“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled”.
(Matthew 5:6)
A wrong explanation is given to the words “to hunger and thirst”. When someone is a changed man or woman, has become serious, and – as it is expressed – has become sensitive to matters of eternity, when he sees something from time to time, and at times also feels something, then this is often said to be hungering and thirsting after righteousness. But this is not so!
Someone may think: “How then could I distinguish this? For honestly spoken, I too take that to be hungering and thirsting after righteousness. I cannot well understand that this could be contradicted. I admit that it is not quite clear to me, and mostly I cannot really rely on it, because I am not sure whether or not it is from the Lord – oh, I wished I knew it. If I only knew that I do not deceive myself in this matter. Alas, if this is not hungering and thirsting after righteousness, how could I come to know what it is, or is man not able to find out what it is?”
Man will come to know this when it is given to him to truly hunger and thirst after righteousness. For at the very moment when it is given to him to hunger and thirst after righteousness, he sees the difference between what is given to him now and that what he thought or hoped hungering and thirsting was.
To tell the truth, you should not ask such and similar questions too often, and particularly you should not peruse the question too deeply, for we have to be converted! We have no need of coming something to know, but we must be converted, and the conversion is: to be taught of God. The Word says: “And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto Me” (John 6:45). “And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children” (Isa. 54:13). We must have the tuition from the Lord, that is: from the Word and the Holy Spirit. If this is given to us, then all things are cleared up and explained.
(From: Meditations, 4 February. Sermon on Psalm 19:8, 20 September 1934 in Rotterdam.)