Are you hungry for righteousness?
I suggest that if we are
truly hungering and thirsting after righteousness we shall not only avoid things
that we know to be bad and harmful, we shall even avoid things that tend to dull
or take the edge off our spiritual appetites. There are so many things like
that, things that are quite harmless in themselves and which are perfectly
legitimate. Yet if you find that you are spending much of your time with them,
and that you desire the things of God less, you must avoid them. This question
of appetite is a very delicate one. We all know how, in the physical sense, we
can easily spoil our appetite, dull its edge, so to speak, by eating things
between meals. Now it is like that in the spiritual realm. There are so many
things that I cannot condemn in and of themselves. But if I find I spend too
much of my time with them, and that somehow I want God and spiritual things less
and less, then, if I am hungering and thirsting after righteousness, I shall
avoid them. I think it is a common-sense argument.
Let
me give another positive test. To hunger and thirst after righteousness means we
shall remind ourselves of this righteousness actively. We shall so discipline
our lives as to keep it constantly before us. This subject of discipline is of
vital importance. I am suggesting that unless we day by day voluntarily and
deliberately remind ourselves of this righteousness which we need, we are not
very likely to be hungering and thirsting after it. The man who truly hungers
and thirsts after it makes himself look at it every day. But, you say, "I am so
tremendously busy. Look at my agenda. Where have I time?" I say, if you are
hungering and thirsting after righteousness you will find time. You will order
your life, you will say, "First things must come first."
--Author unknown
Last Updated October 31, 1999 by Douglas McKay
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