Can we pray?
Oh, dear Lord Jesus, You know how much I would want to be able to teach in this other tongue, in order that the burden You put upon my heart for this evening could indeed be relieved. But, Lord, we know that nothing is impossible with You.
Even if we can speak or not, Lord, what we desire far more is that You will grant us Your present presence, my Lord. O God, mighty God, we read in Your Word that there were times in the history of the house of God when the glory of God filled the house, and it was unnecessary and impossible even to minister Your Word.
Lord, be to us that Your Spirit shall rest upon us this night, Lord; that Your presence shall be living in our midst. And, Lord, that You shall touch heavy hearts deep down.
Lord, that the Lord Jesus Christ crucified may indeed be painted before us. Lord, how we need You, how we hunger for You and thirst for You. Lord, we thank You that You are in this room. Come in, Lord. Come right in with the presence of the Holy Spirit.
We ask it because of the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and in His mighty name. Amen.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
For they shall be satisfied.
I do not think it speaks so much of a desire to do the right thing or to avoid doing the wrong thing, as it is a desire to know Him who was made righteousness unto us.
Oh, if we could have such a hunger and thirst to come to know the Lord better in our lives, we should indeed be satisfied. Because there is nothing that can satisfy our hearts—no matter what it is: blessing, experiences, truth, knowledge. There is only One who can really satisfy the deepest need of our hearts: the living Person of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
This is why we have come here, both of us. We have come here because we desire to see Him. We desire to meet Him. We desire and long to come deeper into that wonderful Person, that precious living Lord and Savior.
If you look up Psalm 17:15, you will see what can satisfy your heart and our hearts together.
As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.
David says, “I shall be satisfied when I see Your likeness, when I behold You, Lord. In the morning, when I awake, I shall be satisfied when I come to know what You are like.”
There is just one thing necessary. There are many things that are good for us, but there is only one thing that is really necessary. We read about that in Psalm 27:4.
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to meditate in His temple.
One thing I have asked: to dwell in the temple of the Lord, to behold the beauty of the Lord. What a desire. What a hunger, what a thirst there was in this man of God, David—the man after God’s own heart.
Now, the heart God wants in us is not a perfect heart, a faultless heart, or a sinless heart. But it is a whole heart—a heart that is hungering, desiring, thirsting to see the Lord and to dwell in His presence.
O may God indeed create such an attitude in our hearts. May we never, never be satisfied with anything else. May nothing whatsoever hinder us in running after Him. It is time to be drawn into His presence, deeper into that wonderful Christ who was made righteousness unto us.
Friends, I feel sometimes that we think God reveals Himself very easily. We think it is easy to have revelation from God. But it is certainly not easy.
God is not the kind of Person who reveals Himself to anybody, at any time, anywhere, at any cost. You do not find Him on the street corner. Sometimes you hardly find Him manifested and revealed in the church.
The Scripture says that He is a God who hides Himself. We do not easily come to see Him and catch a glimpse of His glory. There is no easy way to get a revelation of who He is and what He is like.
Let me use a picture. Suppose I were a bachelor—I am not; I am happily married in my nineteenth year—and suppose I were a millionaire. I am certainly not a millionaire, but I do not need a thing. The Lord has looked graciously after me for many years.
Suppose I were a bachelor and a millionaire. What a life! What a life! And suppose I wanted to get married. Poor girl! But I wanted to marry a girl who really loved me for my own sake, in spite of how I look.
Would it be a good idea if I put an advertisement in the Richmond News Leader on the front page: “Millionaire bachelor seeks suitable girl for marriage. Please call so-and-so”? What do you think would happen? There would be a long, long line—longer than the one up at the dining hall.
But how would I ever come to know whether the girls there would marry me because they loved me? Probably they would all come to marry because of my money.
Now God is not One who reveals Himself like that. It would be better if I, being a bachelor and a millionaire, put on ordinary clothes and went out in the city looking silly and queer. If I went around, and finally one day met the one who would love me just as I am, then I would have found a true heart—a heart that would love me.
