up, yea, even if I

knew that the whole concentrated curse of the Catholic Church should

fall on me for so doing..."

Men become desperate when they hunger and thirst, and all the

energy of their being is concentrated on one goal-to satisfy their need.

This sounds like misery, and it is, but it is in the spiritual realm

another example of the paradoxical misery that leads to happiness.

Without hunger men will not crave what they need. If the Prodigal

Son had not ended up eating husks being fed to pigs, he may never had

returned to his father. The misery and hunger motivated him to go

home, and to the spiritual banquet of forgiveness, as well as the

physical banquet of food.

Happiness through hunger is the next logical step in the beatitudes

of Christ. The first three have been downward. We must be emptied

of self; dependent upon God, and submissive in humility before we can

be filled with the righteousness of God. Those who are poor in spirit,

who mourn, and are meek are sufficiently detached from self, and now

ready for this new direction in which we are to climb.

Empty of self-righteousness and ready to be filled with the

righteousness of Christ. There are three attitudes that will

characterize us if we have arrived at this point, and truly hunger and

thirst after righteousness. First there will be:

I. THE ATTITUDE OF ADMIRATION.

Admiration is the appetite of the soul. Sir John Suckling said, "Tis

not the meat, but tis the appetite makes eating a delight." To be

happy in hungering and thirsting after righteousness we must have an

appetite for righteousness. If we do not admire the righteousness of

Christ, and men of righteousness in history are not our heroes, we will

have a hard time being a happy Christian. A happy Christian who

does not admire righteousness is as contradictory as a gourmet who is

repulsed by food, or a clown who does not like laughter.

If the Christian still finds sin very appealing, he will not hunger or

thirst after righteousness. The man who does not mourn over sin, and

long for the sanctified life that Jesus can give can never find the

happiness of this beatitude. He's hung up back on the negative