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
[Think TV]
