Spiritual Hunger – John G. Lake

Veronese-Jesus-and-the-scribes-450-webby John G. Lake

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” Matthew 5: 6

Hunger can be a good thing. It is the greatest persuader I know of. It is a marvelous power. Nations have learned that you can do almost anything with a populace until they get hungry. But when they get hungry, watch out. There is a certain spirit of desperation that accompanies hunger. I wish we all had it spiritually.

I wish we were desperately hungry for God. Wouldn’t it be glorious? It would be a strange thing, if we were all desperately hungry for God, if only one or two got filled in a service.

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.”

Righteousness is the rightness of God. The rightness of God in your spirit, the rightness of God in your soul, the rightness of God in your body, the rightness of God in your affairs, in your home, in your business, everywhere. God is an all-around God. His power operates from every side. The artists paint a halo around the head of Jesus to show that there is a radiation of glory from His person. They might just as well put it around His feet or any part of His person. It is the radiant glory of the indwelling God, radiating out through the personality. There is nothing more wonderful than the indwelling of God in the human life. The most supreme example that God ever performed was His taking possession of men. By the Holy Spirit He comes in and takes possession of those who are hungry.

I will guarantee to you that after the crucifixion of Jesus there were 120 mighty hungry folks at Jerusalem. If they had not been exceedingly hungry they would not have gotten so gloriously filled. It was because they were hungry that they were filled.

“Blessed are they which do hunger.”

We are sometimes inclined to think of God as mechanical, as though God just set a date for this or that event to occur. But my opinion is that one of the works of the Holy Ghost is to prepare the hearts of men in advance by putting within them a strong hunger for that event that has been promised by God until it comes to pass.

The more I study history and prophecy, the more I am convinced that when Jesus Christ was born into the world He was born in answer to a tremendous heart-cry on the part of the world. The world needed God desperately. They wanted a manifestation of God tremendously, and Jesus Christ as Deliverer and Savior came in answer to their soul’s cry.

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Many look forward to the second coming of Jesus as though mechanically, on a certain date, when certain events come to pass, Jesus is going to appear. I do not see it that way. I believe there must be an overwhelming hunger for the Lord’s coming in the hearts of men so that a prayer such as was never prayed in the world before for Christ to come will rise to heaven. And when it rises to heaven on the part of sufficient souls, it will take Jesus Christ off the throne and bring Him down to earth.

Daniel says he was convinced by the study of the books of prophecy, especially that of Jeremiah, that the time had come when the Israelites should he delivered from their captivity in Babylon; the 70 years were fulfilled, but there was no deliverance. So he diligently set his face to pray it into being (Daniel 9).

If deliverance were going to come to pass mechanically on a certain date, there would not have been any necessity for Daniel to get that tremendous hunger in his soul, so that he fasted and prayed in sackcloth and ashes that deliverance might come. God’s purposes come to pass when our heart and mind get the real God-cry, when the real God-prayer comes into our hearts and the real God-yearning gets hold of our nature. Something is going to happen then.

No matter what your soul may be coveting, if it becomes the supreme cry in your life, not the secondary matter, or the third or fourth, the fifth or tenth, but the supreme desire of your soul, the paramount issue—all the powers and energies of your spirit, soul and body are reaching out and crying out to God for the answer—it is going to come!

Excerpt from Chapter I from Spiritual Hunger – The God-Men, by John G. Lake

Comments

  1. The first time I got this hunger for being with the Lord. I went 4 months & all I wanted to do was worship I got into such a place that I couldn’t leave my apartment without praying& being sure that my heart was right before getting around others. It was a glorious time in my life.

  2. Let’s take a look at this Bible verse below.

    But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul (Deuteronomy 4:29).

    The point is that God has already made Himself available to us, so our job is to seek Him wholeheartedly. When we seek God, we give Him the sole priority over our lives. We express a genuine interest in knowing Him better as well. When we do that, God will not stand by and let our effort to be in vain.

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