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  HUNGER, THIRST
  by Don McClure
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Summary: The sermon emphasizes the transformative power of recognizing
our spiritual poverty and the joy found in seeking righteousness through
humility and brokenness before God.

Duration: 41:04 Topics: "Gods Presence", "Spiritual Hunger"
Scripture References: Matthew 5:3-7, Matthew 6:33, Matthew 7:7

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of God's presence
in our lives. He uses the analogy of a mirror to illustrate how God
created man to reflect His glory, but sin broke that reflection. The
speaker encourages the audience to seek God's presence and acknowledge
their need for Him. He also shares a personal experience of questioning
his own faith, but ultimately realizing that God knows and understands
his struggles.

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CONTENT
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Matthew chapter 5. And seeing the multitudes, he went up unto a
mountain, and when he was said, his disciples came unto him. And he
opened his mouth, and he taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in
spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

We'll hold it there, because we already know we're not going to get that
far. But let's pray, and we'll look at it. Lord Jesus, how we thank you
that when we come before you, we come before the God of time and
eternity.

The God who loves us, the God who created us, and Lord desires us to
know the greatest joy in all the world. That no one outside of you will
ever even dream of a joy like you have, of a happiness like you know.
And Lord, how we thank you, and we praise you that that's the joy that
you have for us.

And Lord, as we look at it tonight, I pray that even if we look at all
the creature human joys that we're so often enticed by, Lord, may you
give to us the capacity to look and say, I want to see your joy, and
Lord, how we thank you, we can set all the other joys right next to
yours, and hands down, yours is deep and rich and pure and real. And
Lord, we ask that you would make us to know that. For Father, we ask it
in Jesus' name.

Amen. Well, as we have been seeing so far through the first three
Beatitudes, is that the first three, essentially, you might call them
negative. Essentially, ultimately, they're all positive, because that's
how they all work out.

But through the process of it, the coming to happiness, and remember,
once again, the Beatitudes are not, they don't constitute happiness in
and of themselves. The word blessed means, oh, how happy, as we have
said, you know, reminded ourselves each time. But the greatest happiness
in the world, here it's broken down into its parts.

Essentially, all of the attributes, you might say, of true, deep,
profound happiness. And that's the greatest joy that the human soul can
ever know. The greatest happiness that any be, any person ever will ever
discover, is right here.

And here Jesus says, the first three of them, as we've already looked
at, but just to reflect for a moment, there that, oh, how happy are the
poor in spirit. Oh, how happy are they who mourn. And oh, how happy are
the meek.

Now, these are things that none of them are difficult to have. Anybody
can have any of these anytime they want to. All you need to do is stand
before God.

One day, every, one day, everybody will stand before God. And even
people that have never known poverty of spirit, they'll never, never
have mourned, maybe, before. And there'll never have been a meekness in
their life.

I'll tell you, these three will be there. When you look at the book of
Revelation, you realize there that one day, you see this awesome line.
It tells us there, before the throne of God, the great white throne, the
judgment seat of Christ, and he says, and there I saw the small and the
great, the great and the small.

Imagine this line of people, all of the great leaders, all of the great
rulers, all the great kings and princes, all the great of wealth and
power and fame and fortune, all the great athletes that the world
admired. You see all the great and all the small, all just in line
together, and none of them are even thinking about each other. They're
all standing before God.

And standing before God, every one of them will have realized the utter
poverty of spirit that they all have. They'll realize next to God's
power and his majesty and his glory and his throne and his eternality,
his whole being there, as you just stand before it, any man who will
ever find himself, be measuring himself by God, he'll always be poor in
spirit. He can't do anything else but doing that.

Jesus once told the Pharisees, he says, you know, you measure yourselves
by one another. In most of the world, it's always measuring itself and
it's, you know, by one another and the human pecking order of, you know,
life in one way or another. But when a person stands before God, they'll
always be poverty, poor of spirit.