God is like that. He is a God who hides Himself because He wants to see whether in His people there is any desire after Him, any thirst for Him, whether there is any hunger, any yearning.
Oh, friend, how the Lord has been speaking to His people down through the ages. There is the people of Israel. If you look up the prophet Jeremiah, chapter 29, verse 11:
For I know the plans that I have for you, saith the Lord,
Plans for welfare and not for calamity,
To give you a future and a hope.
Then shall ye call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you.
And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.
You will find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;
They shall be satisfied.
In Isaiah 65, we have another Scripture. The Lord is speaking against His people, and He says:
I permitted Myself to be sought by those who did not ask for Me;
I permitted Myself to be found by those who did not seek Me.
I said, “Here am I, here am I,”
To a nation which did not call on My name.
Do you see how important it is that you have a hunger, a thirst, and a desire? Otherwise, you will never find Him. You will never be able to go on with Him. You will never be able to grow in Christ without having an ever-increasing hunger and thirst and a burning desire within you to run after Him and seek His face.
In 1 Chronicles 28:9, the Lord is speaking to His servant Solomon:
As for thee, my son Solomon, know thou the God of thy father, and serve Him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth every imagination of the thoughts. If thou seek Him, He will be found of thee; but if thou forsake Him, He will cast thee off for ever.
The Lord searches all hearts. What is He looking for? Is He looking for perfection? Is He looking for a heart that is without fault? Is He looking for a sinless heart? No, He is looking for a whole heart.
He is looking for a heart in which there is a burning desire, in which there is hunger and thirst to know Him, to seek Him, to see Him in His likeness and in His beauty. And when He finds that kind of heart, He will commit Himself. He will be present there. He will let Himself be found again and again.
Oh, friends, suppose we all in this audience tonight had such a hunger and burning desire in our hearts to see the Lord. Yes, we would call upon Him. We would do everything. We would stay here as long as we needed to stay. Do you think something would happen? I am sure something would happen.
Oh, friends, often we cannot meet the Lord. He is there, all right. He has His plan for us, all right. He has His purpose with us in this week and this conference, all right. He is standing in the midst of us in all His glory, all His beauty, and all His power, with all His gifts.
But nothing is going to happen until hearts are stirred with burning desire, with hunger; until lips are opened to call upon the Lord and to seek His face.
I sometimes feel that quite a few Christians consider the Lord as a waiter in a restaurant. When they come in, they sit down at the table and do this: “Waiter!” And there He comes. “Would You please give me a meal? Let us say, a meal of salvation.”
“Yes, sir.” So we get salvation, and it is wonderful. But then we discover we need a dessert, a second blessing. “Please, waiter, give us a nice dessert—a nice charismatic dessert.” So, yes, sir, we get it.
And then we do not stop. At least in Denmark, no meal is perfect without some cheese in the end. So we say, “Would You please bring some of these nice gifts of the Spirit as well?”
It is like the fairy tale of the young boy who found this tremendous, remarkable lamp—Aladdin. Every time he rubbed it, the spirit was there: “Master, what do you require?”
Is that the kind of God we are serving? In no way.
Even salvation is a gift. Salvation, although it is freely given us in Christ through His death and resurrection, is not something that you can just go into the presence of the Lord and take like that.
Brothers and sisters, we have made the gospel of Jesus Christ a merchandising thing. We tell it on every corner: “Oh, come and get saved. You do not need to do anything. Come and get peace and joy and everything you need. God will give you anything and everything.”
Brothers and sisters, if we want the Lord in our lives, we have got to pay the price. It is going to cost us everything we are and everything we have. And if we are getting some other kind of salvation, it will not last.
Here is the precious God. He is an almighty God. He is the Prince, the King of kings, the Lord of all, Maker of the universe.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;
They shall be satisfied.
Look up in Luke 16:27. There we have the story about Abraham, the rich man, and poor Lazarus. This rich man, when he came after his death, woke up and saw the terrible place he had ended up in. He saw Abraham and Lazarus in his bosom.
Then he said to Father Abraham:
Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of torment.
