The Pathway of Righteous Dissatisfaction

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matthew 5:6

“I’m hungry. I’m thirsty.” How often do most of us say something like that? Plenty. Of course, most of the time we’re simply responding to the clock. It’s noon, so we tell ourselves that we need something to eat and drink whether we really do or not.

Nevertheless, most of us have seen news pictures of starving children in some distant land or a desert wanderer who is so dehydrated that his lips have cracked open. These brief brushes with extreme hunger and thirst are enough to tell us that we don’t want anything to do with it.

That’s why we find the words of Jesus in the fourth beatitude so hard to understand. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.” What does that mean? And we aren’t helped when we learn that the words Jesus used for “hunger” and “thirst” mean to be intensely hungry and thirsty. How in the world could that be a source of blessing?

That is a natural question, yet as we will see, it is another pathway to extraordinary living – the pathway of righteous dissatisfaction. Though a seeming contradiction in terms, this pathway will show us how those who live in the middle of God’s blessing understand the value of an unquenchable longing for true righteousness in their lives.

People who live extraordinary lives have a deep appetite for righteousness. Most of us can probably relate with the idea of having a deep appetite for something. We have a craving for a certain kind of food. Or we have an intense longing for some new gadget on the market.

So we all have deep appetites. The issue is to have a deep appetite for the right thing. That right thing according to Jesus is righteousness. Even though the word righteousness has the appropriate spiritual sound to it, we can find ourselves craving the wrong kind of righteousness which will still leave us far from God’s blessing.

For example, for some people the kind of righteousness we need to pursue is little different from the kind that Jesus condemned in the Pharisees – a self-righteous attempt to look more acceptable to God based on a never ending set of religious regulations. But that’s not what the blessed ones have in mind.

They understand that the kind of righteousness they need to be hungering and thirsting for isn’t a set of moral principles – but for God himself. That’s what the Psalmist was trying to get across in Psalm 42 when he wrote, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God.” Jesus said the same thing in John 6, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Once again those who live in the middle of God’s blessing are hungering and thirsting not for the things the world craves or for a set of righteous regulations but for God Himself who is their righteousness.

So each of us need to ask ourselves about our appetites. If we are yearning for what the rest of the world wants, then we shouldn’t be surprised when we continually come up empty. The new job, the new gadget, or the new relationship you will soon be the old job, the old gadget and the old relationship. Belong long we’ll be right back where we started.

The same thing is true if we’re striving for some kind of religious self-improvement plan. After several failed attempts of getting clean and fixing our own spiritual problems, we’ll just come up empty. That’s why we need to have a deep appetite for the right kind of righteousness that only comes when we’re rightly connected with God – the true source of righteousness. Those who live in the middle of God’s blessing understand that.

People who live extraordinary lives actively seek to satisfy their spiritual longings for God. In the romantic comedy, Sleepless in Seattle, one of the main characters is gently confronted by her best friend about her love life. “That’s your problem,” she said. “You don’t want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.”

How true. It’s one thing to want a meaningful relationship. It’s another thing to be willing to put forth the hard work to actually have one in real life. That’s exactly what Jesus was driving at here. He isn’t presenting the idea of hungering and thirsting for righteousness as a passive sort of thing where you sit back and wait for God to come to you and meet your need. Rather He has in mind a more active thing that takes great work and commitment to bring it to pass which is why so many are never filled with it. They aren’t willing to put for the effort to get it.

Not so with those who live extraordinary lives. They have such a deep appetite for the righteous presence of God in their lives that they give themselves to the constant pursuit of it through prayer, Bible study, times of solitude and silence and other spiritual practices. They don’t wait for others to spoon feed their faith to them like preschoolers waiting on a fruit pouch. Instead they find ways to feed that deep longing in their souls on their own, and they will not rest until they get it.

Think back about a time in your life when you really wanted something. Maybe it was a car as a teenager. Perhaps it was a certain job or promotion. It could have been a home of your own or even the ability to have a family. Whatever it was, do you remember how much you wanted it? A lot – right? And that desire was a part of you just about every waking moment, right? And you went to great efforts to do everything you knew to do to get what you wanted, right?

It’s the same with the desire to have the righteous presence of God. People who live extraordinary lives actively seek to satisfy their longing for it. Like the man in Jesus’ story who sold everything he had to obtain the pearl of great price, people who live in the middle of God’s blessing are persistent in their search for God and his righteousness.

So how has your pursuit been? Is it a hit or miss thing? Are you passive about it just hoping God will take of things for you? Or are you actively seeking it? How you answer that question will go a long way toward determining whether or not you are able to experience the fulfillment of the promise that Jesus makes to those walk the pathway of righteous dissatisfaction.

People who live extraordinary lives are filled with a yearning for more of God’s righteousness. It’s absolutely crucial that we’re clear on this, because misunderstanding this principle is a source of much disillusionment about the Christian faith. Here’s what I mean. For the most part we’ve been led to view the Christian life as the means by which we can finally be satisfied or fulfilled as we sometimes call it.

So we open our hearts to Jesus only to discover that in a matter of time we still don’t quite have it. So we conclude that maybe we just aren’t praying correctly. Or we’ve not come clean enough from our sins. Or we aren’t reading the Bible enough, or we’re reading the wrong parts. Whatever it is we’re convinced that there’s some inner barrier that’s keeping us from feeling the blessed relief of total fulfillment in Christ.

But is it possible that we’ve got it all wrong? – that hungering and thirsting for personal fulfillment even in Christ is nothing more than a baptized version of the same longing that people in the world have? I think so. For those who truly hunger and thirst for righteousness aren’t filled with satisfaction. Rather they’re filled with a righteous dissatisfaction that causes them to long even more for the righteousness of God.

You know how you feel when you get a few days to go to the beach or the mountains just to relax and recharge your batteries. When it’s over, you find yourself already longing for the next time when you can return and do it again. You are hungering and thirsting for more of the same.

That’s what people who live extraordinary lives do. They hunger and thirst for the righteous presence of God in their lives, and when they get a taste of it, it doesn’t fill them with satisfaction. Rather it fills them with an even deeper longing for the ultimate fulfillment of it in heaven.

Yes, those who admit their poverty of spirit, who mourn over the brokenness of the world and who humbly face their weaknesses and grow through them are the very ones who are filled with a righteous dissatisfaction with the world as it is and hunger and thirst for the day when God will forever make it the way it was always intended to be.

I wish I could say that I’m always filled with that kind of righteous dissatisfaction, but I’m not. Yet there are moments when it comes flooding into my soul, and I know that it’s what I need more than anything else in life.

I think of times when the choir sings an anthem that is so powerful that it speaks to the deep places in my soul. Or of times preparing a Bible study or a sermon when I am captivated by a truth found in the scripture. Or moments during Bible teaching on Wednesday night when the truth of God’s word just permeates the room. In those moments and in others like them, the righteous presence of God shows up for me and probably for a lot of others, and I am filled with a hunger and thirst in my heart for more.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you have that kind hunger and thirst in your heart? Then you are on one of the pathways that leads to extraordinary living – the pathway of righteous dissatisfaction. If that’s true for you, I pray that your cup will never be filled in this life ‘till you want no more but instead will always leave you craving more and more of his righteousness until that day when at last we will be forever filled.

And if you’re tired of seeking the satisfaction of the world even the religious world, then I invite you to take this pathway – the pathway of righteous dissatisfaction. It is the way of blessing.