It'll also produce an instant sense of mourning. Not only when they see
the absolute poverty, but there will be a mourning over the sinful state
they're in. The sin in their own life that has brought this on and kept
this and sustained that poverty stricken spirit all through their life.

They stayed poor in spirit because they never mourned over it. And then
they'll look there and realize their sinful state, their separation from
God and they will mourn. And that will produce some meekness.

There's a lot of people that don't think, you know, it's hard to be
humble when you're as great as I am, so the little button says and some
people think. But when a person there who's never been maybe humbled and
never been meek in this life, they'll be it before God. And here
essentially what is happening, the first three you might say they've
been negative, I suppose.

But they're not really. But they're wonderful. They're keys to life and
something there that when we discover them, it's a great blessing.

But then from now on you might say they're positive. But the first three
have been kind of an emptying. They've been kind of a draining.

Anybody there that kind of goes through these first three, they exhaust
you, they kill you, they wound you, they grieve you, they bring great
sorrow to a heart if a person really allows themselves to stand before
God. But that's part of God's work. And we on one hand, we say, Lord,
you restore our soul, you resurrect our life, you regenerate our spirit,
you're there to do all these wonderful things.

But when you stop with thinking about restoring a soul, you always have
to strip it first. In a sense, if you've ever thought, if any of you
have ever restored anything, maybe some of you restore furniture. And
what do you have to do with that furniture? Maybe some of you restore
cars.

I have a brother and brother-in-law, both loved restoring cars. They'll
get these old cars that are in kind of shape that nobody else may want
them. But then they'll take them and then virtually every nut and every
bolt will come off it.

The paint is all stripped off, the engine is completely taken apart, and
it's all ground down and the valves and the pistons and everything
within it all redone and everything is stripped and ground and grinded
down to virtually nothing, down to bare bone. And then when you're
restoring it, then you start putting it back together again. If you're
really going to restore something, and as Christians, I look and say, I
want a restored life.

Well, the only way I can have a restored life is allow my life, first of
all, to be stripped. If I can just like a, you know, God looks at me and
he says, here you were created in my image and you've fallen a long way
from it. You need to be restored, to be regenerate, to be renewed.

All these words in the Bible. But they all suggest there the process of
restoration as we know it in the rest of our life. You've got to strip
it.

You've got to cleanse it. You've got to break it down. You get to sand
it and grind it and get down to the core of it before you can then build
it back up.

And when a person will allow their heart to be broken, when they allow
themselves to be stripped down, then is when God begins to do wonderful
things. Because one of the wonderful things you see in the Bible, when
you look at all God's great leaders that we look at, the great saints of
old of the Bible, you realize with all of them, God always pretty much
does the same thing. It seems if God always reduces a man to a minimum
and then he puts in the maximum, but not until he's reduced.

Every one of them, he takes them down to the core. He takes them down to
brokenness. He takes them down to absolute surrender, to great meekness
and humility before God.

And whether or not it's not my mother and my father, it's nobody else
I'm blaming. It's not my neighbor, it's me. And until we know this,
until we discover it, the filling, I don't think it's as real as it
could be.

In any work that God still goes on to do, it's nothing, it's all based
on the ability of somebody to allow somebody to take it down. And the
farther it'll be willing to go down to humility and to brokenness, the
greater the life will come. But until that brokenness, until we almost
despair of life in and of itself, we're not really ready to have another
life and to grasp on to it, I don't believe.

One of the most wonderful experiences, I look back on it, it wasn't
wonderful at the time, but in the 60s, I was going to a Bible school in
England. I was a new Christian. I was determined.

I really wanted to serve God. I was starting to try to get things
together. And I had actually been accepted to a seminary here in the
United States.

But when I saw all the courses, a lot of which you couldn't even
pronounce, hermeneutics, homiletics, pneumatology, and all these things,
and I had no idea what they were. And I even read the description of
them. And at the time, I thought, I don't need this stuff.

I don't even know the Bible yet. And I need to know the Bible. And I
ended up going to a Bible school in England, where five hours a day,
they taught the Bible.

