“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6)
If you really hunger after and want the life of God to be manifested in you, study the life of Jesus. He is the tabernacle of God; He is the fullness of the Godhead. All things were made by Him, through Him and unto Him. You were created for His pleasure. WHAT IS HIS PLEASURE? He wants to fill you with Himself. He wants to fill your desire for “righteousness and holiness.” He wants to fill your desire for RIGHT RELATIONSHIP with Him.
Jesus is not someone you TRY to be like. He wants to fill us with the Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), so you become what HE IS. When He enters you with His “life-giving” Spirit and you seek Him, YOU WILL BECOME LIKE HIM. God desires to reach a group of people who realize their hopelessness in trying to be like Jesus, become frustrated, then begin to seek Him until He begins to do in them exactly what HE WANTS to do.
There is a very simple way to know the perfect will of God for your life. God’s will is the same for every person. He wants to completely fill you with Himself. Many pray sincerely to know the will of God, thinking He may send them to some foreign country to evangelize the people. But, if you will take the time to “seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness”, He will fill you with Himself and then you will know His perfect will for your life.
To “hunger and thirst after righteousness” means that you put everything that you are into WHO or what you are seeking. People do this in the natural all the time. People put everything they have, all their time, all their finances, all their study, into what they want to become. You will do the same if you hunger and thirst after God. You will want more than anything else to see God’s Kingdom manifested on earth.
“As the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1-2) We must condition ourselves to seek after God. We must learn to release that flow of life, the Life of God within us to flow into others.
“How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yea even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cries out for the living God” (Psalm 84:1-2) Our heart and soul does not cry out for sin and the lusts of the flesh, BUT FOR GOD. This will be our experience when we hunger and thirst after God.
If you never become hunger and thirsty after God and His righteousness, you will never know the TRUE meaning of spiritual blessing. You may know good health, some prosperity, and at times have a certain amount of peace, but if you never become one who seek after God, you will not know TRUE spiritual blessing.
You may think, “I have tried all my life to be a righteous person and failed…so what am I to do?” It is so simple that most don’t see it. You simply need to receive it. What you are today is a product of what you have been receiving all your life. What you receive in your heart you will soon become. You cannot by yourself or by your “dead man” produce the Life of God, BUT, you can receive it! If you are not manifesting the Character of God, then you have been receiving the wrong things into you. If you are receiving the things of God, specifically that Christ is IN YOU, then the fruit of the Spirit which love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance (self-control), are being produced IN YOU. If you are living this way, you don’t have to conform to an outward law of rules and regulations (Old Testament). When you hunger and thirst after God His Character GROWS IN YOU.