Hunger & Thirst for Righteousness

It seems that kids are born loving anything with sugar. I haven't met a kid yet who doesn't like candy. But most kids don't like to eat their vegetables. Parents train their children to eat things that are good for them. After being forced to eat certain vegetables by my parents, after a while I seemed to acquire a taste for them. Once I hated broccoli, but now I intentionally order it and often crave it. I feel so much better when I eat healthy, so now I often crave healthy food.

Jesus said that our lives will be blessed if we hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt. 5:6). A hunger for spiritually good things doesn't seem to come naturally to most of us. Like the kid who wants to eat candy all the time, it seems we are born into this world with a desire for worldly pleasures and comforts. We don't naturally want the things that are good for us.

The Bible instructs us to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8). Like eating vegetables, we have to discipline ourselves to regularly start eating from the "bread of life" of Christ's teachings (John 6:35, 63). You may not like what God's word challenges you to do when you first start reading and studying it. But soon you will realize that it offers a better way of living that permanently gives satisfaction (John 10:10; 4:14).

If all you ever ate was sugar, you would eventually feel miserable. When you start eating healthy, it makes you feel so much better about life. Start seeking righteousness. It might seem restrictive and difficult at first, but soon you will develop a taste for it (cf. Heb. 6:5). After a while you will begin to crave the righteous things of God because it makes you feel so much better about yourself. As the Psalmist writes, "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Psalm 119:103).