And there as I sat, and I would take notes in class, and then I would
record it. And then I'd go listen to it afterwards. I'd also get up
every morning.

And I had this little prayer journal that I'd put together. And I had
this daily reading that I would do. I was convinced that with this year
of my life, I was going to so dedicate myself to God, that as a
consequence of this year, my life was going to be transformed.

I was going to be God's gift to the 20th century, you know, or
something. I don't know what it was, but I wanted to be something there.
And so I was giving it everything I knew, everything I had.

From the moment the alarm went off, and all through the day, there
wasn't really any other interest, any other pursuit. I wanted to know
God, and I wanted to know the Bible. And then I wanted to be able to
come away from there and do something with it.

So I'd get up, and I'd pray. And then I'd go to class, and I'd write,
and I'd study. And then after class, I'd take my tapes out, and I'd go
over them.

And I'd think, and I'd study. And this had gone on for a couple of
months, we'd been there. And after about a couple of months, one day, I
got tremendously depressed.

So depressed, I stopped going to class. I didn't get up to pray. My wife
immediately knew something was wrong.

And then, next thing you know, it's kind of, it was a small school,
maybe 120 students at the most. And I've always seemed to have been a
person that somehow or another makes people notice me, I guess. But
somehow or another, you know, it kind of got out that I was having a
problem, and people would talk, and I'd just ignore.

I didn't go to class. And I got very depressed. I kind of thought I knew
why, but I wasn't sure.

But I came to my wife, and I said, we're going home. I'm through. I've
had it.

And she talked to me, wanted to know why, and I couldn't really tell
her. But I just say, we're, that's it. We're gonna go home.

And then she came, and she told me, she said, look, we've sold
everything we have. We don't have anything to go home to. And then we
told everybody, the family and friends, we're gonna go off and learn how
to serve God.

And now we just got enough money to go back home. Are you sure you want
to do this? What are you gonna tell them? Well, at that point, it's not
often pride saves somebody, but I, because I thought, well, man, I don't
want to go look bad there, too. And so I decide, all right, I'm gonna
give it a week.

I told her, I'll think about it for a week. But still that week, I
didn't do anything, and I already went to anything, and just drug
through. And then the night before, I was going to get the tickets.

I woke up, couldn't sleep virtually all night, at about three or four in
the morning. There, out of one last act of desperation or something, I
grabbed my Bible, and I grabbed my little prayer journal that I'd
written all these little gems down, that kind of, you know, excited me
when I heard them. And I took the best tapes of any of the sermons that
I'd heard, and I took them, and I went down to the lecture hall in the
corner where I'd oftentimes go, and it was dark and quiet.

And there I started listening to these things, and reading these things,
and meditating on these things. An hour went by, and two hours went by,
and three and four. Finally, it was time for breakfast, and everybody
was up and moving around, and school was going.

And I'm turning things off, and putting my tape player away, and folding
up my Bible. And as I'm about to walk away, I'm just, here, I'm gonna go
back home. And I was so depressed I was so frustrated, because, you see,
what had happened is, I had read the Bible, somehow or another.

I don't know what I'd been thinking, and what I'd been hearing, but all
the way through it, I was convinced I was supposed to grow. I was
supposed to become better, and better, and better, and I wasn't. And no
matter what it was, this was the plague of our life, I think, all of us.

I don't know that it ever really, sometimes lays out there, and we see
this. But my frustration was so intense in this, and I'm just, finally,
I'm walking out, as I'm going, I, just turning to the Lord, almost, I
said, okay, Lord, I said, listen, all I know is, is, is, here, I sold
everything, I came over here, and I thought I did my part on this thing,
and wanted to learn the Bible, and try to help people. They live their
life, and things, but all I know is, is that right now, my life is a
lie.

Everything I see, I ought to be. And the quality, and the depth, and the
life of power, that ought to be there within me, it isn't there. And
I've given it my best.

I haven't, I didn't, to me, I hadn't felt like I'd laid anything back,
and I'd, had everything that there was to give, to do my part. And I'm
there, and thought, why in the world should I go on preaching a lie?
Wanting to preach a lie. Doesn't work.