But Abraham said:
They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
And he said:
No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.
But he said to him:
If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone rises from the dead.
Oh, we think sometimes that if God will do a fantastic miracle in our midst, then people will bow down before Him and get saved by the Lord. I do not think so. I do not think anyone can be saved, really, without having a thirst and a hunger in his heart.
God does not easily reveal Himself. It is by the foolishness of preaching that people are saved. And everyone who has a desire and a hunger and a thirst, they will enter into the kingdom. They will meet the Lord, and they will indeed be satisfied.
I wonder whether there will be someone here who has not yet come into the kingdom of God, who has not received the Lord Jesus as Savior. Oh, dear friend, if you desire, if you have a hunger after the Lord, if you would come to the Lord and pray that He will create in you such a desire, such a hunger and thirst, then you will find a power within you that will drive you, lead you, and bring you to Himself.
Oh, friends, when we look upon our nation and see the many people who do not know the Lord, we say, “Oh God, bestow all Your blessings upon America and upon Denmark.” But God has been doing that for centuries, and it is never going to lead people to repentance.
The more blessings they get, the more material things they have, the easier they get away from God. What is going to get our people back to the Lord, brothers and sisters? Only a hunger and a thirst created by the Spirit of God.
If necessary, by sending a famine to the land, by drying up all our welfare chances, by breaking our economy, by maybe sending us down to poverty—that will make people begin to think and to desire and hunger for something else.
Oh, we thank God for every blessing He has given us. But what will make us come to the Lord will never be the blessing. It will be when we find that kind of attitude, that kind of heart burning with thirst and hunger after the Lord Himself.
I remember reading in Brother Nee’s books how they search for God in the Far East. If you go out and take tracts with you, they tell me that when they are driving around in India with the Gospel van and stop in a village, taking all the tracts out, people come running and take them out of their hands. They take everything they can get.
There was a man in India who was seeking God with all his heart. He went away into the mountains, prayed, and fasted for weeks. He ended up one day sitting on the edge of a deep cliff.
While he sat there with this burning desire and this hunger, he turned to God in the end and said, “Oh God, if You exist, if You are real, if what they tell me is the truth, God, reveal Yourself to me, or I will cast myself down from that cliff.”
Oh, you can imagine how close God came to that man. He actually saw the Lord Jesus, and he was saved wonderfully and was a transformed person.
We often sing and say, “When He be lifted up, He will draw all men to Himself.” What does that mean? Does it mean that when we sing praises to God and lift Him up in that manner, then people will be drawn into the kingdom of God?
Well, to a certain degree, worship is a great power, but it is not what the Scripture is really aiming at. No, the Scripture speaks of the Lord Himself being lifted up on that tree and nailed to that cross. He is speaking of the agony of Calvary, of all the suffering, of all the pain.
In England there was an evangelist preaching for seven nights. The first six nights, he preached about peace and joy and happiness and blessings. Every time there was a young man sitting in the audience. He came to every meeting, but nothing happened.
On the seventh evening, this evangelist preached about the cross of Jesus Christ. He preached about the blood, about the burden that fell upon the Son of God, how His heart was broken, how the whole load of the sins of the whole world in all ages was put upon His heart.
That night, this young man stood up and came forward and got wonderfully saved. The evangelist went down and said, “Why did you come forward this night and not the other six nights?”
“Well,” he said, “when you talked about peace and happiness, I said, ‘Well, I have got that too. I do not need that.’ Even when you talked about peace, I said, ‘Well, I am quite peaceful. No need of that.’ But when you spoke about the cross of Jesus Christ and all His sufferings, something happened in me. There was a power that descended upon my heart, and there was such a thirst arising within me. I knew that I had to come to Him that night.”
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst;
They shall be satisfied.
Brothers and sisters, God is not moving when there is no need. God is not doing a thing if there is no need. God is not moving if there is no hunger after Him.
I thought that God moved with the people of Israel when they were in Egypt, when He had come through with His servant Moses and had been dealing with that man so that he became a proper vessel in the hands of God. But this was not the thing that moved God.
