Matthew 5:6 "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness! For they shall be filled."

When Jesus made this statement He used the strongest feelings of our appetites. They are also needs that must be met and satisfied for the body to remain healthy and alive. If a person ignores their hunger and thirst for food and water, they will eventually die. The same is true in the spiritual sense. If we ignore our need to know God, be in a relationship with God, and to let Him fill our lives with His righteousness we will die a spiritual death and eventually and eternal death.

I can remember a couple of times, when I was in my 20s, that I got involved with the wrong kinds of friends and ended up living a life apart from God. Both times I felt a nudging a prompting to come back to Jesus, but ignored it. If a person ignores something like that long enough the nudging gets quieter and harder to hear until you become so calloused that you no longer pay any attention to it. Both time God managed to break through the hardness I had developed and I listened. Suddenly I was homesick for the relationship I use to have with God and I became disgusted with the way I was living. Both times I ended up in tears, on my knees, praying for God to take me back. God welcomed me back with His everlasting arms. The result was that I lost the friends I had been with. Which shows how great a friend, and parent God is. When I left the lifestyle of my friends they left me. When I left the lifestyle of God, He kept at me, kept calling me back to Him. He never let go of me. I don't know the real meaning of "God's everlasting arms" but I wonder if one of the meanings is that while we let go of God, His arms are always holding on to us.

When a person has wandered from God and then hears God calling them back and they respond, they become hungry and thirsty for that closeness they once shared with their Lord. God honors their desires by filling them so full of Himself that He spills out in their conversations and in their actions. The same is true for the person who never knew God, but has seen the evidence in the lives of their friends and neighbors. Often that person will be hungry and thirsty to have whatever it is they see in their Christian friends and neighbors. When they have developed that hunger and thirst, God sees to it that someone comes along to help them know God and let God fill their emptiness with Himself. Soon that person is overflowing with God and He spills out in their conversations and actions too. God will never leave or ignore a person who is hungry and thirsty for Him. He is quick to fill their needs.

Consider the story of the Woman at the Well found in John 4. This was a woman who had an emptiness inside her. Jesus offered her living water, told her enough about herself that she recognized Who Jesus was (and still is). She ran into town and told others about Jesus. They followed her back to where Jesus was waiting for them. They were also hungry and thirsty so they urged Jesus to stay with them. He filled their needs by staying with them for two days and when He left many of the people in the town believed in Jesus. Their hunger and thirst was satisfied.

God is always calling people back to Him, and He never lets go of them. All a person has to do is ask for His forgiveness and invite Him into their lives. The emptiness in their lives will be filled and they will be satisfied.

"My sheep respond to my voice, and I know who they are. They follow me, and I give them eternal life. They will never be lost, and no one will tear them away from me." John 10:27&28