I believe you died, and I believe you're real, but it doesn't work for
me. And why spend the rest of my life preaching a lie? And I'm walking
away, I'm literally turning, and out of nowhere, but as clear as if it
was audible, the Lord spoke to me, and He told me, well, I know that.
Just as clear as anything.

I was almost startled. I've always known that. And instead, I mean,
you're just typical of my nature, at any rate.

I get angry. I get upset. What do you mean, you, you mean you've always
known this? You've really, I was talking back and forth with this, you
know, sense there, what do you mean you've known this? Well, you let me
sell everything, and you let me move over to the other side of the
planet, listen to all this, plan to go into something, when you knew it
was a lie in me? Oh, yes.

Always known. Your flesh has always been a lie, and it always will be a
lie. But I'm not a lie.

I never have been, and I never will be. That's why I'm a live and risen,
and I live within you. I'm not a lie.

Just you. And you know, the, it's funny to you, but it wasn't funny to
me. But the, but it hit me there all of a sudden, for the first time.

I mean, it's the most interesting thing about most of us as Christians
is, is I find is that my problems are pretty common many times. But in
the sense there, the amazing thing about us is that we will invite the
finest and the only true Christian that's ever lived, who we believe
died on the cross, rose from the dead, ascended the right hand of the
majesty and high, ever liveth to make intercession for us. We will allow
him and invite him to come into our life.

We'll ask him to come in. We'll invite him in. Have a seat.

Be my Lord and Savior. And then we'll turn to him and say, now watch me
be a Christian. And you know, what an absurd thing to do.

Here we've already got, you don't need two Christians in one body, first
of all. You only need one. And why in the world with the one that's
alive and risen there, you know, do we spend so much time trying to show
off, or trying to perform, or trying to achieve, or trying to do
anything? The issue that God is so often waiting for us to come to is
the day that finally I'll confess I'm a lie.

We'll confess I've been a lie. I'm a fraud. I'm a phony.

Leave me to myself and everybody's in trouble. And here the wonderful
thing is, is that's what the Beatitudes are all about. It's God saying,
I know that about you.

I've always known that about you. You won't surprise me. Some of us,
sometimes we come to God as if we've got something to confess to God.

Hold on. This is going to be a heavy one. You know, as if, whoa, we've
got a heavy one here.

You know, or something. Or we come to God as if, you know, we're going
to surprise him with sin. You know, and I think someday the surprise is
going to be when God says, you want to see sin? I'll show you yours.

And then you'll, you'll be surprised, not me. But when we come there to
where we really, truly, something happens within our heart, in our life,
where we find ourself poor in spirit, and we mourn over, and it produces
a humility, a brokenness, a meekness within us. Those are some of the
most wonderful things that'll ever happen in a human life.

When we finally despair of life as we know it under our own self-rule,
and it produces a sorrow and an emptiness. And out of that there is when
something wonderful can happen, when something dies and I'm crucified
with Christ. You know, all a Christian ought to be is a dead man on
furlough.

But God's waiting for us to die. You know, he's waiting for something to
give up. And then thereafter, Jesus has stripped us down, down to the
core.

He's, he's, so he can really do the work of restoration. He's got the
gunk out and the, you know, the rust and the corrosion and the, and the
stains and the spots and the blemishes. And he's just scrubbing and
cleaning and grinding.

And he gets down to the core of the human soul to where I'm broken and
I'm honest before him. Then Jesus says, Oh, how happy are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness. Let me tell you, one of the
things that's gonna happen to this person.

There is, there's gonna be a hungering. There is gonna be a thirsting.
But it first starts there with the draining and the emptying and the
truth.

You don't, all you gotta do is stand before God. If you're having
trouble being humble, well, then you're measuring yourself by somebody
else than God. If you're having trouble, you know, being poor in spirit
or mourning over your own sin, then you're standing in the wrong light.