If you look up Exodus 2:23, you will find what finally, after those many years of bondage, moved the heart of the Lord:
And it came to pass in the course of those many days, that the king of Egypt died; and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry for help because of their bondage went up unto God.
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them.
In Exodus 3:7, when God spoke to Moses, the Lord said:
I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.
What moved the heart of God to move with His people? Oh, saints, it is not the servant of the Lord who is in the front, in the first line. It is always the people of God. They need to cry.
When God heard their groaning, and when these cries came up out of that people, then God began to move. He came down and lifted them out of the bondage they were in.
Oh, friends, this is so even in the church. The big problem we have in the church today is that we have no need. We are like the third church in Laodicea. We say, “I am in need of nothing. I have become rich.”
We do not know how poor we are. We do not know how needy we are. We do not know our needs.
The Lord is speaking to His church and He is saying, “Buy from Me eye salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see your real situation, that you may see your real need.” And seeing that need, you will begin to cry and call upon the Lord. Your heart will begin to desire the Lord and to thirst after Him with a whole heart.
It is because we are so blind. We do not see the needs in our own lives. We do not see the needs in the church. We are saying, “We have need of nothing.” Oh, how sad it is when there is no need.
The great Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard says in one of his books, “I am not complaining that the time in which we live is evil, but I am complaining that it is without passion.” There is no desire to follow the Lord. There is no hunger in that. We have been satisfied with everything else.
And you know, this lack of need has put the Lord outside the door. He is standing outside and knocking at the door. Believe me, He is knocking, but He will never, ever open that door by Himself.
God will never move until this attitude of thirst and hunger and desire for Him comes forth in our hearts, and we really acknowledge our tremendous need of Him.
When you look at the Lord Jesus in the Gospels, how remarkably passive the Lord was. He never took any initiative on His own. He never moved until there was someone, somewhere, somehow, who had a desire and a burning thirst and hunger.
He never moved until the woman, forcing her way through the crowd, stretched forth her hand to touch His garment. He never moved until those desperate men went up on the roof and made a hole in the roof in order to bring their miserable friend down at the feet of the Lord.
Do you think the Lord complained and said, “What is this? We cannot have this happening here in the church!” Imagine, if during this meeting, suddenly someone came to pull the whole thing apart!
Oh, friends, I wish somehow that someone would come into our churches and pull it all down with their fingers—do something to stir our hearts, that we may seek the Lord. Those were desperate men. What a hunger, what a thirst.
Oh, friends, I wish we would do anything we could to bring our miserable friends to the Lord Jesus. He would not mind, I am sure. He would not mind if there was just a hunger and such a desire and such a burning thirst that we would do anything possible, even breaking through all barriers of every kind, to bring these miserable sinners—paralyzed, hopeless people—to the Lord Jesus.
As the Scripture says about this dispensation in which we live, Matthew 11:12:
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force.
Oh, what a power thirst and hunger is. When this desire after the Lord enters our hearts, it will stir us to take our possession.
The people of Israel got none of their possessions merely by sitting and waiting on the other side of the River Jordan for God to move. God did not move until these priests, burdened with a desire to get into that promised land, stepped down in the river. Then the water dried up in front of them.
Oh, mind you, the people of Israel did not get a tiny bit of the promised land without fighting for it. They took the land in warfare—every bit of it. They took it, I thought, by such a hunger and such a thirst to enter and possess that promised land.
I wish we had that desire, dear friends, to investigate, to search, to possess Christ Jesus, and come into all the promises that He has given unto us in Him.
The Lord Jesus never moved until a miserable, desperate beggar—a blind beggar at the wall of Jericho—cried his heart out when the Lord Jesus passed by. The disciples tried to quiet him down and play civilized in the presence of the Lord Jesus. But this man cried even with a louder voice.
Then the Lord Jesus stood still, and He said, “Bring him to Me.”
Oh, that woman who had a daughter who was sick—how she pleaded with the Lord. The Lord turned her down three times. “This is not for you. You are not of the people of Israel. You do not belong to those who have inherited the promises,” and so forth.
