May 6 Daily Devotional

I hunger and I thirst;
Jesus, my manna be:
Ye living waters, burst
Out of the rock for me

What does it mean ['to hunger and thirst']? ... It means a consciousness of our need, of our deep need, ... a conscious­ness of our desperate need; it means a deep consciousness of our great need even to the point of pain. It means something that keeps on until it is satisfied. It does not mean just a passing feeling, a passing desire.

You remember how Hosea says to the nation of Israel that she is always, as it were, coming forward to the penitent form and then going back to sin. Her righteousness, he says, is as "a morning cloud"—it is here one minute and gone the next....

"Hunger" and "thirst," these are not passing feelings. Hunger is something deep and profound that goes on until it is satisfied. It hurts; it is painful; it is like actual, physical hunger and thirst. It is something that goes on increasing and makes one feel desperate. It is something that causes suffering and agony....

To hunger and thirst is to be like a man who wants a position. He is restless; he cannot keep still; he is working and plodding; he thinks about it and dreams about it; his ambition is the controlling passion of his life.... "Hungering and thirsting." ... The Psalmist has summed it up perfectly in a classical phrase: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." ...

Let me quote some words of the great J.N. Darby which I think put this exceedingly well. He says, "To be hungry is not enough; I must be really starving to know what is in His heart towards me." Then comes the perfect statement of the whole thing. He says, 'When the prodigal son was hungry, he went to feed upon husks; but when he was starving, he turned to his father." Now that is the whole position. To hunger and thirst really means to be desperate, to be starving, to feel life is ebbing out, to realize my urgent need of help.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, pp 80-1

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”

Comments on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, A First Book of Daily Readings

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