But when we find ourself truly standing before God, oh, it may hurt. And
we, it will hurt. Not may hurt, it will.

The sorrow, the realization, I was made in the glory of God. I was made
in his image. God said, let us create man after our own image, for our
own likeness.

It, you know, they, by that word image, it's a wonderful word, image.
But it's, it's, the word essentially, it's a derived image. And to be in
the image of God, though, it required, man was a derivative of God.

He derived his image from God, as in a mirror. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul
says, all we with an unveiled face continuing to behold, we reflect like
mirrors the glory of the Lord. You and I are in the image of God.

We are created in the image of God as, as you would see your image in a
mirror. Tomorrow morning, when you get up, you go look in that mirror.
You walk in there, and after you've taken the first couple minutes in
wonder, love, and praise for what you see, you know, and, and start the
projects of repair, you know, or whatever else you do.

But all you're going to see is your image. You're going to see you, the
one that you're going to spend the next half hour, that nobody else has
to see that one, you know, painting and plastering and doing that or
else you do. But, but the thing is, is you're going to, but that, they
all, but it isn't you, you see, it's a reflected image of you.

It's a, it's a, a mirrored image of you. That's what God made when he
made man. That man was somebody you could look at him, and you could see
what God was like.

You could see a reflection of him. You could see his love and his
character and his nature and his joy and his peace. It was awesome in
there, and, and, and as man was, that's what the glory that God made us
to have.

But when we sinned, we broke the mirror, essentially. But we walked
away, and all of a sudden, you know, there was nobody there who we
reflected him any longer. But it required God's presence.

Just like tomorrow morning, it'll require you in the room, if you want
to see your mirror and see you in it, you got to go to the, you got to
go in the room. Just try it, just for the fun of it. Tomorrow morning
after you go in there, smile, don't say a word to the mirror, don't tell
it what you're going to do, but just after you stand there for a moment,
just as quick as anything, jump out of the room and then peek back and
see if you're still there.

If you are, I want one of those mirrors. But if you, but if you are,
you, but obviously you're not. Because it requires your presence.

And that's, that was how God made man, in such ways that when we require
his presence, when there's something that happens within us that to live
and breathe and move and have our existence, it's in him. That's what
God wants for man. And it's only until somehow or another we're poor in
spirit and we're sorrowful and we mourn and say, God, have you seen what
I've seen in my life? Oh, yes.

But would you like to see me in your life? Because one of the things is
after we've been drained and drained and drained, it'll produce a
wonderful hunger. It'll produce a hunger as well, a specific kind of a
hunger. This hunger there will happen, it'll produce a hunger for
righteousness.

Rather than we realize the devastation of sinfulness and of self and of
corruption and of rebellion and all these things, what they did to us,
now the hunger, it's not just any hunger that's created, it's a hunger
for righteousness. And that righteousness, it's not just, you know,
straight dealing, fair play, morality, ethics, you know, do good. I
mean, that's in part, that's a fruit of righteousness, it ought to be
there.

It's not just respectability and good ethics and righteousness, hey, I'm
going to go out into God, I'm going to be right, I'm going to live right
and do right. That all ought to be there. But here, essentially, this is
a righteousness that comes because a person longs for deliverance from
sin, longs what this did to me, look what happened, look what my sin and
my rebellion's done to me, look what my self-righteousness, look what my
ego, look what my pride, look what my independent spirit that needs no
God, that needs no power, that needs no mercy, needs no forgiveness.

And when I find myself, God, I'm hungry, and this time I'm hungry, I've
been stripped down and broken down, but I'm hungry, I'm starved to
death, but I'm starved to be right. I'm starved for righteousness. And
the wonderful thing here about the righteousness to me that I believe
God's talking about here is not just superficial righteousness, not just
behavioral righteousness, but spiritual righteousness, which is produced
only by God, produced only by the life of Christ within me, a
righteousness that puts me right with God and right with, you know, with
his Son, right with his Lordship, right with the Holy Spirit, right with
all that God wants to be within my life.