But she kept on. What a desire! What a hunger! What a thirst! She would not let Him go, and finally He said, “I have never seen such a thing anywhere”—such a desire to meet the Lord.
Oh, dear friend, God is never moving until He finds that wonderful attitude.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst;
They shall be satisfied.
You remember the day when those desperate disciples were in the boat, sailing across in a storm. The waves were high, they broke over the boat, and water filled the boat. Then they saw the Lord coming, walking on the water. The Scripture says that He would pass them by.
Is that not remarkable? He did not do a thing until they cried out from that boat, “Master, Master, do You not care that we perish?”
Oh, friend, God will move when we have got this heart of hunger and thirst. What a power there is in thirst.
I saw a commercial a few years ago. I will never forget that picture: a man in the desert, in the blazing sun, lying down; his skin was torn to pieces, stretching forth his hand to get a grasp on a bottle of Coca-Cola. I believe it was an American idea.
But that thing—I will never forget it. That desperation in that face, that power coming up in that poor, miserable fellow to reach out and get that bottle before it was too late.
Oh, I wish we had such a desire for the living water.
Do you remember that woman at the well? Oh, what a beautiful picture. How she sat down there with the Lord, and the Lord began to speak to her about the living water. She became so thirsty for it that, when the time came where He requested that she get her husband, the Lord said, “Go, call thy husband.”
But, friends, it was too late to turn her away. Oh, the hunger and thirst that were in her! She would do anything and everything, admit all her sins, in order to get that precious water of eternal life.
Oh, if you are here and do not know the Lord, if you have seen just a little of His love, you will also want to let nothing hinder you from coming to Him.
My father traveled in Germany after the Second World War. Wherever they came by train and stopped at a station, there was a crowd of hungering people outside—small children stretching forth, yelling and screaming from hunger.
My father said, “Everything we had, every bit of food, we handed out through the open window.” He came home and had, in fact, lost weight. He had not been eating very much for several weeks.
That hunger they met moved their hearts. They gave everything.
This is how our God is. If there is any attitude, if there is any kind of heart that God cannot withstand, that God cannot turn down, it is a heart that is burning with hunger and thirst for the Lord Jesus Himself.
Oh, you know, God says of David—let us just read in Psalm 42. What a man he was. No wonder that he was a man after God’s own heart.
As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
So panteth my soul after Thee, O God.
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
While they continually say unto me, “Where is thy God?”
These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me,
How I went with the throng, and led them to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and praise,
A multitude keeping holyday.
Oh, how great is this heart of David. Like the deer pants—do you think that the deer comes into the desert and lies down and sort of expects something to happen? “Maybe it is going to rain some day, and we will get some water.”
Have you seen a thirsty deer in the desert? Well, it is running and running around until it finally dies. It will die from strain and effort before it dies of thirst. It is seeking until it finds some water somewhere.
David is speaking of his own heart. This is the heart that was in that man. Oh, how God loved that heart. It was not perfect. It was certainly not sinless. No one committed ever the great thing that David did. But that heart was in him—that longing, that desire.
Oh, how he longed for the house of God. I wish we had that desire, that longing amongst us as God’s people, to be together in the house of the Lord and dwell together before Him in His presence.
I know that many of you have got that. But still, may we have an increasing thirst and hunger, like David, longing for the Lord and for His house.
Now, what is the way to be deeply rooted in Christ? The way is hunger and thirst after God.
I have a friend who is a doctor. I went into his garden one day. He was watering his flowers artificially. Right in front of the house was a beautiful tree, and I could see from the soil that it got no water. It had such lovely, fresh leaves.
So I turned to him—I almost felt angry with that friend of mine. “How are you treating this lovely tree? You do not give it any water. The other flowers you give water, but this precious thing, you do not give it water.”
He turned to me and said, “Well, it is only because you are such a fool.” Well, I knew that, but it is always good to be confirmed in your belief.
