Today’s devotion is based on Week 3 of “Tough Love”: Delays Gratification! (WATCH HERE)
How many times do you go to the refrigerator or pantry in a given day between meals? Perhaps your time at work curtails this, but you may have your stash in your desk or cubicle. When we get hungry, we want something to eat. It’s hard to even wait until meal time to satisfy that hunger.
Hunger is your body telling you that you have a need. Your body is signalling that some level of nutrition is needed to keep going. As a result it moves you to satisfy that hunger.
The second statement of blessing in Luke 6 is this:
“Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.”
In Matthew 5, Jesus stated it this way:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
The tension between satisfying physical needs and spiritual needs is perhaps best described when Jesus met Satan in the dessert and Satan tempted him this way after 40 days and nights without something to eat.
Matthew 4:2 After fasting forty days and forty nights,he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
The temptation would have been to use his power to satisfy an earthly craving. However, it would not just have been providing bread like he did when he fed the 5000, but falling to Satan’s test to prove he was the Son of God by saying that earthly things are the most important. Rather, Jesus responded:
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Jesus’ “hunger and thirst” were for the things of God, the Word of God. He knew that while food is important in the short term, spiritual nourishment is what truly satisfies in the long term.
What would your spiritual life be like if you craved the word of God as often as you felt the urge to get a snack? What would happen if you drank from the Water of Life, the words of your Savior as often as you were thirsty and took a drink.
Perhaps the point isn’t to have a “feeding frenzy” of the Word of God, but simply a daily desire to seek after and find the satisfaction of the Lord in your life rather than the temporal things.
It’s easy to simply seek God when we have a temporal issue. Laid off? God provide me a job. Sick? God heal me. Lost a loved one? God comfort me. Relationship struggle? God fix it.
To be sure we want to invite God into these situations, however if we just crave the Lord to fix our earthly issues, we will always be wanting.
When we seek the Lord and his word of truth to fill our souls with his love, joy, peace, forgiveness, and hope, it gives a settled foundation for every situation in life we could encounter. Jesus says, “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.” We may not have every earthly desire and luxury, and may be even short on some of what we would call necessities, but blessing comes when we find satisfaction and contentment in our Savior, not our stuff.
So follow Jesus’ direction to blessing, Delay earthly gratification for eternal satisfaction.
Apply: Try today to read a Scripture every time you get hungry and want to grab a snack. See what happens in your day when you taste the truth and goodness of God on a regular basis.
Prayer: Lord, help me always hunger and thirst after the righteousness you give, the truth you proclaim and the hope with which you fill me. AMEN.