This is a righteousness that comes because I'm before God and saying, I
want you, and I want all of you I can have. I want to be in right, you
know, heart with you, right attitude, full surrender, full yieldedness,
full offering, full consecration, not just superficial. Sometimes we can
be right, still be wrong, still be wrong.

Sometimes I find myself, I'll be talking to somebody and I'm right.
Nobody else agrees, but I know enough to know I'm right. I don't need to
know an awful lot to know that, I found through the years, but have you
noticed sometimes, I mean, we've heard it, we've assessed the situation,
and this is right, and yet at the same time, you're outside a real
communion and fellowship.

with God, not filled with the Spirit, not in that right place. You may
be technically right. You may be one that is ethically right or morally
right or what you're talking about is right, and yet at the same time,
you're not spiritually right.

You know, you're just kind of in that land where you're right with other
people sort of a thing, in the sense of your diagnosis or evaluation of
life, and this happened, and this happened, and this is right, and this
is wrong, and this is terrible, and you know, and all these things are
right, maybe, but that's not righteousness. Righteousness is somebody
that has a right relationship with God, a right life in His Spirit, a
right yieldedness to the Lordship of Christ, a right desire for Him to
be all that He wants to be within us, and when somebody, the person
that's got a hunger for that is a person who's sick and tired of
himself. He's tired of his mouth, he's tired of his arrogance, he's
tired of his behavior, he's tired of what he thinks and what he does and
why he does it, the people that he hurts in the process, and saying,
God, how I'd love to be right.

This is why, Jesus says, this is a person on the road to joy like you
can't believe. The person there that wants these qualities, he's going
to be happy, he's going to be happy and right with God, he's going to be
happy and right with himself, and he's going to be happy and right with
others, because he longs for it with all of his heart. And there, when
somebody hungers and thirsts, you know, there, it's such a wonderful
thing.

God wants that within us. A healthy person is somebody there, just like
if you're a healthy human being, you hunger and thirst, and then you
hunger and thirst again, and then you hunger and thirst again and again,
until you're filled. And then you're not hungry and thirsty for a time,
maybe, but you are soon again.

And this is what I believe Jesus is talking about here, is that there is
a true hunger that comes within somebody after they've been emptied. But
now there are great hunger and a great thirst there for God, and to be
filled with God. And the wonderful thing is, is here he tells us, he
says, these people that hunger and thirst after righteousness, they
shall be filled.

And you might, to me, when you ask, with what? Well, essentially,
there's only one thing God has to fill anybody with. Himself. That's
what he's looking for.

He, his presence was removed from man, and that's his spirit. His spirit
who was to fill man, who brooded over man, who took up residence within
his heart and his life, and gave him the life of God. Now the spirit of
God wants to come and fill us yet again.

And when somebody there finds God, I want to be filled with you and with
your spirit. In Ephesians 5, Paul says, be not drunk on wine, whereas in
excess, but be ye, you know, being filled. It's a constant fill, be,
it's present progressive tense, but it means there, there be filled and
then filled and filled.

It's a, it's a continuous thing. Not that somebody is just filled with
the spirit back in 1974, you know, and now you're doing still filled. I
don't think so.

You know, the, you maybe had a nice day in 1974 and other people might
have enjoyed you that day too. But the thing is, is that this is
something that you constantly desire to have. It's a continued and
continued and continued throughout our lives to be, to be desiring, to
be present, progressively filled.

God filled me and then filled me again and again and again. And it's not
just a, it's something that anybody, whatever you had yesterday,
shouldn't make any difference to you today as far as what you had with
God in one sense. I imagine today when you got up, you might've had a
nice meal yesterday, but that, your body didn't care much today about
that.

In fact, if you even told your body, when your body's hungry and said,
ah, you fed, you ate good yesterday. Your body would tell you very
quickly, so what? I want more. You know, and, uh, and you're going to
get it from me or I'm going to ruin your day.

And, uh, I will, I'll make you moody and cranky and all sorts of things
until you make me happy. And however we were filled before, and this to
me, when Jesus said, oh, how happy are they, the hunger and thirst. This
is a cycle of life.