He said, “If I water this particular tree with artificial watering, it will get lazy. What will happen is that it will never stretch down the roots to find the water supply deep down under the ground. Then, you see, if I go away for two or three weeks—maybe a month—on holiday, and I come home, this precious tree has died.”
We will never be deeply rooted in God unless we know something of this hungering, this thirsting spirit within us; something of this desire to seek God, to seek the Lord, to stretch down our roots and cry, “Deeper, deeper down,” until finally we come down into the deep water.
Then it does not matter any longer whether we get rain, whether we get this kind of so-called revival every second month or sometime in the year. We need the Lord in these things, and we thank the Lord, but this is not enough. We must be planted and stretch down our roots into the water so we can survive even the dry years in our place in life.
We will never learn it until we get hearts that are thirsting and hungering for righteousness, for the Lord.
I was preaching one Sunday on the vine and the branches, and this same medical doctor sat down. I was reading how beautiful it is to be a branch on the vine. “Oh, you do not have to do anything,” I told the whole audience. “It is such a sweet, royal, perfect, restful life. You sit there like a small branch, and everything you need comes up through the vine and just comes to every branch. Fruit comes and leaves by itself. You do not have to do a thing. How sweet it is to be a Christian.”
After the meeting, this doctor came to me and said, “You do not know how big a fool you are.” Well, I did know, but it is good to be confirmed in your belief.
He said, “Do you know what happens in the vine and in the plant? There is tremendous activity there. You will never get sap out in the branches if there is not such a drawing power from the branches—a thirst and a hunger that draws that result.”
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst;
They shall be satisfied.
Oh, brothers and sisters, may we know something about that which Paul is speaking about in Philippians 3. Oh, how this man had such a heart. Read verse 12:
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
And now listen:
Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded.
Who are perfect? Those who have this attitude. All those who have this attitude are perfect in the sight of God. They have a perfect heart. They have a whole heart. They are pressing on.
We are never going to gain or win that prize in any other way. God is just there with everything we need, with all the riches of grace in Christ, but it does not move until something is stretched forth to touch Him in desire and hunger.
The Word of God—how do we get into this Book? Peter says that we are to long for it as a baby longs for milk. In the original, he uses an even stronger word, explaining how every fiber in the baby is working in hunger and thirst for that milk.
Certainly, you have never seen a baby hungry and thirsty sit still and die without saying a word. They scream furiously. Everything goes on dangerously. Everything they can move, they move.
And the Word of God is saying, in like manner, let us long for that sincere milk.
The same goes for the Spirit. Many people have difficulty being filled with the Spirit. Many ministers say, “How are you filled with the Spirit, baptized in the Holy Spirit, and how do you speak in tongues?” Well, there is really only one thing needed. The Lord Jesus says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.”
I know a very simple farmer in Denmark. He could hardly read nor write, but he had such a thirst for God. One day, when he was out in the field plowing, he was praying. You could hear him pray a mile away. He would move up the whole time he was there, when he prayed.
And that day in that field, something hit him. He began to praise with all his heart in another tongue. When he came home, he phoned some of the elders in the church and said, “Something happened today. Can you explain what it is?”
“Oh, yes,” they said, “this is this and that. You have got an experience in the Holy Spirit.”
No, some of these elders had not got it themselves, so they could explain it beautifully. They had some tremendous teaching about being filled with the Holy Spirit and baptized in the Holy Spirit. Some of those who are delivering beautiful lectures do not know it at all.
I cannot tell you that you must have this and you must do that, and so on. Oh, what is really needed is thirst and hunger. Those that are thirsty and hungry, they will get it somehow, someway, sometime.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst;
They shall be satisfied.
Let us pray.
Father, we pray that You will create in us such a hunger, such an attitude toward You, Lord, that we may desire this one thing: to dwell in the temple of the Lord and behold the beauty of the Lord.
Lord, we ask You by Your Holy Spirit to touch our hearts, to stir us, Lord. O mighty God, revive our hearts, that we may press on, Lord, toward that goal.
Lord, we ask You in Jesus’ name: lead us here in this conference. Lead us, Lord, and make us the people that will run after You all the days of our lives. In His name.