It's God's created this, not just for an experience, but constantly
there. Wanting to be filled. Tonight as we sang, uh, cause me to come to
thy river, oh Lord.

Cause me to drink from thy river, cause me to live by thy river. That's
something there that we, we constantly, God longs for us to desire that
from him and from his spirit. Our heart would be open and longing, uh,
for a great continuous work of his spirit.

The great evangelist of the past, D.L. Moody. Uh, he used to always
preach constantly about being filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with
the Holy Spirit. This need to be refilled again with the Spirit of God.

A lady came up to him afterwards one time and said, Mr. Moody, you're
always preaching about the need to be filled again and again with the
Holy Spirit. Why is that? He looked at her and he says, woman, I leak.
And, uh, well, I'm not sure of the theology of that, but I understand,
uh, I understand the reality of that.

The issue there is that God has created you and I in such a way that
just as our body hungers and thirsts, and a healthy body will hunger and
thirst again and again and again, and so too will the hungry, healthy
Christian. The healthier the Christian, the hungrier, the greater the
thirst. It's the constant longing, Lord, fill me.

I know you've filled me before. And I know you've immersed me in your
life and your spirit. I know you've given me so much, but I want more.

I can't, I want more of your power and more of your life. And there, you
know, when somebody's saying, you know, did the meal work yesterday?
Well, if you're here, probably did. But what it also means doesn't mean
there that we don't want more.

And I think to me that when we find ourselves, God, fill me with your
spirit. Fill me with your love. Fill me with your life.

I need it again and again and again and again. And I think the person
that longs for that the most and has the greatest happiness is the one
that also has that when they mourn over their poverty of spirit, they
mourn over their sins and they're meek. Sometimes I think the Holy
Spirit will do works with anybody that will open their heart to him.

But I think the ones that have the greatest experiences are the ones
that have just despised their own heart, their own life, their own
existence, and have come to find there's this marvelous substitute that
was actually the one designed to be there in the first place that we
shoved out, took his place and said, I'll run it. I'll run it. It's the
flesh.

But when the flesh begins to be poor. You know, Paul makes an
interesting comment to me in the New Testament. He says the flesh lusts
against the spirit.

And the spirit against the flesh. Now, I understand why the flesh lusts
against the spirit. I mean, the spirit has all the qualities.

The flesh sits over here and it rules and reigns. But the spirit's got
the life and the power and the love and the joy and the wisdom and the
guidance, the understanding, the strength, all that's required. So I
understand why the flesh sits over here with nothing and covets the
things of the spirit.

But why would the spirit ever covet anything against the flesh? If it
isn't the fact that the flesh seems to always have the throne. The flesh
has first right of refusal of thought, plan, behavior. The flesh kind of
sits there constantly saying, well, let me think it over.

If I'm really in a jam, I may think about the spirit. But I'm first. And
to me, the great thing that happens is when I think that the spirit of
God, he looks over there with all this life and all this power and all
this love.

And there how he covets, oh, I wish I could be first. I wish I could be
the one that you long for and you let speak and you relied upon and you
trusted in instead of your own flesh. But the man who's poor in spirit
and he mourns over and he's meek about it, what he's actually done in
that process is the spirit of God has set the flesh aside and opened a
wonderful cavity within the soul to reign.

The throne has been, the king flesh has been dethroned and the spirit is
there ready to move. And how you and I to be able to look and say, God,
am I poor in spirit and do I mourn over it? And is it produced a
meekness so much so as I'm just amazed that you would want with your
Holy Spirit to fill me? Because I'm sure hungry. I'm sure thirsty for to
be right with God and right with the spirit of God and right with the
lordship of Christ.

And when we can come and surrender to him, yielding our life over to
Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. And it's a daily thing, a constant
process. It opens up our life to a whole new experience.

A whole new discovery, I believe, of Jesus. A daily discovery of what
he's all about. One day we end up, as somebody once wrote, discovering
daily who God really is.

Thanking him daily, he's mine and I'm his. Discovering daily God's great
love for me, such mercy and forgiveness, amazingly free. Discovering
daily that God really cares.

Thanking him daily, he does answer prayer. Discovering daily what grace
really means, unmerited favor beyond all my dreams. Discovering daily
God speaking to me, he speaks through the Bible once blind, now I see.

Discovering daily each day that I live that all that I need he freely
will give. Discovering daily Christ working through me, accomplishing
daily what never could be. Discovering daily that I can't but he can.

Thanking him daily for my place in his plan. Discovering daily how real
life can be when I'm living in Christ and he's living in me. Discovering
daily a song in my heart with anticipation for each day at its start.

Delighting and basking in love so divine, secure in the knowledge I'm
his and he's mine. And besides mere contentment, excitement I see, the
daily adventure of Christ alive and living in me. That's what he longs
for for us.

But the one that knows it the most is the one that he's hungry and
thirsty to be right. Maybe that's where you are tonight. We're going to
pray.

But as we do, maybe you realize, God, I want this joy. I want this
happiness. I really, truly do.

But realize as well the price that goes with it. Alan Redpath tells a
story of one time when he was preaching. At the end of a sermon, he said
a woman came up to him as he was standing at the door and she was just
dripping in jewelry as he describes it.

He said, this woman had everything you could put on somebody it seemed.
And she was the absolute picture of wealth and accomplishment. He said,
she stood there, though, at the end and she at the door and she had
tears in her eyes.

And she said, Dr. Redpath, I would give the world for what you talked
about today. And he smiled and looked at her. He says, good, because
that's exactly what it costs.

And when you and I, when we would love to have Lord, I want all you've
got. I'll give the world for it. I believe the Lord looks and he says,
good, because that's exactly what it costs.

It'll cost you your world. And I'll give you mine. Wouldn't you love to
exchange worlds? You do it by changing thrones.

Let's pray. Dear Father, how we thank you and we praise you for your
love for us. And Lord, I thank you that you desire so much that we would
be happy.

I just thank you that you're not some sort of a chairman of the board of
heaven and dealing in souls, just merely counting them. Just stacking up
human beings and just tell them to get in this line and go through this
process and stay out of trouble or you'll regret it. But rather than
that, you're a father that you look at us and you're deeply desiring
that we would be immensely happy.

Like any father would just long for his child. I long that they would
have a joy unspeakable more than anything. And Jesus, I thank you that
we got that from you, from your heart, for us.

And Lord, I pray that tonight that you would open to us the key of real
happiness. And Lord, to realize that the greatest happiness is always
going to be for the one that desires to make God happy too. When we look
there and say, God, you made my life for you.

I'm to be pleasing to you and you're to sit upon the throne of my life
and you won't be happy until you do. But God, I won't be happy either.
I'll never know real joy until I have God on the throne by the power of
his Holy Spirit filling my life.

And Lord, I pray that you would just take us tonight. And Lord, may you
bring us to that river. May we drink from that river.

May we live by that river. The river of your spirit flowing into our
lives, strengthening us in our homes, our families, our relationships,
our loved ones. As we go to work, may Lord, a spirit-filled man, a
spirit-filled woman be living.

Not us imitating you. Not us trying to be a good Christian to impress
heaven. But Lord, one that has just simply turned and said, Jesus, I'm
absolutely exhausted.

I'm so tired of being a Christian. I utterly give up. And I'm sorry that
I've been in the way.

And I just ask tonight that you just help me get out of the way and your
Holy Spirit to fill me. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty.

For a work of your love, a work of your spirit to take me, baptize me,
immerse me, fill me with your love and with your spirit that your joy
may overflow. So, Jesus, we thank you for your love. We thank you for
your word.

We thank you for this sermon. And now we ask the very reason for which
you gave it would be fulfilled in us. Jesus, in your wonderful name we
pray.

Amen.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/8/SID8733.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/don-mcclure/hunger-thirst/
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